On An Overgrown Path

One of them, stone by stone, followed me across the Atlantic a score of years later, and got itself set up within convenient reach of me when I most needed to see what a cloister looked like, and what kind of place a man might live in, to live according to his rational nature and not like a stray dog. St. Michel-de-Cuxa is all fixed up in a special and considerably tidy little museum in an uptown park, in New York, overlooking the Hudson River, in such a way that you don't recall what kind of city you are in. It is called The Cloisters. Synthetic as it is, it still preserves enough of its own reality to be a reproach to everything else around it, except the trees and the Palisades. That is Thomas Merton writing in his early autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain . He was born in the Catalonian town of Prades a short distance from the Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa , which is seen in my accompanying photos. During the French Revolution much of the Romanesque abbey, including the ...

Opportunities to hear a leading contemporary composer discussing the composition process are rare. Hearing the composer discussing a new concerto with the soloist it was written for are even rarer. So my latest Britten Sinfonia pre-concert podcast brings something a little special - James MacMillan (above) and oboeist Nicholas Daniel giving the inside track on the composer's new oboe concerto . They also give their views on whether classical music should be amplified and the links between spirituality and music : the latter subject is particularly topical in view of James' controversial comments about the musical tastes of those orchestrating the recent Papal visit to Scotland. The 30 minute discussion takes a few minutes to load, but I think you will find it worth the wait to listen . Other Britten Sinfonia podcasts hosted by me include: * Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich talk about Elliott Carter's music - listen here . * Composer Eriks Esenvalds talks abo...

Dylan is cool and Simon and Garfunkel are not. But in the days when file sharing meant copying LPs onto reel to reel tape the folk duo were most definitely cool. I still cannot listen to Old Friends on CD without missing the wow and flutter from the Elizabethan 1/4 inch tape machine that was my student equivalent of an MP3 player. Much wow of a very different kind on the free jazz improvisations on Paul Simon's Old Friends by pianist Marc Copland and his five piece band on the 2003 CD above. Other masters who receive the improvisation treatment include Miles Davis/Bill Evans, Charlie Parker and Herbie Hancock. Next to my CD player is a shelf where I keep music I return to time after time: there are seven Marc Copland discs there. Marc Copland And.. is on the Swiss label Hat Hut Records which also brought us Lou Harrison's Fifth Simfony (yes, that's right) for percussion. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Marc Copland And... was bought at retail. Report broken links, ...

What is the difference between a presenter and a promoter ? More same differences here. 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 Also on Facebook and Twitter .

Discussions about reaching new audiences only have value for me if they also talk about the music. So I was delighted to read an article on BBC Learning - Scotland titled Classical music with youth appeal in which a 'doubter' explains: Heck, I even started listening to Radio 3 for inspiration and discovered a piece of music by Arvo Part, Spiegel im Spiegel , which I would now proudly make part of my Desert Island Disc playlist (I think it would sit right fine next to Prince, the Afghan Whigs and the Rolling Stones). There were lots of other gems I discovered along the way, and many of them appear in the series. For example, James MacMillan's The Confession of Isobel Gowdie , Elgar's Symphony No 1, Reynaldo Hahn's beautiful À Chloris and an absolutely enchanting rendition of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' Farewell to Stromness , performed by the Caliban Quartet of bassoonists. I will say no more than this article is essential reading and one of the most regularly r...

As arts cuts announced today start to bite, few people are aware that the Royal Opera House pays its two top people more than £630,000 and nearly £400,000. Although Covent Garden is refusing to identify them, it is likely that they are chief executive Lord Hall and music director Antonio Pappano - from The Arts Desk It is interesting to apply some quick and dirty maths to that £630k figure. Let's assume it is Tony Hall who is earning the big bucks, and let's say that the average audience at Covent Garden is 2000 and there are 200 performances a year. That means £1.58 from every ticket sold at the Royal Opera House is going to the CEO as salary. At the risk of repeating myself... * My crude calculation ignores the cost of pensions and other non-salary benefits which could add another 50p to that £1.58. The calculation is illustrative and, of course, the CEO's salary is funded from sources other than ticket revenue. But if, hypothetically, the cost of the CEO was removed and...

Familiar faces can be seen in the photo above which was taken at the recent thanksgiving service for Raimon Panikkar in the Basílica of Montserrat outside Barcelona. Raimon Panikkar, who died on August 26th, 2010, was best known as an authority on comparative religion. But his advocacy of inter-religious dialogue was also an important influence on one of the great visionaries of 21st century classical music, Jordi Savall . Raimon Panikkar was born in Barcelona in 1918, the son of an Indian Hindu father and a Spanish Catholic. He studied for his three doctorates in Spain, Germany and Italy and his thesis at the Lateran University in Rome titled The Unknown Christ of Hinduism compared the teachings of Thomas Aquinas with those of a canonical Hindu scripture. Panikkar's first visit to India in 1954 started his life-long exploration of how core Christian convictions could be expressed in Hindu and Buddhist forms. In the early 1940s Raimon Panikkar met Escrivá de Balaguer , the found...

Janet Cardiff's Forty Part Motet installation opens at the Lincoln Center, New York. You read it here first . * As the funding scews tighten are classical music multi-media projects and collaborations with art galleries and museums, which in the UK have been cut less savagely, the way forward? The audience composes the music here and there is new music for bells here . Photo was taken in Perpignan , France Sept 2010 and is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2010. With apologies for mislocating the Lincoln Center in the first version of this post. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter .

Eric Whitacre is top of the UK specialist classical chart . You read it here first . * Photo was taken by me at Visa pour l'Image , the 22nd International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan , France in September 2010. The Festival is spread across eight city centre venues including several deconsecrated churches, and the organisers refreshingly describe their selection policy as being driven by "making choices and taking a stance". For me the Festival of Journalism was one of the most absorbing and moving arts events I have attended for many years. In 2009 187,000 visitors viewed the Festival exhibitions, proving that art can disturb and appeal at the same time. Classical music can learn a lot from Visa pour l'Image . Photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2010. Reporters without borders are here. Our visit to Perpignan was self-funded. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk. Also on Facebook and Twitter .

An opera scored by a pupil of Olivier Messiaen for voices, orchestra and rock group that features the librettist as God, Brigitte Bardot as an artichoke and Marilyn Monroe doing a striptease. Sounds too good to be true? Well, read on.... Salvador Dalí created Être Dieu: opéra-poème, audiovisuel et cathare en six parties (Being God: a Cathar Audiovisual Opera-Poem in Six Parts) from a libretto by the Catalan author Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (1939-2003). The score is by the French composer Igor Wakhévitch (b.1948). His teachers included Pierre Schaeffer and Terry Riley as well as Messiaen and among other influences on his music are guitarist Robert Wyatt and the music of Soft Machine . An album of Être Dieu , which is scored for speakers, singers, orchestra and rock band, was recorded on 3 LPs for the now defunct Spanish Dolor Del Estamago label (cover art here ) and was subsequently transferred to CD by the German Eurostar label but is long deleted. I can find no information on l...

The BBC Symphony Orchestra is celebrating its 80th birthday and this post starts from my thread about chief conductors of the orchestra . Above is the LP Antal Doráti made in 1975 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra of fellow Hungarian Béla Bartók's masterpiece, Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta . Doráti was chief conductor of the orchestra from 1973 to 1976. He was an outstanding conductor and composer , but his contribution went far beyond the purely musical. Antal Doráti's written testament 'For Inner and Outer Peace'* dates from his last years and takes its title from Beethoven's own annotation over the first appearance of the 'Dona nobis' theme in the Missa Solemnis . I have previously written of the links between the ideas in 'For Inner and Outer Peace' and those of intercultural ambassador for the European Union Jordi Savall , but the links extend much further. For instance, the message of Antal Doráti's book and the thoughts exp...

I know that with my little group, the minimal audio system I've put together to balance our sound by reinforcing weaker parts of the EQ spectrum has made all the difference in audience response. From a comment by music therapist Lyle Sanford on Beethoven's grand slam . As Lyle says later in his comment - Looking forward to seeing where this path will lead . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Image is, quite appropriately, from the Cardiff School of Computer Science and Informatics . 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 a lengthy piece about the Dutch arts cuts American blogger Matthew Guerrieri labels my post Classical music must put its house in order as "disingenuous or, I think, missing the point". But Matthew disingenuously fails to mention a 'tweet' which is linked from my follow up article . It comes from a certain American blogger who also seems to be missing the point. Here is Alex Ross' 'tweet' verbatim - Wise words from @overgrownpath on how the classical community should respond to Dutch music cuts and other crises: http://tiny.cc/cf9h6 As expected the UK government also announced massive public spending cuts on Wednesday (Oct 20). At this early stage the mainstream media is the best source on their possible impact. That is the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band above. As they famously sang - No matter who you vote for the government always gets in . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Image credit Adventures in High Fidelity Audio . Any copyrighted material on these...

Recently I wrote and podcast about Universal Music's plans to chart a CD by the Benedictine nuns of L'Abbaye Notre Dame de l'Annonciation at Le Barroux in France (seen above) this Christmas. Chant from Avignon will be released on November 8th and there is a useful video (and audio samples - listen to that reverberation !) on Amazon . The video includes footage of recording sessions in the Abbey, complete with a male conductor. But unsurpisingly it makes no mention of past links between the monastic community at Le Barroux and the traditionalist Catholic Society of Saint Pius X and its ultra-right-wing founder Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre. In a fascinating twist it was a chart topping artist on the Philips label, now part of Universal Music, who also had interesting links with Monsignor Lefebvre and traditionalist Catholics in France back in the 1960s. Read the story here . * More on the political background to Voices - Chant from Avignon here. There are a number of arti...

An ace performance by the Britten Sinfonia and James MacMillan at their Norwich concert last night provided much food for thought. Centrepiece of the programme was James MacMillan's new oboe concerto which confirmed that having something to say is more important than conforming to a fashionable musical 'ism'. A forward looking yet sombre central slow movement was followed by an extrovert finale that could only have come from the composer of Veni, Veni, Emmanuel . The new work was passionately advocated by Britten Sinfonia co-founder Nicholas Daniel who has done so much to extend the oboe repertoire. It was illuminating hearing members of the audience talking about the concerto after the performance. Most of them were there for the Beethoven rather than the MacMillan. But the consensus was that new music can be true to itself without making the audience run a mile. However, it was the second half performance of Beethoven's Second Symphony, superbly conducted by James M...

My life has been enriched by the music making of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, as these LPs from my collection show, even if we have had our ups and downs . So I want to join in congratulating the BBCSO on its 80th anniversary. It is fantastic to see that the orchestra is performing a birthday concert of largely contemporary music in London on Friday (Oct 22) under the baton of its chief conductor Jirí Belohlávek. Except there is one small problem. Surprise, surprise , Jiri Belohlávek is not conducting at the birthday party, chief guest conductor David Robertson is. The irony free zone known as the BBC website tells us that "the concert will also feature film footage of chief conductors past and present". Watch the screen closely for a rare glimpse of the orchestra's present chief conductor . * Also on the screen at the Barbican concert should be Colin Davis , who was chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1967-71, and Pierre Boulez who followed him from 197...

Seen above is BIS' recording of James MacMillan's trumpet and clarinet concertos. This week the composer's new oboe concerto is being premiered by Nicholas Daniel and the Britten Sinfonia. At a pre-concert event at the Norwich performance on Wednesday Oct 20 I will be talking to James MacMillan and Nick Daniel about the new concerto, and I will also be asking them if classical music should be amplified . The concert is one of those gems of Britten Sinfonia programming . James MacMillan is conducting, and his new oboe concerto is preceded by Rudolf Barshai's chamber orchestra arrangement of Shostakovich's Eighth Quartet. In the second half a masterpiece in the form of Beethoven's Second Symphony is quite rightly moved from its usual position of concert opener to concert finale. If you cannot get to Norwich or the other concerts, a recording of the London performance is being broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on Thursday evening (Oct 21). My pre-concert talk should be r...

A very talented Venezuelan youth orchestra comes to a prestigious British venue. The Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra (left) plays its socks off in a Russian symphony, receives rave reviews from all the leading London critics, is broadcast on primetime BBC Radio 3 and receives more sticky buns from the programme's presenter than can be comfortably digested. A very talented English youth orchestra comes to a prestigious British venue. The Suffolk Youth Orchestra (right) plays its socks off in a Russian symphony, no leading London critics are present. Advice to Philip Shaw and the Suffolk Youth Orchestra - change your name to the Felipe Seguro Youth Orchestra, invest in some national costumes and ink a deal with Askonas Holt . Also on Facebook and Twitter . 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 i...

On An Overgrown Path , May 2008 Telegraph website, October 2010 On An Overgrown Path has championed the work of the visionary arts administrator Sir William Glock over the years, as can be seen from my 2008 post above. I have also featured Leo Black's new book BBC Music in the Glock Era and After several times in the last few months. As can be expected other stories have appeared on Sir William Glock and on Leo Black's book. These include the recent article seen above on the Telegraph website by BBC Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny which was linked to a Radio 3 Music Matters programme on the same subject. There are only so many ways to present an article and the photo used in both articles comes from a third party source. So the visual similarities between the two pieces are, of course, coincidental. But the coincidences run deeper. The image file name in my article uses the standard naming convention which identifies every image On An Overgrown Path. Here is the HT...

I will close with the highest 'praise' the old Quakers ever used when someone spoke or did well they fixed him with a serene gaze and said 'Friend, thee has been used'. Words from The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton by Michael Mott. Alex's so rewarding post is here , the Con Moto first movement of Edmund Rubbra's Fourth Symphony which it showcases is music to die for. Building classical music's viral loop - 1 is here and more on Rubbra here . Also on Facebook and Twitter . 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

Now Gustav Holst, Jupiter from his Suite The Planets . Let's just listen and let our imagination travel skywards... That was presenter Rob Cowan's link on his BBC Radio 3 breakfast programme yesterday morning. If the quest for inclusiveness involves piecemeal classical music, so be it. But Rob, do the pieces really need to be so Classic FM? Could not the link have led to the first movement of the life-affirming Fifth Symphony of Holst's pupil and fellow mystic Edmund Rubbra ? I can guarantee it would not have lost a single listener; instead it would have sent the imagination of many listeners already familiar with the The Planets travelling towards a wonderfully rewarding discovery in the form of Rubbra's symphonies . * Chance Music on July 7, 2010 paired contemporary American composer Kyle Gann's vision of the planets with Holst's own four hand piano arrangement of his suite. The moving piano arrangement of Holst's Jupiter , which can be heard at th...

It was with much interest that I read your blog on the cuts in Holland. Mostly also because I live in The Netherlands and am as a free-lancer often employed by one of the ensembles of the Radio (btw: you forgot to mention Dutch Radio Choir one of the best professional big/symphonic choirs). But your post reminds me a lot about the joke when an economist is sent to a classical concert and later writes a report saying most of the instrumetalists should be sacked since they do exactly the same job as their neighbours or should be doing more stuff at the same time, like the harpist could also play another instrument since she only played a few times in the whole symphony but is paid for the whole period... What I dislike about the cuts is not their existence but the fact that they are entirely non-transparent. Nothing was said why the whole MCO (ie Radio) was to be abolished. Not one word, not one justification. They only said we need 200 million €, and this is how we will save them. Wel...