All you need is passion


'Heaven and hell do not exist "out there" somewhere. They exist in our own lives, now. Life is a trip, an experience... Everything in our lives is here to teach certain lessons, which ultimately are spiritual lessons. Awareness must come through one's own experience of heaven and hell' - from flautist Paul Horn's autobiography. Jordi Savall's recently released Markus Passion is rich in spiritual lessons. More on Jordi Savall via this link.

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Classical music has a lot to learn

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In June and July 1945 Yehudi Menuhin performed at camps for “displaced persons” – Holocaust survivors – including outside where the demolished Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had stood. He was deeply shocked by what he saw; yet in 1947 he returned to Germany to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by the recently de-Nazified Wilhelm Furtwängler. Menuhin was the first Jewish musician to perform in post-World War II Germany, explaining that he did so in order to support the rehabilitation of German music and to help heal the spirit of the German people.  My header photo shows Menuhin playing Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in 1966 with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by the  now fashionably-reviled Herbert von Karan. The Jerusalem Cinematheque - Israel Film Archive describes that collaboration as an example of how "how music can still contribute to reconciliation today". Coincidentally, or possibly not, both Menuhin and Karajan were yoga practitioners. Menu
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All aboard the Martinu bandwagon

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Depressing, but predictable, to see the mainstream media scrambling aboard the Bohuslav Martinů bandwagon as soon as BBC Radio 3 announces a cycle of his superb symphonies . Equally depressing, but a sign of the times, to see the Independent publishing an appreciation of the composer's symphonies by a writer who confesses elsewhere to never having heard a single note of them. As Norman Lebrecht famously wrote in the Evening Standard back in 2006: ‘... until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’. Sadly the hard facts now show that Norman is no longer at the Evening Standard , and, as from next Monday, the Evening Standard will no longer be a paid for newspaper . But you can find pre-bandwagon appreciations of Martinů here and here . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of
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Tribalism is ruining classical music

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Marketing is now an accepted tool for trying to reach classical music's elusive new audience. In the world of marketing there are two separate entities, the product and the brand. Classical music's product is the music itself. Fortunately there is very little that can be done to damage the product. The transcendental genius of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and their peers across the ages will continue to shine for decades and centuries to come. But the classical music brand is a different matter.  One definition is that a brand is the personality of an organisation, communicated through an identifying.....voice and tone. So what is the personality, voice and tone that the classical music brand is communicating today? The self-styled 'world's most-read cultural website' is  Slipped Disc . This high-profile face of the classical music brand enjoys the full support of the classical music industry. Yet for years Slipped Disc has leveraged tribalism through its on-line lync
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Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

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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 the harpsichordist's 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 d'Assas, Scott Ross 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 b
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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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Soundtrack for a porn movie

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"No, you have not landed on Slipped Disc by mistake. Respected electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze tells the story himself.  The origins of " Body Love " are quite funny. I received a call from a movie producer named Manfred Menz and I wound up becoming his principal composer for a period of time. Amongst others, I composed the "Barracuda" soundtrack for him [1978, previously unreleased on album]. This led to a friendship which lasts till today. Menz now lives in Malibu, California where I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy calls me and asks if I would compose the score to a porn movie. I said: "Porn? Nah, I don't do that kind of thing".  As it turned out, the director of the movie, Lasse Braun, had already shot it and had used my albums " Timewind " [1975] and " Moondawn " [1976] as a kind of "working soundtrack". This was obvious because the couples in the film were moving in time to my gro
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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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You are looking at the future of classical music journalism

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Quite rightly there is much lamenting about the enforced departure of New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn. Quite wrongly the lamenting is being led by Norman Lebrecht* , who single-handedly has pioneerd the audience whoring click baiting school of tabloid music journalism that has made the informed writing of Allan Kozinn and others redundant. Quite hypocritically the classical music establishment is lamenting the demise of erudite critics and journalists while at the same time throwing its weight behind tabloid music journalism . * All links to Slipped Disc are indirect to avoid swallowing click bait; the cited reference should appear at the top of the Google search results. Any copyrighted material on these pages 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 .
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Where are classical music’s alternative voices?

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"Their style is early cunnilingual, late patricidal, lunchtime in the Everglades, Black Forest blood sausage on electrified bread, Jean Genet up a totem pole, artists at the barricades, Edgar Allan Poe drowning in his birdbath, Massacre of the Innocents, tarantella of the satyrs, L.A. pagans drawing down the moon... Jim Morrison [seen above] is an electrifying combination of angel in grace and dog in heat... The Doors are musical carnivores in a land of musical vegetarians... The Doors scream into the darkened auditorium what all of us in the underground are whispering more softly in our hearts: We want the world and we want it... NOW!" Young music critic of the year contender Andrew Mellor would do well to study that purple prose by Tom Robbins , which describes a 1967 Doors concert in Seattle. Robbins was writing for the underground paper Helix , and his plea of “We want the world and we want it… NOW!" chimes with Mellor’s recent musings in the New Statesman about cl
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Classical music should exploit its healing power

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Classical music cannot stand still; so that means it must find new audiences. Western classical music has evolved into a highly dualist art form with clearly demarcated boundaries around its core offering of the orchestral and operatic repertoire. There is little debate that this repertoire must - and will - remain central to the art form. But it can be argued that to open up new markets the current watertight boundaries around that core offering must become porous. An example of a blurring of these boundaries would be an entry into the mind, body and spirit market; a market which a post here in 2011 pointed out was then worth around $11 billion annually in the US, compared with $200 million for classical album sales. It is tempting to dismiss the mind, body and spirit market opportunity as no more than 'Mozart for meditation' and 'Gregorian Chant for the soul', but that would be a mistake. As my earlier post noted , the spiritual dimension is found in many of cl
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