A Lark Ascending

Well you learn something new every day...never knew there was a BBC America. Always assumed the Beeb sold to various networks. Looking on the website seems to show a lot of Star Trek!

Particularly like the Violin Concerto on the Ades - reminded me in places of Walton! Enjoyed the Respighi far more than the discs I played yesterday. The Bantock is very much in the style of late-19thC British music - a nice listen but doesn't shout for a replay. Something happens to British music around 1910, long before the Stravinsky/Schoenberg influences kicked in. Suspect it might be Ravel/Debussy. Where Elgar seems to come out of the same world as Bantock (though with far greater individualism of sound), Vaughan Williams is another world.

It's worth the wait! We had to wait 2 years between series; probably have to wait the same for series 3 if it happens. Meanwhile the third series of 'Line of Duty' starts next Thursday - another 'popular' high quality BBC drama.

I prefer the 70s Henderson records to the 60s and 80s+ ones (though they too are marvellous). Not that they are 'better' played or anything, I'm just a sucker for that slightly electrified sound on some of the discs (especially when there are e-ps aboard). I came to Henderson backwards - the Strayhorn disc from the 90s (which was a poll topper in the UK [listeners of a nervous disposition will want to avoid that one as it includes He Who Shall Not Be Mentioned]), the Miles record and then back to the original Blue Notes. The mid-period came later but that's what I play most. I'm especially fond of: 1970 so not sure as it counts as 'mid' - stylistically seems to have more in common with the 70s records than the 60s.

No 3 of latter. Especially enjoyed the middle theme and variations movement. Prokofiev states the theme (a stately neo-classical thing) a couple of times at the start and again at the end but uses a brief harmonic reference between other episodes to give that rondo like sense of a running thread, avoiding the repetition you can get when when a rondo theme gets restated in full. Probably talking bollocks there but that's what went through my head as I was listening. Now: Bedford in 'classical' mode but using old bandmate Mike Oldfield plus Chris Cutler from Henry Cow. Vaguely recall seeing this around at the time of release - it came out on Virgin during its initial 'experimental' phase. Didn't hear it at the time. Nice listen if not earth shattering (faint praise, I suspect, for something supposedly depicting the end of a star!).

Final Happy Valley. Loved the jump from the bridge scene which Wainwright managed to turn into black comedy with the jumper explaining to Catherine how to talk him down because she'd not done the course. And the end where without saying a word she put the shooting up on the moor together with her grandsons genetic connect with Royce and starts to fear the worse....without a word spoken. Nicely set up for a third series. Though if Whittingdale and the Tories have their way it won't happen because Happy Valley is popular and the BBC shouldn't be doing popular.

That's right - but Clayton's MOR included a lot of 'beyond the obvious' 60s/70s rock. It stood out from the shows more tailored to very specific tastes.

Peter Clayton was also my first radio guide into jazz via JRR and the late-night Sunday spot. In the 80s he did a non-jazz Saturday morning programme on Radio 2 that used to veer all over the shop. One minute you'd have Love doing 'Alone Again Or', then Ella, then The Carpenters.

59 No 2. Glorious slow movement. No 2 of the Rach.

Arnold suffered from extreme bipolarity issues - there were at least two suicide attempts (he also had an autistic son to raise). The story of his latter years (told at great length in Anthony Meredith and Paul Harris' biography) is heartbreaking. You hear his troubled mind in so much of the music which often swings at a moment's notice from the joyous to utter despair. The Fifth Symphony, my favourite, has an absolutely gorgeous slow movement; the main theme returns in the last movement and looks like all is going to end in triumph and then he smashes it to bits in the last few bars. He also seemed to delight in the sort of simple tunes that the cognoscenti would dismiss as 'vulgar', sending up the stiff pomposity of the classical music establishment. Yet you get points in his music as bleak as anything you'll find - his many concertos often have quite jaunty outer movements and then middle ones that are like those moments when you awake in the middle of the night with all your fears whirling round you (the slow movement of the Cornish Dances is a good example). Some great comic pieces - like 'A Grand, Grand Overture' (with floor polishers and four rifles) [worth watching on YouTube...a send up of 19thC grandiosity] and the very popular Padstow Lifeboat written in his Cornish years. His Seventh even has some overt Irish folk music, a result of listening to 'The Chieftains' (a favourite of his son). His Sixth even references Charlie Parker! And then you go to the Ninth and it's almost unmitigated despair. He was generally seen as an also ran in the 50s and 60s but seems to have enjoyed a revival in recent decades. My favourite story around him was when he helped Jon Lord with Deep Purple's 'Concerto for Group and Orchestra' in the early 70s. Some of the orchestral musicians (RPO) got all snotty about the music and he gave them a tongue lashing, praising Lord's music. The music was 19thC pastiche but Arnold seemed to on the side of the ordinary chap. As far from the Darmstadt grandee as it was possible to get. ******************************************************** No 2 off latter.

If she was sneaking out of school to see ELP 40 years back she is not an "old" lady!!!!!!!!!! I don't know, the youth of today! (one of those smiley things denoting comment not to be taken seriously..."old" people don't do smileys)

One of my all time favourites. Bought it on LP c. 1984 after a period of three or four years buying few classical records. Was absolutely floored by this - both the music and the vivid recording. A first choice for a bright sunny day. Still in the Med: Every now and then I hear a piece of music on the radio and think 'That was wonderful, what was it?' and it turns out to be one of these Respighi pieces. Yet when I play these discs (or a Naxos I have) I quickly lose attention. Much the same today. Back to Spain and another old favourite:

A punk's* view: Keith Emerson's playing was in stark contrast to my troglodyte brutality I like this bit: "I’m not one of those who exalt rock’s native “simplicity”, who claim how much more authentic such efforts are and who regard efforts to intellectualise rock as misguided. I’m more intrigued by rock musicians who overreached, and by the uncomfortable intersections of intellectual intent and popular music they came up with. ELP are the quintessence of highfalutin artistic aspirations mixed with technical exuberance, propped up by every whim rock stardom can muster. They embody the dizzying heights, sublime accomplishments and abysmal pretensions of such an approach." (* Not sure if punk is the right term...I'm not up on post-70s musical tribes)

Already mentioned in the classical listening thread but worth his own thread I thought. Not surprising...he's been ill for a long time but still sad. I first became aware of him around 1981 when I spent a couple of weeks in Orkney and reading around the culture there. Davies was central to that area for many years. Had a couple of LPs in the 80s but only really started to explore him when Naxos started to record recent compositions and put older ones back into the catalogue. Something of an enfant terrible in the 60s/70s but he went on the compose a lot of music in more traditional idioms. Not easy to listen to but the symphonies have a cragginess about them that must connect with the many years he spent in remote parts of Orkney close to the sea (there's a great photo of him sat in a croft with a wind up gramophone with a giant sound horn - never seen it on the web...oh, just found an older one in b+w.... ) Despite being 'hardcore' he also had a populist side, writing extensively for amateur and children's choirs. Things like 'Mavis in Las Vegas' are easy to listen to and a hoot. His short piano piece 'A Farewell to Stromness' and 'Orkney Wedding with Sunrise' regularly show up on the more popular classical music radio programmes. As far as I know only the first 6 symphonies plus the Tenth have been recorded. Surprised no-one has got around to the Eighth (Antarctic)...remember reading some tremendous reviews when it was premièred. His fifth was done at the Proms a couple of years back, one I was lucky enough to attend. He came on stage to accept applause at the end. His website is a mine of information: http://www.maxopus.com/resources.aspx RIP Edit: Guardian Obituary: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/mar/14/peter-maxwell-davies-british-composer-appreciation-andrew-clements

My father was just too young for the war - he joined up in 1945 (the usual lying about his age thing) as a way of getting out of Tregony! One of his older brothers was at Dunkirk and subsequently invalided out; another was at sea and sunk at least twice (he also told a chilling tale of picking up some Spaniards in the late 30s and looking back to shore as the ship sailed out to see executions taking place on the streets. Never worked out if it was Republicans or Fascists doing the shooting). Also had two uncles by marriage, one who went over in the days after D-Day; the other was in North Africa and then Italy. When he died my cousins came across his diaries from the time. Amazing reads - it's as if he'd modelled his writing style on WWI diaries/letters home. There's an astonishing part where he describes the opening of an offensive. Eventually we worked out he was describing the start of El Alamein. As is usual, none of them talked much about their war experiences.Though the uncle in the desert had a love of Italy and things Italian for all his life.

Another lovely cowpat (or, in this case, sheep dropping). PC 1 off first, Lt. Kije off second. Apart from the 3rd I don't know the PCs very well. My bike music for the week. From a world not dissimilar to Prokofiev.

The end note in 'Life after Life' talks about her World War II interest. She's a bit older than me but I recognised the point she made about growing up in a world where World War II was everywhere. I don't recall anything like bomb damage but TV, film, comics were obsessed with it. I was an avid collector of little Airfix soldiers as a kid and those sets were dominated by different armies from the participants of World War II. Growing up on RAF bases I saw a Spitfire or Hurricane every time I went in or out of a camp. Until I was in my mid-teens WWII was more real to me than the current Cold War! I enjoyed 'Trinity Six' and another of his set in China. Think it was 'Typhoon'. Explored internal terrorism in China from minorities in the Islamic areas of the far west, something we hear little about.

Thanks, Jim. I'll try those later...though tutus scare me (much more than clowns)! Particularly interested in the Debussy at the top. Where I have enjoyed ballet recently is within baroque opera. Some marvellous sequences in the Rameau/Lully operas I've watched over the last couple of years. Though I have a suspicion that some of the appeal is being able to watch scantily clad ladies (or men if that is ones preference) doing all sort of extreme things with their bodies under the protective umbrella of culture. Worth keeping your eye out at the cinema for opera/ballet/theatre. Things like the Bolshoi production are shown worldwide. I only started going to these things last autumn and have been mightily impressed, especially the Shakespeare. Haven't done an opera there yet - they tend to be 19thC things - though Elektra is coming up in a couple of months. I've watched that on DVD but might well go to see a different production.

Ritual annual play - really felt like spring today outdoors. No. 1

Not live but as close as I'll get to Moscow (trains from Worksop only go as far as Scarborough): Spartacus - Khatchaturian (Bolshoi Ballet via Stage on Screen Cinema broadcast) I don't do ballet. Enjoyed a live Prokofiev 'Romeo and Juliet' many years ago and know lots as music but the genre has never appealed. So went to this out of curiosity and was spellbound. The score is pretty ordinary (apart from the gushily Romantic 'Onedin Line' theme). And it took time to adjust...the triumphal march of the Roman army at the start, mincing across the stage had me thinking 'Life of Brian'. But as it progressed I got more and more drawn in (even though I'm clueless about the different types of dances and 'moves' [I'm sure there's a proper term...in French)]. Apart from being amazed by the athleticism and stamina (you can tell I'm not a ballet fan...I expect I should be admiring something like grace or poise), I was fascinated by the way that everything had to be conveyed by gesture. Could not take my eyes off the lady who played Aegina (above)...extraordinary. And there was a wonderful moment in the 'big tune' where Spartacus came as close to dammit as balancing his squeeze on one finger. Though if this review of a performance in New York by a similar team is anything to go by, I should have hated it: http://observer.com/2014/07/from-russia-with-love-and-spectacle-the-bolshoi-arrives-at-lincoln-center/ Robert Gottlieb is clearly the beneficiary of a very expensive private education that has trained him perfectly to be unimpressed. Will keep an eye out for some live or (hired) DVD performances of 20thC ballets - would like to see things like Jeux, Daphnis and Chloe and The Prince of the Pagodas.

A generous tribute from my favourite rock keyboard player of that era...all the more so given that it was written at a time when Emerson was about as unfashionable a musical figure as it was possible to be.

I think a lot of people from the 60s/70s who went on to get very interested in classical music made a start with the likes of Emerson. It's interesting reading Gramophone magazine (the best-known UK classical review magazine). When I first started buying it in the late-70s it had a very haughty, donnish tone. Over the years it's become much less hectoring ('you must admire this, you must disapprove of that') as new generations of reviewers have moved in and I remember on several occasions references by those reviewers to the origins of their interest in the likes of Emerson. So maybe, unwittingly, Emerson helped in the democratisation of the classical music world (a work still in progress!!!!). The back page of Gramophone has a regular feature featuring a short interview with a celebrity (not just musicians but actors, politicians etc), inviting them to talk about their musical background and recordings that have influenced them. Emerson did this a few years back. Sadly, not available online (though it probably lies in their subscription site). ************************** I remember borrowing 'Five Bridges' off a friend around the age of 14/15 and being very taken by the version of the 'Karelia Suite' main theme (which was used as the theme to a major TV news programme in the 60s so already recognisable). Desperate to impress, I went round for several days telling anyone who would listen how much I loved Sigh-bee-lee-us. A friend who was studying music eventually took pity and gently informed me of the correct pronunciation. But a couple of years later it was a recording of Sibelius 5 with the Karelia Suite that became my first classical LP purchase. Thanks Keith!

Sam Lee at the Howard Assembly Rooms in Leeds In a UK folk world that is currently swirling in confident new talent, Lee stands out as something different again. Spends much of his time collecting songs from the traveller communities of the UK and Ireland. All the songs tonight were from such sources. A wonderful voice, heavily ornamented with wonderful grace notes. But it's the backing that takes this somewhere else - a three man support band made up of percussion, fiddle and piano/six string ukulele and Mongolian dulcimer (Lee also plays a drone box and Jew's harp). Never used to lay down a rhythm but to provide a colouristic context for the songs, very free, almost improvisatory. Photographs always show Lee looking very serious but he was a cheery and very engaging stage personality. You felt he'd be happy to sit and tell you about his meetings with his song sources for hours. A really distinctive talent. Refreshing to attend a concert with music so open to the world given the daily blasts of xenophobic bile being hurled at us in the mainstream British press at present.

No. 100 off latter. Over the last few days - 3CDs of baroque sonatas is a bit much at one sitting!

You'll love the Brodie's. Very quirky. Plots never go where you expect them. I picked up 'A God in Ruins' in one of those supermarket deals (I know, I know, another sale lost to the local bookshop...except the nearest one is 16 miles away!). Want to read one or two other things first.