On An Overgrown Path

The BBC has announced that the inaugural BBC Proms Dubai four-day festival will take place from March 21-24, 2017 at the Dubai Opera. The artists appearing include Benjamin Grosvenor, Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Dubai is the largest city in the United Arab Emirates and the human rights infringements in the UAE include the persecution of homosexuals , the maltreatment of migrant workers - see photo above - and discrimination against women . Islamic Sharia is the main source for the penal code in the UAE. This means, to quote Diana Hamade , an Emirati lawyer based in Dubai: "Crimes such as the desertion of Islam, fornication, murder, theft, adultery and homosexuality - all crimes classified as " Al Hudud " in Islamic law - are punishable by predetermined penalties (flogging and arm amputation among them)." The BBC Proms Dubai will include an authentic Last Night. It was the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop at the 2013 Last Nigh...

My  recent advocacy of Welsh composers prompted an email from Richard Bratby in which he observed that "I've always... sensed that music as an art, in all its forms, is somehow much closer to the surface of daily life in Wales". Richard is right, as I realised many years ago when I spent time at an EMI production facility in Treorchy , a Welsh town world-famous for its male voice choir . And much more recently I experienced the same integration of music into the quotidian in Crete: when this taxi driver from Sitia heard that we had been with Ross Daly he whipped out his lyra for a spontaneous photo opportunity. This love of music is just one facet of the crazy wisdom that Nikos Kazantazakis captured so accurately in his Zorba character. Crazy wisdom is counter-intuitive smartness, and Cretans have that in abundance. Conventional wisdom tells us that independent music stores cannot survive. But in Crete, despite Greece's perpetual financial crisis , there were...

Two low-priced multi-CD reissues of Leopold Stokowski conducting from Sony and RCA have provided food for thought. Much has been made of Stokowski's wayward and willful interpretations; however gems from his Indian summer such as a magical Brahms Second Symphony recorded four months before his death in 1977 paint a very different picture. Stokowski is judged harshly for his sometimes wayward interpretations , but is given little credit for his ability to reach new audiences . Which is puzzling given classical music's current obsession with reaching new audiences . Today we demand that a conductor adheres slavishly to the score of a symphony. But there is no problem when that scrupulous interpretation is subject to furtive texting, grazing while the band plays on , dribbles of inter-movement applause, and much else in the name of attracting a new audience . For me audience anarchy versus wayward Stokowski is no contest . No review samples used in this post. Any ...

Today is Diwali , the Hindu festival of lights that is celebrated in India and around the world . Next year there will be an even bigger celebrations on the Indian sub-continent and elsewhere as August 2017 is the 70th anniversary of the partition of India. Music will play an important part in next year's celebration as on the Indian sub-continent music is not an art, but life itself . Hopefully musical commemorations will not be limited to the classical traditions of India, because the Western classical tradition has absorbed many Indian influences. Messiaen famously appropriated rhythms from the classical Indian tala system in his Turangalîla Symphony - the title is a compound of the Sanskrit words turanga and lîla which roughly translate as 'love song'. Other composers who have absorbed Indian influences include Philip Glass ( Satyagraha ), John Tavener ( The Veil of the Temple and Requiem ), Karlheinz Stockhausen ( Licht ), Jonathan Harvey ( White as Jasmine and ...

Crossover projects usually leave me cold. The French producer Hughes de Courson  had considerable success in the Francophone world with his Bach and Mozart crossover albums , but I would not grieve if I never heard any of them again. Except that is for one track from his 1997 album Mozart in Egypt . My involvement with Sufism may explain why the Dhikr Requiem Golgotha strikes a chord with me. Listen to it with no preconceptions while pondering on this wisdom from the early Persian Sufi Junaaid of Baghdad : "None achieves that Degree of Truth, until a thousand honest people have testified that he is a heretic". 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).

A recent post touched on the symphonies of William Mathias and today's features those of another composer from the 'Land of My Fathers'. It is all too easy to dismiss the Welsh symphonists as Vaughan Williams with slag heaps. In fact they have little in common with their pastoral colleagues across the border, and much more in common with the music of mainland Europe. Bartók's influence can be heard in William Mathias' music, and his contemporary Daniel Jones was influenced by. but not wedded to, European serialism. As a close friend of Dylan Thomas , Daniel Jones was an early editor of Thomas' poetry and his Fourth Symphony was composed in memory of the poet. He was one of a small group of composers that included Peter Racine Fricker , Benjamin Frankel and Bernard Stevens who developed a hybrid style that experimented with elements of serialism while remaining rooted in tonality. As a result Daniel Jones' symphonies have the merit of combining progr...

Warner are releasing a set of Bach's complete keyboard works played by Zuzana Růžičková to mark the harpsichordist's 90th birthday. Zuzana Růžičkováwas was married to the composer Viktor Kalabis (1923-2006), and in a 2013 post about Kabalis I said that the standout on a new 3 CD Supraphon anthology of Kalabis' concertos and symphonies was his Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings conducted by the composer with his wife as soloist. Zuzana Růžičková's advocacy of new music needs recognition. As well as performing her husband's works she collaborated with pioneering figures including Maurice Ohana and Iannis Xenakis . Moroccan-born Maurice Ohana in particularly remains a puzzlingly neglected composer; he was profiled here in a 2008 post which highlighted Zuzana Růžičková's advocacy. Let's hope that the well-deserved birthday accolades for Zuzana Růžičková draw some attention to these forgotten late 20th-century composers. No review samples or other comp...