On An Overgrown Path

Alex Ross reports in the New Yorker that Valery Gergiev’s annual income is said to be $16.5 million. Recordings of Hans Gal's Symphonies by Kenneth Woods and of Missy Mazolli's new opera about Isabelle Eberhardt are just two important recent projects that relied on crowdfunding . $13,500 was needed to deliver the acclaimed Hans Gal Symphonies; which is 0.08% of the amount reportedly paid each year to Gergiev by arts organisations around the world . As funders search for yet more savings , what is the defence against the accusation that classical music still has more money than sense ? Also on Facebook and Twitter . 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).

Catalonia, triumphant - Catalunya, triomfant - is the opening declamation of Els Segadors , the Catalonian national hymn which was recorded in 1988 in a deeply moving rendition by Jordi Savall and his much-missed wife Montserrat Figueras . Catalonia is a creative powerhouse which has given us the two great string players, Pau Casals and Jordi Savall. So, to mark the fortieth anniversary of Pau Casals' death this month , I invited Jordi to record this brief exclusive tribute to his compatriot. In that tribute Jordi Savall remembers Pau Casals not only for his great musicianship, but also for his human engagement for peace and concord, dialogue and justice. Jordi shares those values and this week releases Orient-Occident II , his personal homage to war-torn Syria which brings together musicians from Lebanon, Israel and Syria in a long awaited follow-up to his best-selling Orient-Occident project. As always with Alia Vox this lavish new CD/book is a thing of great beauty, n...

The Gulf States have, justifiably, come under the spotlight for their repressive treatment of gays . But the human rights abuses are far more widespread: investigative organisation Human Rights Watch has documented these abuses and starts its latest report with these words: The human rights situation in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) worsened in 2012 as authorities arbitrarily detained and deported civil society activists, and harassed and intimidated their lawyers. In September, an independent monitor found significant problems in the treatment of migrant workers on the high-profile Saadiyat Island project in Abu Dhabi, identifying the payment of illegal recruitment fees as a key concern. Fortunately classical music is actively involved in human rights via the four superstars who are United Nations Messengers of Peace , including new recruit Lang Lang . Of these messengers of peace, three have first hand experience of the situation in the Gulf States, as Daniel Barenboim , fellow m...

'A sort of art revolution seems to have been going on [in the Gulf States] in the last ten years. In 2005 the Abu Dhabi government opened the Emirates Palace concert hall in a 7-star hotel, then four years ago the Qatar Philharmonic gave its first concert in Doha (under the baton of Lorin Maazel, no less). Last week Bahrain opened its new 1001-seater National Amphitheatre ; Dubai is also building an opera house and last year the spectacular Royal Opera House, Muscat opened its doors in the Omani capital. [See photo above]. This is where the BBC Symphony Orchestra caravan rolled up last week, thanks to an invitation from the Royal Opera House... With the growth of music education, orchestras and opera houses in this region together with fabulous hospitality, the Gulf Arab states could well become a popular and attractive part of our touring itinerary' - BBC Radio 3 blog post November 2012 by Phil Hall of BBC Symphony Orchestra 'The decision to bar homosexuals from ente...

In the Wizard of Bayreuth's bicentennial year Wagner's rarely heard Under the Double Eagle march has been rescued from the archives in a notable new release from Warner Classics. The march is, of course, the work of the Austrian bandmaster and composer J.F. Wagner (1856-1908) and not his more illustrious namesake. But if my nuanced deceit generates some social media buzz about one of the least publicised but most rewarding classical releases of the year, it will have done its job. Under the Double Eagle is one of the slighter words in Warner's retrospective from their newly acquited EMI archive Sir Adrian Boult - the Complete Conductor . I previewed the 10 CD box in August under the headline This Tchaikovsky is the cat's whiskers . Now, having auditioned the new discs, I am moved to pronounce that Sir Adrian's Tchaikovsky surpasses the cat's whiskers - even Ginger's . If you want to hear recorded sound that has never been bettered - period - listen t...

My biography? Doesn’t “fit in”. From the wrong side of the tracks all the way. Virtual failure in commercial terms, but who the hell cares either way? That self-deprecation appears on Michael Finnissy's website , which is also notable for the absence of social media links featuring the composer. Pianist Ian Pace has recorded Michael Finnissy's epic The History of Photography in Sound in a superb interpretation on the Métier label . In the admirably comprehensive sleeve notes for the new release Ian Pace quotes Susan Sontag as saying: To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge - and, therefore, like power... Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire. Elsewhere in his notes Ian Pace describes how: Finnissy's work investigates quite exhaustively the possibility of removing ...

Two weeks ago BBC Radio 3 controller and Proms director Roger Wright was in New York at the prestigious Lincoln Center, telling classical music what it was doing wrong in his Royal Philharmonic Society Lecture . This despite his having presided over, inter alia , possibly the most lacklustre period in the distinguished history of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and despite having crowned an orgy of dumbing down at Radio 3 by turning the most extravagant Proms' season ever into a 5.8% plunge in radio audience . (When the BBC makes its royal charter renewal submission in 2017 you can bet it will be the Barenboim Ring that is puffed and not the calamitous performance of Radio 3 ). Elsewhere ex- Gramophone editor and sometime Radio 3 contributor James Jolly is sharing his wisdom on the conference circuit , despite the Gramophone's circulation having plunged from 60,000 to 25,000 while he was editor and then editor-in-chief. Why do we listen to classical music industry experts ...