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Coverage of the billionaires' space race between Jeff Bezos Richard Branson and Elon Musk reminded me of this poem by Daniel Ladinsky which is loosely based on the verse of Kabir. I photographed the pre-dawn street scene in Varanasi, which is where it is thought Kabir was born at the end of the 14th century.

I don't think there is such a thing as
an intelligent mega-rich
person

For who with a fine mind can look
out upon this world and
hoard

what can nourish
a thousand souls.

On An Overgrown Path is no longer linked on social media. New posts are available via RSS/email by entering your email address in the right-hand sidebar. Photo via adressa.no. Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

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Does it have integrity and relevance?

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Shortly after it was released I bought the young Finn  Klaus Mäkelä's new complete cycle of Sibelius symphonies recorded for Decca. Sibelius symphonies are very well represented in my large CD collection , in fact I have more Sibelius symphony cycles than for any other composer. Yet I have returned to Mäkelä's interpretations a surprising number of times. No, they will not replace the accounts of Sanderling , Colin Davis,  Barbirolli , and others. But they are not worse or better: because subjective dualist judgements of better or worse, like or dislike, good and bad, definitive or otherwise, etc etc no longer mean anything to me . There is no concrete reality in a music performance, only what we individually perceive as reality. A performance is an endless flow of constantly changing conditions. The score is not the performance, and the performance is not the score. Between score and performance lie an infinite number of overlapping variables - tempi, dynamics, performanc
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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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Why new audiences are deaf to classical music

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Colin McPhee - East collides with West

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Your cat is a music therapist

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Vonnegut gets his Dresden facts wrong

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David Munrow - more than early music

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Nada Brahma - Sound is God

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Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

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If classical music is not live it is dead

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