On An Overgrown Path

Two low-priced multi-CD reissues of Leopold Stokowski conducting from Sony and RCA have provided food for thought. Much has been made of Stokowski's wayward and willful interpretations; however gems from his Indian summer such as a magical Brahms Second Symphony recorded four months before his death in 1977 paint a very different picture. Stokowski is judged harshly for his sometimes wayward interpretations , but is given little credit for his ability to reach new audiences . Which is puzzling given classical music's current obsession with reaching new audiences . Today we demand that a conductor adheres slavishly to the score of a symphony. But there is no problem when that scrupulous interpretation is subject to furtive texting, grazing while the band plays on , dribbles of inter-movement applause, and much else in the name of attracting a new audience . For me audience anarchy versus wayward Stokowski is no contest . No review samples used in this post. Any ...

Today is Diwali , the Hindu festival of lights that is celebrated in India and around the world . Next year there will be an even bigger celebrations on the Indian sub-continent and elsewhere as August 2017 is the 70th anniversary of the partition of India. Music will play an important part in next year's celebration as on the Indian sub-continent music is not an art, but life itself . Hopefully musical commemorations will not be limited to the classical traditions of India, because the Western classical tradition has absorbed many Indian influences. Messiaen famously appropriated rhythms from the classical Indian tala system in his Turangalîla Symphony - the title is a compound of the Sanskrit words turanga and lîla which roughly translate as 'love song'. Other composers who have absorbed Indian influences include Philip Glass ( Satyagraha ), John Tavener ( The Veil of the Temple and Requiem ), Karlheinz Stockhausen ( Licht ), Jonathan Harvey ( White as Jasmine and ...

Crossover projects usually leave me cold. The French producer Hughes de Courson  had considerable success in the Francophone world with his Bach and Mozart crossover albums , but I would not grieve if I never heard any of them again. Except that is for one track from his 1997 album Mozart in Egypt . My involvement with Sufism may explain why the Dhikr Requiem Golgotha strikes a chord with me. Listen to it with no preconceptions while pondering on this wisdom from the early Persian Sufi Junaaid of Baghdad : "None achieves that Degree of Truth, until a thousand honest people have testified that he is a heretic". Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

A recent post touched on the symphonies of William Mathias and today's features those of another composer from the 'Land of My Fathers'. It is all too easy to dismiss the Welsh symphonists as Vaughan Williams with slag heaps. In fact they have little in common with their pastoral colleagues across the border, and much more in common with the music of mainland Europe. Bartók's influence can be heard in William Mathias' music, and his contemporary Daniel Jones was influenced by. but not wedded to, European serialism. As a close friend of Dylan Thomas , Daniel Jones was an early editor of Thomas' poetry and his Fourth Symphony was composed in memory of the poet. He was one of a small group of composers that included Peter Racine Fricker , Benjamin Frankel and Bernard Stevens who developed a hybrid style that experimented with elements of serialism while remaining rooted in tonality. As a result Daniel Jones' symphonies have the merit of combining progr...

Warner are releasing a set of Bach's complete keyboard works played by Zuzana Růžičková to mark the harpsichordist's 90th birthday. Zuzana Růžičkováwas was married to the composer Viktor Kalabis (1923-2006), and in a 2013 post about Kabalis I said that the standout on a new 3 CD Supraphon anthology of Kalabis' concertos and symphonies was his Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings conducted by the composer with his wife as soloist. Zuzana Růžičková's advocacy of new music needs recognition. As well as performing her husband's works she collaborated with pioneering figures including Maurice Ohana and Iannis Xenakis . Moroccan-born Maurice Ohana in particularly remains a puzzlingly neglected composer; he was profiled here in a 2008 post which highlighted Zuzana Růžičková's advocacy. Let's hope that the well-deserved birthday accolades for Zuzana Růžičková draw some attention to these forgotten late 20th-century composers. No review samples or other comp...

In a Guardian article Amit Chaudhuri argues that Bob Dylan is not the first songwriter to win the Nobel Prize for literature and makes the case for the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore who won the Nobel Prize in 1913 . In support of Amit Chaudhuri  I would cite Alexander von Zemlinsky's neo-Mahlerian Lyric Symphony which sets Tagore's The Gardener , and Jonathan Harvey's Song Offerings which sets the sensuous Gitanjali Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

A Facebook comment on yesterday's post about the impending demise of BBC Radio 3 leads to the music of the Welsh composer William Mathias (1934-1992). His choral music is often performed, but his instrumental music deserves to be better known. Mathias composed three symphonies - a fourth was not completed - and three string quartets. The three symphonies have been recorded for Nimbus and the quartets by the Medea Quartet for Metier . William Mathias swum against the musical and cultural tide by valuing creativity more than conformity, as David Wright explains in an appreciation of this underestimated composer : Mathias was often misunderstood. He developed an original idea of what some have termed 'recessional music' which, put simply, means that instead of music heading towards a climax or resolution it recedes from that expected point. It was part of his quest for originality to de-conventionalise tradition and, in that, one can but admire him. Also on Facebook and ...

In his Guardian review of Jeremy Paxman's memoir , Will Self points out that the TV presenter is wrong to attribute the decline of the BBC's flagship Newsnight current affairs programme to demographic rather than technological changes. Will Self's observations on the "balkanisation of the media" are very relevant to the recent myopic soul searching about the future of BBC Radio 3 which coincided with the station's 70th anniversary. Technological change is the reason why the media landscape has changed so dramatically in the last decade. Yet, in her 1200 word exposition of how "BBC Radio 3 needs a rethink" Guardian cultural commentator and BBC biographer Charlotte Higgins does not use the word 'technology' once. Like Charlotte Higgins and others who wrote panegyrics at the time of the anniversary, I am indebted to Radio 3 for its past role of illuminating and educating. But times have changed, and, as we are told so often, classical...

Some mon just deal wit' information. An' some mon, him deal wit' the concept of truth. An' den some mon deal wit' magic. Information flow aroun' ya, an' truth flow right at ya. But magic, it flows t'rough ya. That wisdom comes from Nernelly, a Jamaican bush doctor, and it comes via Timothy White's biography of Bob Marley. In Essaouira, Morocco the serendipitously titled Bob's Music store is named after Bob Marley and the acrylic is by Essaouiran gnawa artist Mohamed Tabal *. Nick Drake was signed to Island Records , as was Bob Marley. Nick visited Morocco in 1967 and I Was Made To Love Magic is the title of one of his songs. My encounter with the magic of the Gnawa in Essaouira is documented in Music should be dangerous . * Red Lion by Mohamed Tabal (acrylic on masonite) is via The Richard M. Edson Collection of Contemporary Folk & Outsider Art . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, an...

It  is quite right that women musicians are now receiving the attention and status that is rightly theirs. But it is wrong that so much of the attention is being lavished on a few women who are prominent on the classical celebrity circuit. Bring on Alice Coltrane , Philippa Schuyler and others in the long tail of women musicians. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

New to me, but certainly not new to the catalogue are recordings by the Pratum Integrum Orchestra on the Caro Mitis label . Caro Mitis is the premium classical label of the Russian Essential Music record company, and their catalogue ranges from early music to Britten , Prokofiev, Hindemith and Schnittke . The Pratum Integrum Orchestra is Russia's only early music ensemble with the forces to tackle the orchestral repertoire. Their award-winning recordings of the Telemann orchestral suites have provided me with much rewarding listening. Spirited and persuasive playing is coupled with excellent if slightly dry SACD sound captured in Studio 5 of RTR in Moscow. Recording and post-production is outsourced to Polyhymnia International , an independent Dutch production facility specialising in SACD format recordings that rose from the ashes of the Philips Classics recording centre in Baarn. All the hardware in the recording chain is configured to Polyhymnia International's specif...

Yet another crowdfunding request has appeared in my inbox, this time for an ensemble I have considerable respect for. Which prompts some thoughts from me about crowdfunding. Seismic shifts in the media industry mean that traditional funding from record companies and book publishers for new projects is as scarce as the proverbial hens' teeth. To help fill the funding gap crowdfunding - raising finance from the audience - has stepped in. Without crowdfunding some important and successful projects would never have come to fruition. But that still does not mean that the process should not be subject to scrutiny and debate. Crowdfunding in its present guise is a child of the internet, but the principle has a distinguished history. One of the earliest examples in the record industry was the 1931 subscription edition of Hugo Wolf lieder masterminded by Walter Legge and HMV, while in the book industry during the previous century Charles Dickens often sold his novels in monthly magazi...

If you don't like the news ... go out and make some of your own. That was the catchphrase of Wes ("Scoop") Nisker on San Francisco alternative radio station KFOG . Among his other KFOG pearls of wisdom that are uncomfortably relevant to our current predicament is the traffic bulletin "People are driving to work to earn the money to pay for the cars they're driving to work in. Back to you". Where have all the songs of conscience and concern gone? Gone to social media everyone . It seems there may not be many more songs of conscience and concern on KFOG . More on that Peter, Paul & Mary album via this link . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

My  wife took these photos during our recent visit to Crete. Like many countries Greece has a large feral cat population. In the grounds of our rented apartment in Sitia a feral cat had given birth to a litter of six beautiful kittens. The mother had found a safe cavity in a rocky bank for her litter, and she fed and cared for them with total dedication. I confess to being a cat person , but I am also aware that photos of kittens have become a benign form of click bait . These two photos are undoubtedly visually arresting, but there is another reason for posting them. My visit to Crete was a rich experience. I hiked in remote eastern Crete , had the inspiring company of Kelly Thoma and Ross Daly , swam in the warm and crystal clear Libyan sea, and heard uplifting music . All of those memories will stay with me, but so will the memory of that mother cat and her offspring. It is not just classical music that is obsessed with the next big thing , the whole of society has the same ob...

In 2011 I collaborated with John McLaughlin Williams on a two part feature about the composer and pianist Philippa Schuyler, who is seen above on the cover of a 1962 edition of Sepia magazine . The first Overgrown Path article Philippa Schuyler - genius or genetic experiment? told her life story, while in A Philippa Schuyler Moment her Nine Little Pieces for piano were analysed by John using a recording he very generously made especially for the blog - listen via YouTube below. Philippa Schuyler was the scion of an interracial marriage. Her father, George Schuyler, was a renowned and controversial black journalist, and her mother, Josephine Cogdell, was a blond, blue-eyed Texan heiress. Philippa rose to prominence as both a composer and pianist, and her compositions were performed by the Chicago and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras and the New York Philharmonic. But in the early 1960s her career stalled and she died in 1967 at the age of 36 when the US military helicopter in w...

Why are classical musicians and journalists so good at promoting themselves on social media, but so bad at promoting deserving and little-known music? That question is prompted by listening to Lyrita's new budget-priced 4 CD anthology of British Symphonies . Since 1959 Lyrita have worked tirelessly to showcase the treasures of British music, and they have been almost a lone voice in their advocacy of music beyond the warhorses of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Holst. The lamentable neglect of so much fine music is highlighted by an analysis of the number of performances of the symphonies on this new release. The Proms are recognised worldwide as a great British institution, and the archive of Proms performances provides an invaluable barometer of music fashions. Of the thirteen symphonic works showcased by Lyrita just under half - six to be precise - have never received Proms performances. (Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly , one of those works is Malcolm Arnold's Sinf...

A  post last year described how Crete is a place of primal energy due to its proximity to the fault line between the European and African tectonic plates. A few weeks ago I was at a concert by the Ross Daly Quartet on Crete and the energy was certainly flowing then. In fact when the ubiquitous raki was passed round by the musicians after the concert, the snail seen in my photo was energised to sample this Cretan version of firewater. Energy lines shaping music should not be dismissed as hocus-pocus. Music is vibrations, and vibrations are energy. Sufi master musician Hazrat Inayat Khan's teachings on the centrality of energy and vibrations have influenced generations of musicians from Scriabin, who met Inayat Khan in Moscow in 1913, to Stockhausen, whose Atmen gibt das Leben has its genesis in a text by Inayat Khan. There can be little doubt that energy lines run through musically auspicious locations such as Bayreuth, Tanglewood and Aldeburgh, and Alexander Scriabin intende...

In   her resignation speech the outgoing BBC Radio Director Helen Boaden makes the case for "slow radio" and expresses the view that "it seems to me that the media can sometimes rush very fast in order to stand still". Could this be the same Helen Boaden who last year lectured* the Association of British Orchestras on how "the creation of snackable access to classical content is the key to audience engagement"? * Intriguingly, online references to Ms Boaden's snackable content soundbite have been deleted. But here in the interest of rigorous journalism - a subject close to Ms Boaden's heart - is a link to Mark Berry's Twitter feed to corroborate the soundbite. Photo via Irish Times . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Also on Facebook and Twitter .

Ross Daly's worldview that : "There’s a way to belong but not to be a native... I live outside a national identity and that’s always been a great advantage... I can feel at home anywhere” is reflected in his music. Born in Kings Lynn, England and raised on both sides of the Atlantic, Ross studied the sitar in India and rabab in Afghanistan. He settled in Crete in 1974 because, to quote him: "Some things in life grab you; Crete and its music did that for me”. In 1982 he established the Labyrinth Musical Workshop in the Cretan village of Houdetsi as a loosely structured collective exploring the modal music of different cultures. He explains that he chose Houdetsi because "A village is better than a city for this, everything’s in walking distance. We began with one-week seminars, everyone living together.” Every summer the Labyrinth Workshops draw students from around the world to seminars and masterclasses taught by celebrated musicians from the modal traditions. In...

Last year 12 million adult colouring books were sold in the US and recently I suggested that the classical music industry could learn from the colouring phenomenom. In an example of a great and not so great mind thinking alike, violin virtuoso and founder of Audax Records Johannes Pramsohler is releasing a CD of Baroque music coupled with a Baroque-themed colouring book for children. Dubbed 'A creative doodle book for musical kids' the beautifully packed CD and book urges the youngsters to 'Open your ears and get out your crayons.' Typically it is a smart independent label that has spotted the market opportunity. When independent thinkers lead, establishment dinosaurs follow. The fad for live tweeting in concerts has passed. Will colouring book concerts for adults be the next big thing? My thanks go to Johannes Pramsohler for the sample colouring book - I am really enjoying my doodling. Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critic...

Everybody wants to be extraordinary, that is very ordinary. But to be ordinary and just relax in being ordinary, that is superbly extraordinary. One who cannot accept his ordinariness without any grudge, any grumbling - with joy, because this is how the whole existence is - then nobody can destroy his bliss. Nobody can steal it, nobody can take it away. Then wherever you are you will be in bliss. I was in New Delhi, and after I had spoken a man stood up and asked me, 'What do you think about yourself? Will you be going to heaven or hell? I said, 'As far as I know, there is no such thing. But if by chance they are there, I can only hope for hell.' He said, 'What!' I said, 'In hell you will find all the colourful people - ordinary people, but all colourful. In heaven you will find great scholars, theologians, saints, philosophers - but all serious, all quarreling, all against each other, disputing continuously. It must be a quarrelsome place, where you...

All you can do now is point out that giving up medicine was my greatest gift to the human race, if one considers the number of people who are walking around now who wouldn't be if I'd been a doctor. On the other hand, if I'd been Margaret Thatcher's doctor, I might have been able to save my compatriots a lot of misery by the administration of certain drugs or insisting that she needed drastic brain surgery. . That is Robert Simpson writing about his aborted medical training in a 1991 letter*, and his wry concluding comment has a topical relevance to politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. A recent Overgrown Path thread extolled the virtues of mono sound , and the CD transfer of Robert Simpson's First Symphony on Warner's 10 CD overview of Sir Adrian Boult recordings confirms that when it comes to technology less is more . On the LP above the coupling is Peter Racine Fricker's Second Symphony. The neglect of Fricker's music - which by contrast with ...