Mixing music and politics - 2


Croatia is a very musical place, as yesterday's presidential election result confirmed. Mixing music and politics -1 is here.

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Berlin Philharmonic's first woman conductor

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In 2005 the appointment of a woman music director by a major American orchestra caused a storm of controversy . So, it is surprising to find that it was back in 1930 that the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra was first conducted by a woman, and even more surprising to find she was an American. But the story doesn't have a happy ending. Despite receiving critical acclaim, Antonia Brico found doors closed to her when she returned to the US, and was forced to form her own orchestras to continue her conducting career. She is seen above conducting in New York in 1945. (Image credit Dr. Ralph Weizsäcker ). Antonia Brico was born Wilhelmina Wolthus in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 1902, and emigrated to California with her foster parents in 1908. She attended high school in Oakland where she gained experience as a pianist and conductor. She went on to study liberal arts at the University of California, Berkeley , and also worked at the San Francisco Opera as an assistant to the director,
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There is no happiness for those who do not travel musically

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Bill Laswell's City of Light is an electro-Vedic journey to India's holy city of Benares .   The evocative booklet essay is by the anarchist writer and poet Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn Wilson), whose book Sacred drift: essays on the margins of Islam was featured here some years back. Music on the margins of Islam has also been a preoccupation of Bill Laswell for decades. His 1992 album   Apocalypse Across the Sky offered a refreshingly lucent take on the Master Musicians of Jajouka, in contrast to Brian Jones' celebrated chemically-blurred production .  Staying on those creatively inspired margins, Laswell's  Gnawa Night captures the spirit masters of sub-Saharan Africa in the same lucence.   In his booklet essay for City of Light, Hakim Bey quotes from Diana L. Eck 's definitive portrait of Varanasi, Banaras: City of Light , and the quote resonates with my recent post Music is the best way to travel . It comes from the ancient Indian collection of sacred h
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How to reach a big new post-COVID classical audience

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Bruno Walter's 1938 Vienna Philharmonic interpretation of Mahler's Ninth Symphony still has the power to move and enlighten, despite the technical limitations of the recording. Similarly Wilhelm Furtwängler's Berlin Philharmonic concert recording from 1949 of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony still reminds us that beauty is more powerful than hatred, again despite considerable technical limitations. Today, blowing 866 million euro on a not quite acoustically perfect concert hall is the go-to solution for saving classical music, which means a celebrity conductor can  throw his batons out of the pram  when he is not rewarded with a blinged-out new hall. So why, given these contemporary priorities, can great recordings from the past touch us so deeply when heard through the technology equivalent of a tin shed concert hall?  The answer lies in the little-understood but vitally important process of listening . There is no such thing as perfect sound , or historic sound, or bad
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Ravi Shankar's centenary must not be lost to lockdown

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Beethoven is fortunate. His anniversary falls in December this year: which means, hopefully, it can be celebrated when a degree of normality has returned. Ravi Shankar is less fortunate. The centenary of his birth fell on April 7th, when the world had more important things to worry about. Which meant the anniversary passed almost unnoticed; with the major celebration at London's South Bank Centre postponed until April 2021 . But it is important that Ravi Shankar's centenary is not lost to lockdown. Not only because he was a master of the sitar, but also because he was a great humanitarian who broke down the barriers dividing music of different cultures. One example is his collaboration with Philip Glass. In 1965 the neophyte American composer was studying in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and he was hired to notate the film score for Chappaqua composed by Ravi Shankar. In 1989 the head of independent label Private Music Ron Goldstein brought Pandit Shankar and Philip Glass
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Classical music must face the facts - click bait pays

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Above are the latest accounts for SlippedDisc Limited, which has Norman Lebrecht as a director*. These accounts show that the profit and loss account surplus** increased in fiscal 2020 to £203,719, an increase of 41% over the previous year***. To put that £203,719 trading surplus into context, the average salary for a Metropolitan Opera musician converted into sterling is £138,990 , that of BBC Radio 3 Controller Alan Davey is £182,000 , and Boris Johnson earns £161,401 . Let's be clear at this point: the filed accounts fully comply with the requirements of Companies House and are in the public domain , and Norman runs a legitimate business. This post is not being driven by malice or sour grapes. On An Overgrown Path has never had commercial aspirations: I was well rewarded during my career in the music industry and I am very fortunate to have adequate pension provisions. This post is driven, like so many on my blog, by context and facts.  Regular readers know that, to put it mi
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Requiem for my vinyl

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As I move deeper into retirement an impending move to a very nice but smaller property means I have reluctantly decided to part with my collection of 600 classical LPs and turntable. There are several reasons why this LP collection dating from the 1970s and 80s will be of particular interest. Regular readers will know my musical passions, and these are is reflected in the eclectic classical repertoire which has a particular focus on British music, and almost all the 600 discs are from 'quality' labels, DGG, Lyrita, Decca, Argo, Philips, EMI, Archiv, Hyperion, Conifer etc.  But what makes the collection unique is that every disc is in mint condition. All were bought by me and have never been out of my hands. I am fastidious about replay quality, so when buying noisy pressings were rejected until a flawless copy was provided. Typically the discs in the collection will have been played less than five times. They have only been played on the top-quality turntable seen above. All
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The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

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Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol
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Word quickly spread that the old composer had lost it

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October 2021 brings the centenary of Sir Malcolm Arrnold's birth. But it is unlikely that the photo above* will appear in any of the fulsome tributes to this still sadly neglected composer . It shows Sir Malcolm towards the end of his life with Anthony Day. In 1984 Anthony was appointed by the Court of Protection as Sir Malcolm’s chauffeur-companion, and he fulfilled that role until the composer's death in 2006. Anthony Day, who died of cancer in 2019, is known because of his involvement in the long and bitter battle  over the inheritance of the Arnold Estate. However, the Malcolm Arnold Society offers a refreshingly balanced overview of his role, saying that "Anthony was responsible for the not-always-easy Malcolm... Anthony’s life was not without its controversies, but through his long administrations, the distressing infirmities of Malcolm’s old age were at least tempered by the recognition and many honours Malcolm received as the grand old man of British music"
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Click bait pays but it also stinks

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A comment worth republishing has been added by a reader to my recent post ' Classical music must face the facts - click bait pays '. This thread is not about knocking Norman Lebrecht. Because as I said in my earlier post, I grudgingly admire what he has achieved. It is about the wider problem of what is happening to classical journalism. Because if classical music wants to thrive, it needs the support of intelligent, independent journalism free from hidden commercial agendas and political prejudice . And that is precisely what is lacking today.  Back in 2016 I wrote a post titled ' Music blogging #itsover '. Well, if music blogging was over five years ago, it is dead in the water today; despite the spectacular 'success' of Slipped Disc . In that 2016 post I wrote "Music blogs are now just another part of a tacky global marketplace where people have principles, but are prepared to change them if the price is right. There is no place in the blogging commun
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Grammy takes a Dame Ethel trip

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Chandos' recording of Dame Ethel Smyth's The Prison has won the the Best Classical Solo Vocal Album category at the 2021 Grammy awards ceremony. Here is my exclusive interview from last year with James Blachly who masterminded and conducted the recording. My previous headline was 'Get high on this composer's music - it is enough' Classical music has the unfortunate habit of flogging memes to death. One much-flogged meme is that yet another undiscovered masterpiece by a woman composer has been found. So, understandably, another such claim may induce a degree of ennui. But it would be wrong if that ennui means the new recording of Ethel Smyth's The Prison is overlooked. Today, it is difficult to find any coverage of Dame Ethel's music that does not major on her backstory of suffragette, imprisoned activist and lesbian: for instance Erica Jeal's thoughtful Guardian four star review of The Prison inevitably has a subhead beginning "A long ov
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