I design gardens with music

Bob, you'll find a link in my latest post to a charming BBC Radio 3 documentary on Takemitsu which was broadcast a few years ago. In case you missed it then, I recommend it. It briefly restored my faith in Radio 3.
That email was sent by David Derrick and the headline quote comes from Toru Takemitsu who appeared here recently in Remixing Japan. My header photo was taken in Les Jardins du Loriot, Venansault, France and featured in another post that mixes music and gardens.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. Photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2013.

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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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