Lost in explanation


Can you imagine music without explanation?

Elmediator is a multi-genre and multimedia performance venue in Perpignan, France. This post is also available via Facebook and Twitter.

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Those are my principles....

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Norman Lebrecht: Slipped Disc and   Lebrecht Weekly, 12/05/2023   "Why I cannot, in good conscience, review this record I cannot, in all conscience, give this recording a star rating, or even a detailed review. The soloist is Elisabeth Leonskaja, a legendary pianist whose introspections are perhaps the strongest living reminder of her late friend Sviatoslav Richter....Christian Thielemann, in the recent film ‘Music under the Swastika’, claimed that Wilhelm Furtwängler’s complicity in the Third Reich was justified by his legacy of extraordinary recordings.  Leonskaya’s presence in Putin’s Russia is not dissimilar. What are we to make of them?... The performances, per se, have nothing to do with the present situation. And yet, everything.I cannot review them". . ..and if you don't like my principles... well, I have others . Norman Lebrecht: Slipped Disc , 19/11/2025 "The Muziekgebouw in Eindhoven has cancelled a December 4 concert by the Russian-Georgian Jewish pia...
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Know your audience

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Recently Pulitzer Prize winning composer John Luther Adams (seen above)  announced he had moved  from the USA to Australia, explaining "the current situation in the United States was a major element in my decision to leave". Even by Slipped Disc standards the response to that announcement on Norman Lebrecht's industry-endorsed website was deeply unpleasant. Here are just a few of the comments deemed acceptable for publication on Slipped Disc .  Good riddance. Maybe he’ll take his rather tiresome music to Antarctica next. He can be closer to Muslim assassins. Wise choice Absolute loser  If that’s what passes as a top classical composer these days, no wonder the genre is doomed. What a jerk. As a critic you cannot possibly ignore how unbearable his compositions are (I carefully avoid the word music). Let's ignore what a potential classical music funder would conclude from a typical Slipped Disc narrative . Yes, the defense of free - if not particularly intell...
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David Munrow - more than early music

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'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College , Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. ...
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Who needs streaming?

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That's 3200 CDs and counting. More than enough to satisfy me until I shake off this mortal coil. Recent purchases include the following. Harry Van Der Kamp and the Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam's 17 disc box  Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck: The Complete Vocal Works . Sweelinck is an important and overlooked composer who pioneered turning sacred music into an art form. From BIS Dark With Excessive Bright  by Missy Mazzoli; contemporary music that might just reach a wider audience recorded in stunning SACD sound . This new release is just more confirmation that the music industry let the genie out of the bottle by ditching CDs and embracing streaming, and then went on to murder the genie by opting for the MP3 format as the de facto audio standard.  And again from BIS and again in hi-res SACD,  Autumn Equinox by the Finnish composer Sebastian Fagerlund . There is so much quality new music coming from Scandinavian composers that is being buried under the current obsession w...
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Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares

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These photos were taken by me in 2008 at independent record retailer Prelude Records in Norwich. Jordi Savall's impromptu viol recital and signing session preceeded two performances at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. One was a solo recital by Jordi in Peter Mancroft Church ; the other was an immensely moving performance of his visionary Jerusalem multicultural project at the Theatre Royal*. As reported here Prelude Records closed earlier this year; it was a victim of predatory online retailing, and today its premises stand empty awaiting occupation by a mobile phone or E-cigarette retailer. The Norfolk and Norwich Festival has been the victim of savage funding cuts , but continues in a more modest form due to the dedicated work of its small management team. A few days ago I wrote about a two-thirds empty Snape Maltings concert and proposed that classical music's heartland is facing a perfect storm caused by the convergence of the shifts in consumer tastes and the r...
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Silence of a Candle

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Very sad news about  the death of Ralph Towner at the age of 85. Understandably most tributes have focused on his career as a solo guitarist. But his ensemble work also demands celebration. This included his work with the underrated Paul Winter Consort . This resulted in the 1972 album Icarus produced by George Martin.on which Towner classic's The Silence of a Candle and Icarus debuted. The moonlighting Beatles producer described the album as 'the finest album I ever made' in his memoir All You Need is Ears , which is quite remarkable coming from the person responsible for Sgt Pepper . In 1971 Ralph Towner was a founding member of the ensemble Oregon with Consort bandmates Collin Walcott and Paul McCandless, who were joined by Glen Moore on bass. Oregon never received the attention they deserved, simply because their adventurous and innovative music was impossible to fit into any of the music industry's meaningless genres. As bassist Glen Moore explained "We...
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Great recordings without the spin

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This wonderful Christian Steiner portrait of Charles Gerhardt(1927-99) featured in my 2007 post LPs were like the force of gravity . Gerhardt's important contribution as a conductor, producer and champion of twentieth-century composers such as Howard Hanson , whose Second Symphony is the main work on the disc above, has never been fully recognised. So I was delighted when David Cavlovic sent me a link to a wonderful appreciation of Gerhardt's work . Reading Robert E. Benson's memories of Gerhardt prompted me to dig some of his great recordings out of my collection, and to write my own appreciation below. Charles Gerhardt was a champion of the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold , and collaborated with the composer's son George on recordings of his film music. One result was the 1972 LP seen above conducted by Charles Gerhardt and produced by George Korngold, which is a true sonic and musical delight. At one time it was available as a Chesky CD transfer, but I can find no...
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He thinks completely with his body

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...
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Swamped by a tsunami of classical populism.

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These photos show me with Jonathan Harvey in 2010 recording an interview for Future Radio. As I will be away from blogging for a while I am leaving you with a long listen. My broadcast interview is available via this link from the archive website of the then Future Radio station manager Tom Buckham. The 87 minute broadcast ends with a performance of Jonathan's masterpiece for large orchestra and electronics Speakings with Ilan Volkov conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. (For those with 2025 attention spans a transcript is available via this link .)   Jonathan Harvey was a composer with Buddhist tendencies . His composition ... towards a Pure Land for large orchestra evokes the state of mind in Buddhism beyond suffering where there is no grasping. Two years after I recorded the interview Jonathan left us far too early to travel towards the Pure Land - Nibbāna . Since then his eclectic vision of a new music for a new audience has been swamped by a tsunami of cl...
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Walking with Stravinsky

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Lizzie, I am sorry that this article didn’t appear last year as I had planned. 2006 was the centenary of your birth, but the year passed with scarcely a mention of your work, or a performance of your music. It was my plan to rectify that in a small way, and I wrote a very nicely turned appreciation. I am sure you would have approved of it - all about the myth of Elisabeth Lutyens, the mother of British serialism, ‘Twelve-tone Lizzie’ - the outspoken eccentric shunned by the musical establishment whose compositions were rejected by the BBC, and the composer who struggled for commissions and performances. The myth is perpetuated in your Wikipedia entry which says you 'worked in isolation and neglect, creating a personal style of serialism and eventually gaining some recognition for her ability to set text. Lutyens' work was exposed to the public at large through her scores for horror films.' In your autobiography the Goldfish Bowl you made much of the tensions with your ...
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