Broadcast rarities from days gone by

[Sethernage]

For the attention of Mr. Autoharp. My understanding is that you have a means of contacting the composer Dave Smith. I note that the recording I have of Takahashi's "For you I Sing this Song" is preceded by three arrangements of Albanian folk songs by said Mr Smith. I wonder if you would be so kind as to seek, on my behaof, his permission to post those pieces here also.

[Sethernage]

Here is the zipped up Music of Changes.

[Sethernage]

And here is a zip of the Takahashi pieces. Please note, both files are derived from back-up cassette copies. I will post versions more directly derived from the original cassette recordings as and when I turn them up.

Further, "Kwangju, May 1980" (the date is part of the title) was recorded at the Almeida Festival in 1983. The concert was not as advertised. This was due to visa problems experienced by the the intended vocal soloist in a song cycle by the composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski. In the event, he performed the Takahashi and his own set of 36 variations and improvised cadenza on "The People United Will Never Be Defeated".

"For You I Sing This Song" was recorded using a lapel microphone at a concert given at a different venue by the Eisler Ensemble, directed by John Tilbury the following spring.

[guest2]

Those contributions from member Sethernage are much appreciated, especially Takahashi's For You I Sing this Song. It may interest members to know that the scores of his works are available for free download here.

-oOo-

Strawinsci's Mouvements, composed in 1959, were broadcast in 1967 in this performance by Theo Bruins with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Willem van Otterloo.

For a long time this work - Strawinsci's first unbridled incursion into Webernianism - was a real rarity; now several recordings are available but it is still only seldom included in concert programmes. It consists of five sections, of which each instantiates a particular polyphonic type. The pianoforte does not play a concertante role, but forms part of the orchestra.

The composer wrote, "Movements are the most advanced music from the point of view of construction of anything I have composed. I should say, too, that its rhythmic language is also the most advanced I have so far employed. . . . And each section of the piece is confined to a certain range of instrumental timbre."

Among Theo Bruins's own compositions is a Piano Concerto in serial style (1952).

[Sethernage]

Coming soon, a recording of the 1972 Proms broadcast of Cage and Hiller's HPSCHD. This is rather long, but for those interested, the time taken to download will, I think, be an inconvenience worth putting up with.

[Sethernage]

Here is the link to the 1972 Proms broadcast of HPSCHD (from the Round House) the file is replete with introductory and closing announcements. The file size is nearly 129MB.

[guest2]

That Cage is a magnificent thing is it not? A symphony in all but name; the Henry Wood Promenade concert was no doubt the high point of the author's career. And many famous names among the executants. How strange though that the announcer came on after it had started, and that the broadcast ended long - how long exactly? - before the work!

-oOo-

The work of Jani Christou is I find rather intriguing. Here is his Phoenix Music for orchestra, written in 1949 and broadcast in 1967. [Quality of this one = five and a half out of ten - sorry.] It sounds very like early Webern in places does it not?

Christou (1926-70) although born in Egypt was culturally Greek. Not only that - his education was fundamentally English; it was in English that he wrote his philosophical and musical texts, and his diaries. At Cambridge he even studied philosophy under that famous English godlet Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In 1951 Christou's brother expired as a result of his having made a mistake motoring; in 1970 Christou himself suffered the identical fate.

Christou in his later work was far from considering music as an activity for its own sake - he scorned such a view as "decorativism" and "aestheticism"; he thought of it - music - rather as a means of activating primordial shared emotions otherwise hidden by civilized experience, and of achieving mystical states of trance or hysteria.

He completed three symphonies, of which the third has already been "lost."

[guest2]

It was in 1967 that I heard for the first time a broadcast of these Hymns to the Night by Alphons Diepenbrock, and the work has ever since been a particular favourite. There is considerable confusion about nomenclature and dates which I should later attempt to clarify: he produced over the years that is to say a number of works with similar titles.

It is at once clear from his photograph is it not that this composer, who lived from 1862 to 1921, was a serious person with an admirable sense for propriety. Mr. Lebrecht calls him "serious to the point of depression," but there we must for once part company with the usually perspicacious critic.

[guest2]

The première of Consonance, by Makoto Shinohara (on the right-hand side of this photo-graph), took place in 1967, and here is a recording from that year of a broadcast of the occasion.

Mr. Shinohara was born in 1931, and is "active in the Netherlands." Of course he is yet another member of what might be termed the "Cologne Gang." The work is scored for the odd combination of Flute, Horn, Vibra-phone, Marimba (also sometimes known as the "kaffir pianoforte"), harp, and the indispensible violoncello. It gives quite a jolly impression does it not?

[autoharp]

The work of Jani Christou is I find rather intriguing. Here is his Phoenix Music for orchestra, written in 1949 and broadcast in 1967. [Quality of this one = five and a half out of ten - sorry.] It sounds very like early Webern in places does it not?

Christou (1926-70) although born in Egypt was culturally Greek. Not only that - his education was fundamentally English; it was in English that he wrote his philosophical and musical texts, and his diaries. At Cambridge he even studied philosophy under that famous English godlet Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In 1951 Christou's brother expired as a result of his having made a mistake motoring; in 1970 Christou himself suffered the identical fate.

Christou in his later work was far from considering music as an activity for its own sake - he scorned such a view as "decorativism" and "aestheticism"; he thought of it - music - rather as a means of activating primordial shared emotions otherwise hidden by civilized experience, and of achieving mystical states of trance or hysteria.

He completed three symphonies, of which the third has already been "lost."

"Intriguing" indeed.
By an astonishing coincidence there's a somewhat clearer recording of this piece at
http://enantiodromie.blogspot.com/2008/05/jani-christou-symphony-no-1.html
Also his 1st Symphony and doubtless other "goodies". Spahlinger or Duckworth anyone?

[guest2]

I look forward to listening to that Symphony Mr. Autoharp. Both it (which dates from 1950 and includes a setting of T. S. Eliot - another British godlet) and the Phoenix Music are quite early works. Later on Christou seems to have run through the whole gamut of twentieth-century methods: serialism, twelve-tone techniques, aleatory procedures, and he established in Athens a workshop for electronic music.

-oOo-

In 1967 was broadcast Luciano Berio's Sequenza 2 for solo harp, as performed by Francis Pierre during a concert given at the Festival of St. Paul de Vence (if we hear the announcement correctly).

I personally would not cross the road to hear anything of Berio, but let me quote from the New Grove Dictionary: "Sequenza II for harp, written in 1963, invests its instrument with unwonted ferocity." The performance may be of interest to harpists among the members; it sounds as though the player spends much of his time rapping upon the wooden frame with his knuckles.

[guest2]

At the same 1967 Festival concert, Pierre Boulez's Second Improvisation on Mallarmé (Une dentelle s'abolit, for the inevitable soprano, celesta, harp, pianoforte, tubular bells, vibra-phone, and four percussion instruments, completed in 1957) was performed by the Ensemble de Musique Vivante with a singer called Genevieve Cobleau (or something like that! - can members assist?). There is a great deal of further information in Madame Jameux's book on Boulez: the complete poem in both French and English, and four or five pages about the organization of the composition. It is built, says the composer, on the opposition of two different types of vocal writing, in the first of which "the melody consists chiefly of melismas and ornaments. In these circumstances syllabic declamation is impossible. This results, of course, in a certain unintelligibility but this is deliberate." (Thus Boulez.)

[guest2]

Wolfgang Fortner's Triplum, for three pianofortes and orchestra, was completed in 1966, so this broadcast from 1967 must be one of one of its earliest performances. [Recording quality = 8 out of 10]

Norman Lebrecht, the admirable English critic, makes rather a snide remark about Fortner: "He emerged from the war as a twelve-note convert, perhaps as a personal act of repentance."

This evidently major work sounds very modernistical, yet its composer greatly admired the achievements of both Bach and Webern. I do think Fortner's music deserves to be played much more often than even in his native land it actually is.

[guest2]

The Irish composer Gerard Victory (1921-1995) wrote his Favola di Notte for orchestra in 1966, and I first heard it in this broadcast from the following year.

[guest2]

Joep Straesser (1934-2004) was a Dutchman; his modernistical choral work Herfst der Muziek (Autumn of Music, I think) appeared in 1964. This broadcast comes from 1967.