If Einstein turned out to be a rapist.....


Reading on a subject only marginally related to classical music, I came across an aphorism which is relevant to Wilhelm Furtwängler's recorded legacy: 'If Einstein turned out to be a rapist, it would not make the theory of relativity wrong'.

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Bach to basics

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One of the many downsides of our clickbait obsessed culture is the neglect of not very clickbait-able J S Bach. To compensate for that in a very small way this post highlights some old and new, straight and not so straight, recordings of Bach's music that have given me particular pleasure recently.  For 38 years Valentin Erben was cellist of the Alban Berg Quartet. In 2020 at the age of 75 Valentin Erben recorded the Bach Cello Suites framed by nine organ chorales played by his son Sebastian Erben.  The three CDs were recorded by the Paladino label in Marienkapelle & Bruckner-Orgel, Stiftskirche, St. Florian, Austria and were released last year. Back in 1999 the German jazz pianist Thomas Gabriel recorded the CD Bach Jazz  with his trio. There is certainly no shortage of jazz treatments of Bach with Jacques Loussier's as the gold standard. But the Thomas Gabriel Trio's interpretation stands out due to its innovative but sensitive use of improvisation. Ther
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Now we rise and we are everywhere

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Nick Drake has featured here many times  over the years. A new addition to the Nick Drake resources is Demian Dorelli's Pink Moon - A Journey on Piano . Impressive interpretation complimented by impressive piano sound captured in Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios . For some, including this listener, the style may be a little too Einauidu for comfort. But an awful lot of people like Ludovico Einaudi . And Einaudi sometimes sounds like Philip Glass on a bad day. And classical music needs a new audience. So what is there to complain about? Now we rise and we are everywhere is a quote from the last track on Pink Moon . It is inscribed on Nick's headstone  at Tanworth-in-Arden.
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Revisiting the Master Musicians

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Two of the albums that I return to time and time again during my explorations of mystic turuq  are Brian Jones Presents the Pan Pipes at Joujouka from 1971 and Bill Laswell 's 1995 Apocalypse Across the Sky , both of which capture the literally entrancing sound of the legendary Master Musicians of Jajouka in their home village in Morocco's Rif Mountains. Six years ago I collaborated with Led Zeppelin biographer and Michael Jackson ghost writer Stephen Davis on a two-part profile of the Master Musicians. Between 1973 and 1989 Stephen made a number of visits to Jajouka, and he is therefore an important and reliable source on an important cultural tradition in which the music is sometimes drowned-out by the sound of axes being ground . When I asked Stephen to choose between the Brian Jones and Bill Laswell productions he plumped for the more atmospheric and authentic 1971 recording, but conceded that Apocalypse Across the Sky "sounds great". Personally I love Brian
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Watch Michel Petrucciani video online

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Back in January 2005 I wrote about legendary jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani (right), and that article remains high in my 'popular pages' listing after fifteen months. Since writing that piece Overgrown Path reader Andrew Nathan and I have been tracking down Petrucciani video footage, and just this week Andrew came up with an absolute gem that is available free on Google video. In my original article I wrote that Michel Petrucciani was a 'pianistic genius' , and it is no coincidence that he is buried in the Pierre Lachaise cemetery in Paris alongside Chopin. This 38 minute video with excellent sound (and a bonus guest appearance from the gorgeous Charlotte Rampling ) is not just essential viewing for jazz fans, it should be watched by all students of the piano - whatever their discipline. Just click here to view this important document. (The video is not hosted by On An Overgrown Path , this is a link to an external site). And to set the video into context here is m
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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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Philippa Schuyler - genius or genetic experiment?

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A child prodigy fêted by Leonard Bernstein and Virgil Thomson, performed by five leading American orchestras while still a teenager, accompanied by the New York Philharmonic at age 16, ranked alongside Aaron Copland and Marc Blitzstein, mourned with a Pontifical Requiem Mass in St Patrick's Cathedral, New York, and the rumoured subject of a Hollywood biopic. That is the executive summary of an American musical legend who was born eighty years ago tomorrow. Child prodigies, anniversaries and even executive summaries are the common currency of classical music today. But there are several reasons why the story that is going to be told On An Overgrown Path over the next two days is important. The first is that the legendary figure was a woman who had a black father and white mother. The second is that she experienced the barriers to musicians of colour that still linger on today. And thirdly, despite her legendary status, until the second part of this feature appears tomorrow h
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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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Audio porn

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That is my 1970s vintage Technics stylus pressure gauge being used today. This beautifully engineered strain gauge measures stylus pressure accurate to 0.1 grams. The Thorens TD 125 turntable with SME Series IIIS tone arm and Audio-Technica AT-F3 cartridge are also all more than 40 years old. I wonder how many of today's CD players, yet alone MP3 devices, will still be in daily use in 2057? Coming to that how many of today's music streaming services will still be in business ? And I wonder how many Malcolm Arnold symphonies will be performed at the BBC Proms in the next 40 years ? 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).
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Classical music has lost the art of dumbing sideways

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A tribute to André Previn affirmed that "He probably did more to popularise great music on his Saturday night show for BBC1 than anybody else before or since" and acknowledgement of his role as a populariser was a common thread running through all the rich appreciations. In recent years classical music has been subject to many varieties of dumbing down; from Ibiza anthems at the BBC Proms to Paganini with a hula hoop . But dumbing down has singularly failed to even approach the success achieved by André Previn and other popularisers of the past. My classical epiphany predated André Previn by some years. It was Jacques Loussier and Modern Jazz Quartet founder John Lewis who led me to appreciate the infinite riches of J.S. Bach's music. Jacques Loussier (b.1934) and John Lewis (1920-2010) were masters of the art of dumbing sideways - using jazz to make classical music more accessible without devaluing it in the process. Unlike today's dumbing down movement whic
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Classical music has a salary envy problem

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Godwin's rule of Hitler analogies states that once Hitler is mentioned that discussion is ended, because the level of discourse has deteriorated so far further communication is pointless. Which means that whoever mentioned Hitler has lost the argument. I now propose a new rule based on Godwin's law: namely that once Gary Lineker is mentioned in a discussion about the BBC Singers, whoever mentioned Gary Lineker has lost the argument.  First a disclaimer. I am not a football fan and I believe disbanding the BBC Singers is a mistake. But I also live in the real world and see that classical music is doing an appalingly bad job at defending the BBC Singers. BBC TV's Match of the Day fronted by Gary Lineker has a weekly audience of around 2.5 million viewers, and Lineker's on-screen presence guarantees a massive license fee loyalty that helps fund the BBC's classical music activities. I deliberately use words 'help fund' as neither Lineker's salary nor the
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