Exclusive - the truth behind that Boulez photo


On An Overgrown Path can exclusively reveal that the reason why Pierre Boulez looks discomfited in this new Universal Music PR photo - he is flanked by the bosses of Deutsche Grammophon and Universal's French classical division - is that he has just been told his new contract with Universal Music obliges him to be interviewed by Sinfini Music.

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Those who we lost

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That is harpsichord legend Scott Ross in the photo above, and Saville Rowe legend Tommy Nutter in the photo below. A post here years ago recounted how in 1984 rumours that Scott Ross had contracted Aids were spreading, and, tragically, both he and Tommy Nutter became Aids victims. Since the start of the epidemic more than 44 million people have died of Aids related illnesses. To put those deaths into perspective, around 16 million combatants and civilians died in World War 1 , approximately 6 million Jews and Romany died in the Holocaust , and   14.9 million deaths were linked to COVID-19 pandemic  in 2020 and 2021.   Tommy Nutter and his photographer brother David were both gay and lived in New York at the peak of the Aids epidemic. The creative community was particularly badly hit by the deadly virus, and Tommy died in 1992. His brother lived through that tragic time, and in the Epilogue to his moving biography of the Nutter brothers , its author Lan...
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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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2010 was a vintage year for blasphemy and heresy. A post on Salvador Dali drew attention to his forgotten audiovisual opera-poem Être Dieu inspired by the Cathar heresy, Jonathan Harvey stirred things up on my Chance Music programme by saying "the future must bring things which are considered blasphemous like amplifying classical music", while yet another path took me to new heights of heresy. In fact the path reached 2400 feet, which, as the photo above shows, is a serious challenge for anyone who, like me, who has a vertigo problem. I took the photo from the fortress of Quéribus in Languedoc, France and the view is towards Mont Canigou, the holy mountain beloved of Pablo Casals and Thomas Merton . Quéribus castle was the last Cathar stronghold to surrender in 1255 and Jordi Savall's The Forgotten Kingdom had led me to Languedoc and Catharism and on to Gnosticism. The Cathar heresy has its roots in the "dualist" religions in the Indus basin which origina...
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Music for four accordions

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Could LSD have saved Tchaikovsky?

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On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of his great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the château, the harpsichordist gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos below were taken by me on a ...
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