Edinburgh International Festival Programme Launch

Tam Pollard at the "Where's Runnicles" blog has posted his views on the Edinburgh International Festival's programme here and I thought I would give a few points of my own, although I agree with much of what he says.

I'm slightly disappointed by the lack of big name Symphony orchestras and conductors in the Usher Hall but I think that some big name Baroque performers such as John Eliot Gardener and Masaaki Suzuki are maybe the reason there. I am very pleased to see NYCoS involved in the final concert after the policy for many years of having no youth groups performing, however good they are. As an ex-NYOS member I think it would be great if they could be invited one year - how about a joint NYOS/NYCOS concert, that would draw the crowds in surely.

I think my main gripe is the lack of 18th Century Scottish music in the main programme. Sure it's got a few dedicated late night spots by performers who know and love the repertoire but it would have been great to see it included somewhere in a big name artists Queen's Hall programme, or in an Usher Hall concert - although I appreciate that's more impractical given the small resources much music of the time was written for. If the theme of the programme is "The Scottish Enlightenment" it would have been nice to see music from this more to the forefront since noone else will promote it if a Scottish Festival doesn't.

EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention is that while it is nice to see some contemporary music from Scotland (Macmillan and Maxwell Davies), it would have been nice to see some young Scottish composers given exposure rather than (or as well as) established ones. This is another area I feel the festival could have done better in recently, particularly given that Jonathan Mills is a composer himself. I do appreciate that everyone has their own personal views on what should be in a festival though, and it can't be all things to all people. While this post has been mainly about things I feel are missing that is not to say I don't think the programme is good.

Free classical downloads - Part 2

There were a couple of sites I forgot to mention in my last post.

Alexander Street Press offers downloads about twice a month, and best of all you can sign up to a mailing list to remind you when the next one is available. It's currently Enescu's String Quartet No.2, something I've certainly never heard before, but it's supposed to change today so if you're a big Enescu fan get there asap.

Particularly timely is Radio 4 in the Netherlands. This week in honour of Bernard Haitink's birthday they are giving away a symphony a day of him conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, one of the best orchestras in the world, playing in arguably the best acoustic in the world. There is a special website set up here. Earlier this year they also put up ten symphonies played by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for their 120th Anniversary. These were supposed to be taken down but they still appear to be on the site. One good thing about these downloads is that you can also download a CD cover with them, meaning you have the programme notes, one thing often missing in downloads.

The Dutch Radio 4 being so generous with downloads highlights the issue of the BBC Trust restricting the BBC's ability to give away free classical music on the internet. Despite the fact that it would break no copyright laws if they gave away recordings of their own orchestras of music from the early 20th Century and earlier. The Trust decided to restrict this after the phenomenal success of the free Beethoven downloads it made available for two weeks and which were downloaded almost one and a half million times! Commercial companies raised a huge fuss and the BBC bowed to the pressure. This was probably one of the worst things done for the promotion of classical music in recent years. While Radio 3 had probably planned to continue this and there could have been many new fans for Bach and Haydn if they had done Anniversary downloads for them, the Trust instead kept classical music in the domain of those elite few who already go out and buy it, while the record companies shot themselves in the foot by not jumping onto the bandwagon and trying to get new fans for their products when they are already suffering from declining CD sales. It's maybe worth mentioning at this point that classical music is one of the few areas of commercial music that doesn't look like it's currently looking for life support. Anyway, enough of the rant. Lets just say well done and thank you to the Dutch.

Free classical downloads

The last few days I've been exploring free classical downloads on the internet. There are of course a lot of sites where you can pay for downloads but if I'm buying music, and I frequently do, then I prefer to get it on CD. However, I was interested to see if you could get recordings by world class artists legally and have discovered two sites where this is possible. They both have different reasons for being able to get round copyright.

LiberLiber is an Italian site with mostly orchestral and operatic repertoire where all the recordings appear to be over 50 years old, which is I believe currently the protected period in some European countries, presumably including Italy. If you are interested in these I would download them soon though because the EU wants to lengthen the copyright period to 95 years, meaning sites like this would be illegal. You may think that 50+ year old recordings are not worth bothering about anyway but there are some great performances here, even if the sound quality doesn't have the clarity we're used to now - watch out for some Toscanini/NBC Symphony recordings and a few by the Berlin and Vienna Phils among the orchestral repertoire, while the opera stuff includes some fantastic Italian companies and quite a lot of D'oyly Carte G&S recordings.

The Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston hosts regular recitals, and it posts live recordings by many of the artists who perform there, and actively encourages you to share it with your friends. There is almost 40 hours worth of music on here and again has a range of world class (and mostly very young) performers. The sound quality of these is excellent as well, always something which can be the downfall of live recordings if not done as a professional release (although I imagine the recording engineer must be a professional). Presumably all these artists are happy to release a few tracks in order to get greater exposure.

Both these sites are completely legal and yet provide a great service to the classical music world through their downloads. Liberliber is releasing recordings which the artists are no longer getting the money for, and which most people would not buy in a shop, yet after exploring the music that is there I am encouraged to go and listen to this repertoire further. Similarly with the Isabella Gardner Museum I will certainly keep an eye out for recordings by some of these artists now, names I didn't know before and probably wouldn't have taken a chance on in a shop. Both these sites only work because the quality of the performance is what you would get if you paid for a recording though. There are other sites where you can download recordings by amateurs and while it's nice that it's there it doesn't really excite you in the same way and I would rather pay than listen to that. As someone who is against illegal downloading I think it's great that people are finding ways to use free downloading constructively and I hope that more people will follow. If you know of any other sites which make good use of legal downloads let me know, in the meantime please explore these sites and hopefully you will discover something new for you there like I have.