Music Preserved News

Please Note !

The recordings listed on this site may be heard at Music Preserved listening centres. They are not licensed for copying or downloading.


	Peter Quantrill - a new appointment to the Council

	Having graduated in Classics from Cambridge in 1995, Peter has worked in the music industry in various guises as a shop manager for the Music Discount Centre, as Assistant Editor at The Strad and Production Manager at Gramophone and now as Editorial Manager at White Label Productions, where he supervises editorial material for EMI Classics, Brilliant Classics and other record companies and musical organisations. As a regular broadcaster for BBC Radio 3's CD Review and member of Gramophone's reviewer panel, his areas of musical enthusiasm include Renaissance polyphony, Bach, great symphonists, new music and the art of conducting. He is the annotator for the London Chamber Orchestra and is the creative consultant for Music Preserved's digital download label, MP Live. When he's not listening to, writing about or discussing music, he is most likely to be playing with his son Alfred, or cooking, or following the cricket.

	Recording of the Month - January 2010

	The archive is always adding new recordings to the archive and this is now featured with a Recording of the Month chosen as the latest jewel in the crown of the recordings on offer. Interested? Go to one of our listening centres and take a listen to the latest offering of Poulenc's La Voix Humane recorded by the Lyric Orchestra of Chicago under the baton of Cario Felice Cillario. The recording features Josephine Barstow and was made on 3 November 1982.

	The Music Goes Round and Round

	Basil Tschaikov, the founder member of the Music Preserved archive (formerly the Music Performance Research Centre)and now its emiritus President, has written a fascinating account of his 60 years in the Music Industry as a performer, writer, educator and administrator entitled The Music Goes Round and Round. The book is freely available to read at http://www.musicweb-international.com/Tschaikov/flyer.htm

	Peter Moores Foundation supports “vital” cataloguing, restoring and digitizing of Harewood Collection

	Music Preserved has won a grant of £25,000 for 2008 from The Peter Moores Foundation. The grant will be used for starting the process of cataloguing, restoring and digitizing the Harewood Collection of off-air recordings, donated to Music Preserved by Lord Harewood in 2006. Confirming the award, the trust said: 'The preservation of this important collection is vital'. If good progress is made, Music Preserved will apply for further funding in order to complete the task in coming years.

	AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award

	In 2007, the Music Department at the University of York was awarded an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, enabling research into the audio archives of Music Preserved, housed within the University of York Sound Archives (UYSA) at the Borthwick Insitute for Archives. The Award funds three PhD students over five years to work with the Music Preserved collections, in research, digitizing and cataloguing. In its first year, the project recruited Ewan Gordon, an audio engineer researching early stereo in broadcasts and disc and tape recording; in addition to pursuing his doctoral research, Ewan has been receiving special training from Roger Beardsley, an authority on transferring music from obsolete media into digital formats. In the second year, the project will recruit a student with an archival cataloguing background and research interests in live performance broadcasting. In the third year, the project will recruit another transfer engineer with contrasting research interests involving the Music Preserved collections. Through this collaborative effort, creative research into audio recordings will be furthered through three differently-focused doctoral dissertations; in addition, the rare Music Preserved recordings will become a sustainable, accessible resource for music research in the digital age.

	Muti and the Philharmonia re-enact 1972

	An extract from an off-air recording of Maestro Riccardo Muti’s first concert with the Philharmonia Orchestra (on 2 December 1972) was played at a pre-concert event at the Royal Festival Hall - on the same day 35 years later. The concert itself, on 2 December 2007, re-enacted the same programme as in 1972, ending with Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The recording used is in Music Preserved’s collection, donated by co-founder Jon Tolansky, who was percussionist in that 1972 performance.

	Gramophone magazine shortlists Music Preserved recording

	Widely recognised as the most prestigious of awards in its field, the judging panel for Gramophone magazine's Awards 2007 shortlisted for the "Historic Archive" category three recordings released over the past twelve months, one of those being now in Music Preserved's collection. The shortlisted release was of the concert given at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 22 May 1950 by Wilhelm Furtwängler and Kirsten Flagstad with the Philharmonia Orchestra and including the world première of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs together with scenes from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung.

	Appointment of Distinguished Patrons for Music Preserved

	Over recent months, ten distinguished Patrons have been appointed for Music Preserved. They are: The Earl and Countess of Harewood, Dame Janet Baker, Sir Thomas Allen, Sir Nicholas Kenyon, Sir Charles Mackerras, Vladimir Jurowski, John McCabe CBE, Chi-chi Nwanoku MBE and Barry Sterndale-Bennett. All have expressed their support for Music Preserved’s mission – to preserve and make accessible the great heritage of recordings of music in live performance. In accepting the role, Sir Charles Mackerras wrote of this “truly unique organisation which does so much to preserve the recorded performances of musicians of the past”.

	Marshall Marcus joins Music Preserved Council

	Marshall Marcus recently took up the position of Head of Music at Southbank Centre following four years as Chief Executive of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, nine years as its Chairman and nineteen years on its Board. Before leading the OAE Marshall enjoyed an eclectic 25 year career as a chamber musician, soloist and orchestral violinist, performing in more than 50 countries with groups as varied as Amsterdam Baroque, The Moscow Soloists and the Cambridge Buskers. He was a member of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Concert-Master of the Orquesta Philarmonica de Caracas, leader of the Orchestra of St. Johns and a violinist with and Executive Director of Endymion Ensemble. As a student he graduated in Philosophy and Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, in the teaching of English at Cambridge University and in performance at the RCM.

	Music Preserved welcomes the Harewood Collection of off-air broadcasts

	The collection of off-air broadcasts, recorded since the 1930s and 40s by Lord Harewood, have now joined the Music Preserved collections. These rare, often first-generation, broadcast recordings consist of around 600 acetates and 700 reel-to-reel tapes, making a substantial and significant addition to Music Preserved. The recordings will need to be transferred with great care to CD, the digitized sound then made available to listeners from high quality audio files. This process requires significant funding, and we are currently preparing grant applications to meet these costs. Therefore the entire collection will not immediately be available. If you are interested in hearing a specific recording in this collection (or any other Music Preserved recording), contact us at mp@musicpreserved.org.uk or make an appointment at one of the Listening Centres. We would appreciate your understanding that some time may be needed before the recording may become accessible for listening.

	Sound clips provide samples of Music Preserved recordings

	Sound clips make available here on the website tantalizing samples of recordings that may be heard in full at the Music Preserved listening sites at the Barbican Library and the Jerwood Library of Performing Arts at Trinity College of Music. Further sound clips will be added from time to time to give web users a sense of the scope and breadth of the Music Preserved collections. To sample the sound clips, click 'Listen' in the main menu.