A Lark Ascending

There's a nice little interview with Wizz Jones here about the infamous Beatnik problem in Newquay, Cornwall of 1960: You can see the original 1960 TV report here: If the councillors of 1960 only knew what was coming with Club 18-30!

Deutschland 83 Episode 3 - it doesn't get any better. Breaking into NATO bases?....easy. War and Peace - really enjoyed episode 3. They've done a good job on this and the photography is sumptuous (though I somehow doubt Russian villages in 1807 looked quite as neat and tidy). Aesthetes will moan (when don't they) but War and Peace is a great story regardless of its status as 'great lit-er-a-tuh'. Most viewers wouldn't even dream of reading it so a compact serialisation like this brings the tale to many more people. BBC4: Moguls and Masters of pop Part 1 - very interesting documentary about pop/rock music managers from Elvis to Bieber. The section on Don Arden was especially good. I rather took to Ozzy Osborne and Sharon Osborne (didn't realise she was Arden's daughter). Deadline Gallipoli - an Australian two parter (100m each) about the journalists following the Gallipoli campaign. Sentimental and with a number of stock scenes but I really enjoyed it. Tucked away in the UK on one of those channels that usually recycle old TV programmes.

Somerset, England: A frosty sunrise for three swans at Oake Manor golf club Photograph: iVistaPhotography/Barcroft Media Dresden, Germany: Ducks fly over the Elbe river Photograph: Arno Burgi/AFP/Getty Images http://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2016/jan/19/photo-highlights-of-the-day-cuban-dance-and-a-wrecked-pirate-ship

First signs of spring can't be far off - snowdrops - so time for an avalanche of English stuff.

Hadley's 'The Tree's So High' is a gorgeous piece - a long orchestral journey to the final vocal arrangement of the folk song. The other pieces on these two discs don't stick in my mind. No 2. Preferred it to 1 but still not music I'll rush to return to. I know very little Feldman but this I enjoyed greatly. Also a first listen to the Harvey, also fascinating. A composer I can't pretend to understand but who keeps drawing me back.

Looks like a very lovely place. From The Guardian: The most colourful cities in the world – in pictures Copenhagen, Denmark: The Nyhavn waterfront is lined with brightly coloured 17th and early 18th century townhouses - Copenhagen, Denmark Pachuca, Mexico: The hilltop neighbourhood of Las Palmitas in Pachuca underwent a colourful transformation when a collaborative initiative between the government and a graffiti artist collective took to the streets with paint http://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2016/jan/19/most-colourful-cities-neighbourhoods-world-in-pictures

RIP Wasn't that aware of them in their heyday (apart from having a thing about 'One of These Nights' when it was getting lots of air play). Didn't care for their 'rawk' side but when I went through my country phase in the 90s I took to the softer side with all those harmonies - always a sucker for rich harmonies in any genre. I think 'Lying Eyes' is a gem of a song.

3 RVW favourites - the Serenade to Music, 5 Mystical Songs and Flos Campi. Skipped the Christmas Carols for fear of bringing a curse for unseasonal activity. Serenade and Flos Campi are pretty well known; but I think the 5 Mystical Songs are little gems hidden away in RVW's vast catalogue - lots of those gorgeous 'distant hill' harmonic progressions.

Thanks, HutchFan. Sounds like one to try when I've read a few of the novels. Just as long as there's not too much baseball!

Now you've spoilt it for me.

Danish contemporary music (with ambient countryside sounds); and something I heard on the BBC Record Review programme a few days back - 16th/17thC music from South America mixing 'formal' compositions with folkier things. A bit like some of L'arpeggiata (though no Leonard Cohen covers!).

Lovely light textured music...from the Francophile end of the early/mid-20thC British composers. Goossens seemed to live the rock and roll lifestyle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Aynsley_Goossens. Would have got on well with Jimmy Page.

Loved this - perfect Sunday afternoon watching. I hardly know Sondheim apart from the obvious things (not many of his pieces seem to lead a life beyond the actual musicals). But I got curious watching the 'Broadway' documentary series. Will have to rent the Seurat musical next.

The gapless Rose Lake. Beautiful piece. Recall reading a review describing 'The Vision of St. Augustine' as being severe. Sounded just like that first time out...one that will take some revisiting. If one of the fashionable celebrity maestros were to champion the Wood symphony, I'm sure it could become a regular. Reminds me of the Berg Three Orchestral pieces - I'm sure I heard quotes from the Purgatorio of Mahler 10 in the Scherzo and Messiaen right at the end of the finale. The only misstep is the ending which has a very 19thC grand flourish, totally out of keeping with the rest.

Glad it was good. She rarely takes the easy path - one standards disc and her take on Carole King's 'Tapestry'; elsewhere she goes for self-written or off-the-wall choices. Dave Newton. Used to love his sets at Appleby, especially when he broke into his stride routine. Not seem him for a while.

Virtually all gone now. Little Ice Age.

It's that wet snow - hanging prettily from the trees and on the grass but quickly vanishing on tarmac or concrete. If it gets a bit warmer it will be gone. Kids are having a great time all over the estate. Teachers will be praying for more tonight (apart from the head teacher who always appears on the news with a snow shovel announcing how he's kept the school open despite the mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers wandering by)!

What Major Tom saw: Mimas transits Saturn’s ring shadows. Photograph: Nasa Europa and the Great Red Spot: Europa (seen on the right) is the second largest of Jupiter’s closest moons. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is to the left – a cyclonic storm system about twice the size of Earth, which has been raging for at least 348 years. Photograph: Nasa http://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/17/photography-exhibition-planets-natural-history-museum

No. 1 The Rose Lake - utterly beautiful late Tippett piece. Unfortunately suffers from the flaw in quite a few Chandos downloads - bloody gaps by the time it hits the iPod. Why they have this problem when other record companies don't escapes me. Will give a listen to the RCA version on Spotify...also has The Vision of St Augustine which I'm unfamiliar with.

Winter has finally arrived...it's snowing!

One of the top 5 of Britten operas for me (along with Grimes, Screw, Budd and Midsummer). Superb orchestration - the wonderful bell effects, the gamelin influences and the Mahlerian strings in the moments of high drama. Excellent production - the scenes change quickly and here the sets are simple but effective with brilliant use of light and shadow. Ashenbach is a really unsympathetic character - self-obsessed, prissy, an arty-farty aesthete. Yet despite wanting to bop him one, the opera is thoroughly engaging from start to finish. I saw an Opera North version a few years back which was very good; this strikes me as its equal.

Howells (and Ivor Gurney) had a thing for a place in Gloucestershire called Chosen Hill. I went to school there briefly in 1968 - had no idea who Howell or Gurney were at the time!

Some nice winter pictures...though I don't recall seeing any frost so far this winter: Belfast, UK Somerset, UK: Sunrise on a winter morning over the flooded Somerset Levels http://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2016/jan/15/photo-highlights-of-the-day-frozen-seas-and-butterflies Frost patterns form on a car windscreen in Penrhyn Bay, Conwy on 11 January. Photo by Neal Lindskog. http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/35282386

Egdon Heath is magnificent...one of my favourite Holst pieces. The way the ghostly morris dance emerges out of the gloom in the middle is fantastic. I just finished a bio of Holst...the piece was greeted with incomprehension when first performed (like much of his post-Planets work). I suspect the sound might be due to the age of the recordings. Hopefully they sound better than the original first CD transfers of the 80s (horrible red and white sleeve designs too) - EMI was in such a hurry to get the music out for sale that they didn't try very hard with the remastering. I'm not one for buying multiple versions of classical pieces - one will usually do...but I've tended to buy newer recordings of that music as they've emerged. I had several of the Boults on LP in the 70s, not that long after they first emerged (I actually saw Boult a couple of times at Prom concerts - Beethoven 6 and Elgar 2. He waved a very big stick).