Ghost Echoes is a music history podcast with secret rules. It begins in 1970 and it will proceed up to the present day, discussing one musical recording per episode. Some of them are famous and acclaimed, others utterly obscure. Some are classical, most are pop. The list of recordings that Ghost Echoes will focus on throughout its run is already decided and set in stone, having been chosen in accordance with the podcast’s non-negotiable rules, of which there are three: 1. REDACTED, 2. REDACTED, and 3. The first two rules are secret.
These rules lead Ghost Echoes down countless historical side streets and blind alleys where it departs from music entirely and passes by Victorian booze palaces, angry Ontarian proletariats, inscrutable paintings about the space race, demolished movie theatres, drunk people, exceedingly large oval rugs, unlikely origin stories of venerable educational institutions, Charlie Brown cartoons, and conspiracy theories about extrajudicial assassinations by MI5.
Ghost Echoes is the story of music -- and everything else
Ghost Echoes is a music history podcast with secret rules. It begins in 1970 and it will proceed up to the present day, discussing one musical recording per episode. Some of them are famous and acclaimed, others utterly obscure. Some are classical, most are pop. The list of recordings that Ghost Echoes will focus on throughout its run is already decided and set in stone, having been chosen in accordance with the podcast’s non-negotiable rules, of which there are three: 1. REDACTED, 2. REDACTED, and 3. The first two rules are secret.
These rules lead Ghost Echoes down countless historical side streets and blind alleys where it departs from music entirely and passes by Victorian booze palaces, angry Ontarian proletariats, inscrutable paintings about the space race, demolished movie theatres, drunk people, exceedingly large oval rugs, unlikely origin stories of venerable educational institutions, Charlie Brown cartoons, and conspiracy theories about extrajudicial assassinations by MI5.
Ghost Echoes is the story of music -- and everything else
The Portsmouth Sinfonia billed themselves as “indisputably, the worst orchestra in the world.” They have brought joy into the lives of millions. In the fifth episode of Ghost Echoes, we learn about the importance and healing effects of failure.
Music and Sound Notes:
-- The recording of Vivaldi’s Concerto for two trumpets heard here is NOT Matthew Parsons and his colleague Glenn Skelton. It is in fact Michel Rondeau (presumably double tracked) and organist Alaine Letendre, sourced from Musopen.
-- Here’s Chi-Chi Nwanoku’s BBC performance of Failing by Tom Johnson.
-- The snippets heard shortly after are from “It Never Entered My Mind” performed by the Miles Davis Quartet, the third movement of Bach’s Italian Concerto performed by Glenn Gould, the first movement of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto performed by Patricia Kopatchinskaja with Teodor Currentzis conducting MusicaEterna, and Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you as sung by Barbara Hannigan with Andris Nelsons conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
-- All the tracks by the Portsmouth Sinfonia are from their debut album, The Portsmouth Sinfonia Plays the Popular Classics. The works excerpted from here are Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, the first movement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony, and “The Blue Danube” by Johann Strauss II.
-- Information on the Portsmouth Sinfonia came from Cornelius Cardew: A Life Unfinished by John Tilbury and this piece by Eric Grundhauser.
-- Thanks to Berlin Atmospherics for the applause SFX.