On An Overgrown Path

I like total spontaneity on stage, after six weeks of careful rehearsal - Noel Coward That quote appears in Conference of the Birds by John Heilpern which featured here recently . But others think randomness is a very precious thing . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Photo of Noel Coward via Emsworth . 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 broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

'In 1990, when I was Chief Executive of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra , we put on a series of modern music concerts, under the title Musica Nova , the originator of this series being Sir Alexander Gibson . We were greatly helped financially by the City of Glasgow, which had been made City of Culture that year. Among the composers featured was John Cage . I well remember meeting him at the airport, and taking him to Glasgow University. Cage was a great specialist in mushrooms, and on seeing some rather sad specimens growing on a patch of grass in the university precincts, he said ‘Ah! That’ll do for lunch.’ He invited me to join him, but I was cowardly enough to decline. I regretted this later, since, as the concerts progressed, I found he was one of the most delightful and engaging musicians I have ever met. His brilliant music made a great impact on the Musica Nova audiences.' That previously unpublished reminiscence comes from an unlikely source. Former EMI producer...

While on a long cross country drive on Saturday I heard Matthew Herbert's recomposition of Mahler's Tenth Symphony on BBC Radio 3 - there is a valuable video interview with the recomposer here . Kudos to Deutsche Grammophon, who take a lot of stick on this blog, for challenging silly conventions with this new release* which may well appeal to a younger as well as older audience. For me, no more justification is needed for the recomposition than Carl Nielsen's words : 'The right of life is stronger than the most sublime art, and even if we reached agreement on the fact that now the best and most beautiful has been achieved, mankind thirsting more for life and adventure than perception, would rise and shout in one voice: give us something else, give us something new, indeed for Heaven's sake give us rather the bad, and let us feel that we are still alive, instead of constantly going around in deedless admiration for the conventional.' All of which leads me to t...

Let the Gypsies come and blossom. We miss them. They can help us by irritating our fixed orders. They are what we pretend to be; they are true Europeans. They do not know any borders. Günter Grass That quote is used by Garth Cartwright in the introduction to his portrait of the Gypsy musicians of the Balkans, Princes Among Men . The frontispiece of the book includes the following puff: An insightful and poignant travelogue which should be handed out free to every Daily Mail reader ~ Big Issue Please could a copy also be handed out to President Sarkozy ? Titi Robin's album Gitans , which is powered by the 'gypsy queen of Rajasthan' Gulabi Sapera , featured here . Germany's new generation of Gypsies are here , the forgotten holocaust victims are here , and before anyone points it out, yes, I know . Our pilgrimage to the gypsy shrine at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is here. My candid header photo, which shows some some of the new Europeans rather that authentic Gypsies, w...

While I was travelling last week the sad news came of the death of Geoffrey Burgon aged 69. Predictably the mainstream obituaries focussed on his music for the screen at the expense of his concert scores. As I wrote back in 2007 , "Although his film and TV scores are well known, Burgon's concert music isn't heard often enough to generate letters of complaint these days. His choral Requiem is a genuinely forward looking work, wonderful scoring, and beautiful Kingsway Hall sound". Geoffrey Burgon was a distinctive voice who was not afraid to speak out pour encourager les autres . He will be missed. Also on Facebook and Twitter .The Decca CD of Geoffrey Burgon's Requiem was bought at retail. 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 broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail ...

Peter Brook told me that if you watch any cat, it isn't just that his body is so relaxed and expressive. It's something more important than that. A cat actually thinks visibly. If you watch him jump on a shelf, the wish to jump and the action of jumping are one and the same thing. There's no division. A thought animates his whole body. It's exactly the same way that all Brook's exercises try to train the actor. The actor is trained to become so organically related within himself, he thinks completely with his body. He becomes one sensitive responding whole, like the cat. An ultimate example of this is revealed in a film of Picasso at work [see above]. In one lightning stroke you can see how the tip of Picasso's brush captures his entire imagination. His brushwork can actually be seen as his thought process. The same is true of the great orchestra conductor. After years and years of work, he thinks and transmits in one gesture. The whole of him is one. From Confe...

'Young people don't like concert halls... and wouldn't normally go to one except for amplified music. There is a big divide between amplified and non-amplified music... The future must bring things which are considered blasphemous like amplifying classical music in an atmosphere where people can come and go and even talk perhaps.. and certainly leave in the middle of a movement if they feel like it. Nobody should be deprived of classical music, least of all by silly conventions.' That is Jonathan Harvey talking about the future of classical music in an exclusive interview being broadcast and webcast on Future Radio on Sunday Sept 4. Which is the day after the composer's choral work Dum transisset sabbatum is being performed at a BBC Prom . Jonathan Harvey is seen above talking to me at his home in Sussex during the recording. In the interview he talks about musicians he has known including Benjamin Britten , Hans Keller , Karlheinz Stockhausen , Milton Babbit...