On An Overgrown Path

My thread about the importance of the performance space continues with this post. We took a risk at last night's Jacques Loussier Trio concert in St Peter Mancroft Norwich , and opted to sit in the front row of the choir stalls. This put us five feet behind the bass and drums, and within touching distance of the end of Loussier's piano, and in his direct line of sight. It was a calculated risk as I knew Loussier wasn't going to blast us out of our seats, as had happened when we inadvertently got front row seats for a Joe Zawinul Syndicate gig a couple of years back, and ended up sticking Kleenex in our ears! We were rewarded with one of the most musically involving jazz performances we have been to for years. Instead of being in a magnificent fifteenth century English perpendicular church we were in a jazz club. We were not watching the band, we were part of it. I am slightly ambivalent about Loussier's music. But for many of us Loussier's Play Bach LP...

I have been having a friendly debate with fellow blogger Will Benton on the merits of Officium , the best-selling ECM CD made by choral group with the Hilliard Ensemble and jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek - seen above. Will thinks Officum's mixture of medieval polyphony and jazz improvisation represents dumbing down, I think it is a valid destination on the overgrown path of music exploration. A new viewpoint was given on this debate when we saw the Hilliards and Jan Garbarek performing music from Officium and its companion CD Mnemosyne in Norwich Cathedral last night in the opening concert of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival . Increasingly I find the performance space for a concert is as important as the repertoire or performance standard. Norwich Cathedral Priory was the perfect foil for the soaring music, with the Norman roof of the former Benedictine Abbey gently reflecting and prolonging the wonderful sounds. The five performers (plus sparing percussion for a ...

A scene from Maazel's 1984; described by a leading reviewer as " a new opera of such wretchedness and lack of musical worth." Unfortunately the 'insider' from Covent Garden who described Lorin Maazel's opera 1984 as 'crap' (see my post Big Brother is paying you ) appears to have been pretty accurate. The Guardian's reviewer Andrew Clements starts his review this morning with these words..." It is both shocking and outrageous that the Royal Opera, a company of supposed international standards and standing, should be putting on a new opera of such wretchedness and lack of musical worth." Open this link for the rest of Clements damning review. (Thank goodnesss that the Guardian had the teeth to expose this as a 'vanity project' in contrast to the fauning promotional puffs published elsewhere which never bothered to ask the simple question - what justification is there for Covent Garden to mount an opera by someone who has never ...

The press in the UK has been full of hype about Lorin Maazel's new opera 1984 (it even has its own web site ) which is about to premiere at Covent Garden , and fellow music blogger Jessica Duchen has given it some space. Covent Garden's poster for Maazel's new opera, 1984 I thought it was just me that was confused. Maazel a composer? Maazel an opera composer? Maazel deserving a new production at Covent Garden? Maazel, the guy that 'created' a rather dreadful thing called Ring Without Words which stitched all those bleeding cunks of Wagner together, and got rid of all those pesky voices that spoil the orchestral sounds, then recorded it for Telarc with the Berlin Philharmonic . Maazel? The modest and humble composer whose web site's url is www.maestromaazel.com ? Then yesterday's Guardian explained it wasn't me. Maazel's opera 1984 is being produced at Covent Garden as a 'vanity' work. Maazel's own production company is picking up £400...

And so, back to the joy of live music making. One thing that I have learnt over the years is that works written for chamber ensembles don't translate well to orchestral forces. (And equally I don't think that a symphony orchestra can play jazz, despite Gershwin , Shostakovich et al ). Small is beautiful, and the clarity and precision of single instrumental voices really let's you see straight through to the composer's original intentions. I was reminded of this while listening to an excellent performance of the orchestral suite from Copland's Appaachian Spring by Thierry Fisher and the Ulster Orchestra on Radio 3 on Friday night. But it was really brought home on Sunday by an outstanding performance of Walton's Facade using poems by Edith Sitwell (seen below) based on a performance conducted by Walton himself (with Constant Lambert as narrator and a stage curtain by John Piper ) in the Aeolian Hall in London in 1942. The Invitation Concerts run by Norwich ...

My two posts, Downfall and the mystery of Karajan's personal photographer and The mystery of the Siegfried Lauterwasser Collection solved via the internet on the fascinating, and chilling, Siegfried Lauterwasser archive of photos has generated a lot of interest, not the least from a very supportive post on The Periscope which is the companion blog to the Euro-correspondent.com journalist network. The whole Lauterwasser story hinges on the archive held at George Eastman House which is part of Ryerson University in Toronto. Although the archivist there, Jo Struble, has been helpful there have been problems with broken links on their web pages, and latterly performance problems on their server which mean some of the images are slow in loading. Andy Eskind is the original researcher whose remarkable internet detective work while working at George Eastman House proved conclusively that the remarkable, and powerful, archive of Nazi photos was indeed the work of Siegrfried Lauterwa...

In a week when the giant A380 European Airbus makes its maiden flight George Monbiot writing in the Guardian gives some chilling (or should that be global warming?) statistics on the impact of air transport on the environment. His column was triggered by the debate on the building of the Whinash Windfarm on the eastern boundary of the English Lake District National Park . (Hopefully a balanced set of links here for the planning appeal site, the 'no' lobby , and the 'yes' lobby represented by the developers ). In his article Monbiot says ..."The Whinash project (or any equivalent large windfarm) by replacing energy generation from power stations burning fossil fuel, will reduce carbon dioxide emission by 178,00 tonnes a year. This is impressive, until you discover that a single jumbo jet, flying from London to Miami and back every day, releases the climate-change equivalent of 520,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. One annual daily connection between Britain a...