On An Overgrown Path

'Peter Sellars doesn't think the age of genius - of great classical music - is dead. At all. When I last met him, wandering the streets of Vienna, he was raving about John Adams's latest opera A Flowering Tree - 'You can put his recent pieces up against anything of Verdi' - and the new Kaija Saariaho oratorio La Passion De Simone , which he called 'breathtaking'. Sellars could be right. This is the most interesting time in classical music for at least a generation. It's safe to get back in the water after the chilly era of the over-intellectual avant-garde (the legacy of Arnold Schoenberg's 12-tone technique) or the initially exciting but occasionally facile repetitions of the Philip Glass and Steve Reich generation (cited as an influence by pop acts as different as Giorgio Moroder and Sonic Youth ). Some of the most inspiring, moving and challenging - and also some of the most daft and insane - music of this century has been written by contem...

A splendid piece of music trivia in yesterday's Guardian Financial section about Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL), the organisation that collects music licensing revenues in the UK ~ 'PPL was formed by EMI and Decca in 1934 after a test case brought against a Bristol coffee shop for playing a record of French composer Auber's Overture, The Black Domino , performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, without consent. The case set a precedent that the owners of sound recordings should be paid for the broadcasting and public performance of their copyrights'. Daniel Auber was a French composer who lived from 1782 to 1871, and his opéra comique The Black Domino ( Le domino noir ) was his most successful work. There was a fine recording conducted by Richard Bonynge, which is now deleted. Daniel Auber and those shellac 78s of The Black Domino overture may now be long forgotten, but their impact isn't. Today PPL collects almost £100m annually on behalf of record c...

The manager of the Queen's composer has been arrested in connection with a fraud complaint. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies called in police after as much as £500,000 reportedly went missing from his business account. Officers from Metropolitan Police and Northern Constabulary launched an investigation, and the composer's manager and long-time friend Michael Arnold was arrested last month. He has been bailed pending further enquiries ~ reports Dumfries.co.uk. Sadly, not a good year for the musician with teeth , in January he also had his gay Orkney wedding was derailed . 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 copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

'In art what is interesting is the structure of evolution, the direction things take. You can talk about beginning, development and end in many ways but in my view the idea of development is the most interesting thing in life' ~ Elliott Carter , Literary works. Italian. [le traduzioni dei saggi di questo volume sono di] autori vari ; a cura di Enzo Restagno. Torino, EDT/Musica 1989. Now read about a standing ovation for Elliott Carter Sorry, the score isn't Elliott Carter, the painting is Le Violin rouge, vers 1948 by the Fauvist Raoul Dufy . 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 copyright owner(s).Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Harvard's political culture in the early 1920s was decidedly conservative. Soon after Robert Oppenheimer's arrival, the university imposed a quota to restrict the number of Jewish student. (By 1922, the Jewish student population had risen to twenty-one percent.) In 1924, the Harvard Crimson reported on its front age that the university's former president Charles W. Eliot had publicly declared it "unfortunate" that growing numbers of the "Jewish race" were intermarrying with Christians. Few such marriages, he said, turned out well, and because biologists had determined that Jews are "prepotent" the children of such marriages "will look like Jews only." While Harvard accepted a few Negroes, President A. Lawrence Lowell staunchly refused to allow them to reside in the freshman dormitories with whites. From American Prometheus, the Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Now read about a Harvard ...

My article on the Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour told how the 23 year old violinist Gerhard Taschner (photo above) played in the orchestra's final concert before the surrender of Berlin in 1945. DG Archiv has just released a CD of Taschner's playing which combines the Bruch Concerto with two lesser known 20th century violin concertos by Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949) and Wolfgang Fortner (1907-1987). Elsewhere my centenary tribute to Elizabeth Maconchy lamented that two important Lyrita CDs of her orchestral music had not been transferred to CD. Well, forget the complaint, the new owners of Lyrita have now combined the music from the two CDs onto a single CD which includes Maconchy's gorgeous Symphony for Double String Orchestra , and Manoug Parikian playing the Serenata Concertante for Violin and Orchestra . No excuse now not to get to know the music of this scandalously neglected composer . Another outstanding CD of twentieth century music from the path is the ...

Genius on the edge of madness has been a destination of the path several times , including my article I am a camera - Vincent van Gogh . So I was interested to receive this email from Alexander Barnett : I am the writer director of the just released film, 'The Eyes of Van Gogh ." The film shows the horrific year that Vincent spent at the insane asylum of St. Remy. In the article 'I Am A Camera' there are some major discrepancies which I must point out. 'His period of intense creativity there changed the course of western art.' Vincent did indeed do some excellent work there but in spite of brilliant exceptions, his greatest work, by far, was that of his Arlesian period, Feb. 1888 to May 1889. 'During his confinement this remarkable institution encouraged his painting and gave him the facilities and space to work...The far sighted Doctor Peyron was practicing an early form of art therapy...Saint Paul de Mausole is an inspirational establishment that pioneer...