The holy atmosphere of concerts

In Christopher and his Kind, Christopher [Isherwood] admits to have been 'violently prejudiced against culture worship'. He hated 'the gushings of concert audiences and the holy atmosphere of concerts.' Stephen thought it was 'in some respects' like 'the Nazi attitude'. It was particularly painful when the brutal sarcasm was turned against figures like the pianist Artur Schnabel and the composer Roger Sessions, both of whom Spender had come to know, and revere, in Berlin. He continued to go to concerts (by Schnabel, Bruno Walter and Furtwängler), defying his friends philistine edicts.
From - Stephen Spender the authorized biography by John Sutherland. I am a camera in East Berlin here.

My montage shows Roger Sessions with Christopher Isherwood on the left and Stephen Spender right. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

A Negro in front of a white symphony group? No - I'm sorry

Image
It is reported that Everett Lee has died at the grand old age of 105. Everett Lee was an early victim of the institutionalised racism that still pervades classical music, and he deserves far more than to be lauded in a trite obituary and then forgotten again. My Overgrown Path articles about him ten years ago were in the vanguard of the movement to give musicians of colour the recognition they deserve. So here again are three of those articles: 'I don't believe in Negro symphony conductors': July 25th 2011 'Oh, come in, young man. I'm reading these reviews. They are out of this world. You really have something. But I might as well tell you, right now, I don't believe in Negro symphony conductors. No, you may play solo with our symphonies, all over this country. You can dance with them, sing with them. But a Negro, standing in front of a white symphony group? No. I'm sorry.' That is the impresario Arthur Judson discussing career opportunities with
Read more

Scott Ross and the paradox of genius

Image
On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of his great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the château, the harpsichordist gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos below were taken by me on a
Read more

Have all the really great musicians come and gone?

Image
Bernard Haitink's 2016 recording of Mahler's Third Symphony is arguably the greatest interpretation of that towering work committed to record. It is also one of the last testaments from a conductor who together with Georg Solti, Herbert von Karajan, Sir Adrian Boult, Colin Davis and others defined a golden age of classical music. In response to my post ' Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares ' reader David has posted a comment that starts by asking "...have all the really great performances, recordings indeed all the greatest musicians come and gone?" He then goes on to observe that  "I haven't heard anything in the last twenty or more years that compares with previous generations". The classical industry has spent much time agonising over its failed attempts to reach a new audience. But an even bigger problem has received little attention. Not only is the new young audience remaining elusive, but the older lon
Read more

...and the musicians were paid £800

Image
Back in 2008 I curated what was probably the first and only broadcast of a complete lilal  night healing ritual performed by the sub-Saharan musicians known as Gnawa. As a result of that broadcast, eight years later I was invited to a Gnawa trance ritual in Essaouira on Morocco's Atlantic coast. That  lilal was a private devotional event which I was privileged to attend with a Moroccan Sufi friend. But like all musicians, the Gnawa rely on commercial performances for their income. That source of income was abruptly terminated by the Covid pandemic. Which has left many Gnawa musicians facing extreme hardship in a country where fiscal safety-nets are much more fallible than in the West, and as a result  a priceless cultural tradition is at risk. Now there has been a heartwarming attempt to alleviate, at least in part, the musicians' hardship. A UNESCO intiative led to 75 gnawan master musicians gathering in Essaouira in December for the filming of a two hour TV special
Read more

New classical audiences need new music

Image
A reader's  perceptive comment  explained that to reach a new audience classical music must help listeners across the classical/non-classical divide.  Electronic Dance Music  (EDM) is the immensely popular staple fare of classical's elusive new young audience, and EDM lacks any narrative progression. Classical music can also be non-linear: one example is John Luther Adams' Become Desert , a seamless 40 minute sonic mirage which   abandons the horizontal narrative structures of works such as Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony  with its 'Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside'.  Become Desert sits comfortably in the concert hall, yet it would not be out of place in a sunset session at Ibiza's Café Del Mar or a full moon trance party on Koh Pha Ngan . As John Luther Adams described in a New York Times essay ,  Become Desert  literally entrances its audience - "You find yourself listening in ways you never have before. The scale of yo
Read more

All we are saying is give convergence a chance

Image
Wenatchee the Hatchet has left the comment below on my post ' Have all the really great musicians come and gone? ' For those with a maximum attention span of 280 characters the money quote is "I think working across all the musical genre boundaries to sustain a synergistic theoretical and practical cross-genre collaboration among musicians and composers could help people across the pop/classical divides... but music journalism and scholarship too often seems set on antagonizing the scene rather than exploring possible convergences". I suggest those words of wisdom should be the New Year's resolution for the classical industry. The accompanying graphics are from the predictably ignored  The Arabian Passion according to J.S Bach from the genre-defying early music ensemble Sarband : music samples here and here . Now this is Wenatchee the Hatchet's quote: 'I know Doug Shadle is working hard to get [Florence] Price heard more but what I've heard is &q
Read more

Scott Ross and the paradox of punk

Image
Angela Merkel's choice of mother-of-punk Nina Hagen to perform at her departure ceremony chimes with my recent Scott Ross thread . Despite being an authority of the music of Bach and Rameau, Scott Ross had refreshingly wide-ranging tastes in music. Here is Michel Proulx's description from his privately-published biography Scott Ross, Claveciniste - Un Destin Inachevé . '[Scott Ross] also liked synthesisers because he loved Brian Eno's, or Philip Glass' music, but also that of Nina Hagen and other artists from the 'non-formal' scene. I believe it was enough to present him with a subject which he would like for him to catch on it'.   It was with the help of harpsichord maker, Zen Buddhist and biographer Michel Proulx that I found Scott Ross' little house in Assas which featured in my homage Scott Ross and the paradox of genius .
Read more

Classical music must woke up and smell the coffee

Image
As pointed out here previously Norman Lebrecht's Slipped Disc receives the unequivocal support of the classical music industry in the form of advertising, exclusive news and interviews, advertorial partnerships, and complimentary concert tickets and CDs. Yesterday Norman published an article headlined 'US orchestra: Conductor wanted. No whites need apply' which was sourced from the National Review .  This conservative publication has a certain notoriety, including being one of the few media outlets to publish material written by Jeffrey Epstein's publicist Christina Galbraith . The National Review also publishes contributions by Dinesh D'Souza who has tweeted "So Rosa Parks wouldn't sit in the back of the bus--that's all she did, so what's the big fuss?" and this year ran an article bylined 'The Editors' proposing that the Equality Act "represents is a cynical attempt to use the Civil Rights Act as a Trojan horse for radi
Read more

Classical music has many saviours

Image
In June the scene above will become the most talked about concert venue in the world when Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela give an outdoor concert in Raploch, Stirling . Scottish artist Bill McAnally's watercolour shows Stirling Castle which will provide the spectacular backdrop for Gustavo Dudamel's concert on midsummer's day June 21, 2012. The original painting hangs in our dining room as a reminder of the years we spent living on the edge of the Raploch in the 1980s; it was here that our son started school and our daughter was born. Gustavo Dudamel's concert is being staged by Sistema Scotland and is part of the visionary Big Noise Raploch project which is working to create a children’s orchestra centre. Almost all the ingredients are in place for an unforgettable concert in June, a world class conductor and orchestra playing in a magnificent natural setting to promote music education. What more could we want? Well, I think we
Read more

Another pianist with a religious habit

Image
Yesterday I pointed out that Norman Lebrecht was wrong in saying that French pianist Jean-Rodolphe Kars had entered a monastery in 1981 and had not been heard of since. But in a fascinating twist reader Leo Carey, who sparked my recent Hans Schmidt Isserstedt post , has reminded me of another French pianist who did indeed disappear into a Benedictine monastery. Thierry de Brunhoff was born in 1933. His father was the writer and illustrator Jean de Brunhoff (1899-1937) who was famous for creating the Babar the Elephant books. When he was nine years old Thierry de Brunhoff became a pupil of Alfred Cortot at l'Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. Brunhoff's father had died when he was just three and he was encouraged as a pianist by his mother who had also been a pupil of Cortot's. He was a favourite pupil of Cortot and his career developed in the early 1960s to include acclaimed recitals and records, notably of Schumann. Some of his recordings from this period remain ava
Read more