Benjamin Britten slated


It is worth reading the review in Slate of Neil Powell's Benjamin Britten: A Life for Music, and not just because it links to and quotes from my related post.

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Wagner, Mahler and Shostakovich all sound like film music

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In a typically thoughtful contribution to my post Why not play the premier league composers more often? Richard Bratby - who is professionally involved in classical music - mused "speaking solely from my own experience - there is a very noticeable falling-off in ticket sales when a symphony orchestra programmes pre-Beethoven repertoire, irrespective of the quality of the performance or the music, or the energy with which it is marketed. But why?" Now Kea has answered Richard's question with the following comment: Wagner, Mahler, Shostakovich, etc, all sound more or less like film music (or -- more accurately -- film music sounds more or less like recycled bits of Wagner, Mahler, Shostakovich, etc) and therefore don't require any intellectual involvement or serious effort to listen to. Understanding the music of Bach, Mozart or Haydn, etc (or for that matter Schumann, Brahms, Webern, Cage, etc) actually requires people to listen actively rather than being pulled alo...
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Soundtrack for a porn movie

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The silence of Järvenpää was not absolute. Although Sibelius wrote no major works between 1927 and his death thirty years later, he did produce some music. One of the last creative tasks he completed was the 1948 orchestration for strings and harp of Ett Ensamt Skidspår (Lonely Ski-Trail) which was originally written for piano and narrator in 1924. Ett Ensamt Skidspår was first recorded in 1993 by the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra conducted by Juha Kangas for the Finlandia label. My copy of the original CD, which was released in 1996, is seen above. The Finlandia release of Works for String Orchestra by Sibelius has now transferred to Warner's budget Apex label in different packaging , and it is quite a bargain. As well as Lonely Ski-Trail there is another Sibelius premiere recording on the disc, Grevinnans konterfej (The Countess's Portrait). The programme also includes Rakastava, Andante Festivo , and other more familiar works. The Finnish narrations on the two short...
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Come to the edge!

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Twenty-one years ago I wrote about an article on NewMusicBox  that forecast the age of music streaming, and included the following quote from the article: A world where music is available via the latest technologies for a single monthly subscription charge. A world with unlimited access to a huge range of music. A world where the music business will explode and reinvent itself. A world where listeners are empowered, and the reach of new music is limited only by your own imagination. A world where the major record companies aren’t invited to the party. A world where music becomes a utility on tap, just like gas and electricity. A world where music is like water.  It can be argued that streaming has empowered consumers by offering instant gratification. But two decades ago, in my post I expressed concerns about the advent of 'music like water' with these words: "Music-like-water won’t bring a utopia where every recording, of every work, by every composer from Evaristo Abaco ...
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Surgeon General's Warning: Inner Cities

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“At a concert this week in Berlin, Berlin's famed 65-year-old Philharmonic Orchestra was led by a U.S. war correspondent in battledress. Besides being a war correspondent, the guest conductor was a Negro, born in British Guiana. The 2,000 Berliners and the 500 Allied soldiers in the audience found it quite an experience. They applauded warmly when the conductor led the orchestra through Weber's familiar Oberon and Tchaikovsky's Pathétique. They broke into cheers, and called him back five times, when he gave them Berlin's first hearing of fellow-Negro William Grant Still's boisterous, bluesy Afro-American Symphony. Slender, serious Rudolph Dunbar is no musical freshman. He studied at Manhattan's Julliard School, has several times conducted the London Philharmonic. He was in Berlin as correspondent for the Associated Negro Press of Chicago. Shortly before the Berlin Philharmonic's Conductor Leo Borchard was accidentally killed by U.S. sentries, he had in...
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Nada Brahma - Sound is God

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It may be my age, but those moments when a piece of music really hits me in the solar plexus seem to get rarer and rarer. But during my recent extended travels in India I was metaphorically punched time and time again when listening to ECM's Codona recordings on headphones. Recent posts have touched on the potential of virtual concert halls and the fact that no one mixes for speakers these days , and the Manfred Eicher produced Codona sessions from between 1978 and 1982 really demonstrate the impact of the up close and personal sound of headphones . The line up for Codona was African-American trumpeter Don Cherry, Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, and Colin Walcott on sitar, tabla, hammered dulcimer, sanza, timpani, and voice. The band took its name from a circus trapeze act of the early 20th century called the Flying Codonas , and the three albums packaged by ECM for CD as The Codona Trilogy capture the peerless musicians-beyond-frontiers performing their creative hig...
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Audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music

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That photo of Sir Malcolm Arnold and Julian Bream appears on the late composer's website . Ten years ago I was literally very close to Sir Malcolm's music. He spent his final years being tended by his carer Anthony Day in Attleborough just a few miles from where I live in Norfolk. I managed Sir Malcolm's website and one of my first posts  about his music dates from that time. Following Sir Malcolm's death in 2006 I never lost my appreciation of his music, but it featured less frequently in my listening. However, recently I have returned to his symphonies, and listening to them again has raised some important questions. His nine symphonies are the product of a master craftsman. They move forward from Mahler and Shostakovich, yet should be immediately accessible to contemporary audiences saturated in the music of those two composers. But, despite this, Sir Malcolm Arnold's symphonies remain unknown outside a small circle of admirers. Why? Let me make it clear ...
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