Concert Intervals on R3

[DracoM]

1. Intervals are when you clean the palate and prepare for new delights. You can walk about, sip a drink, talk to friends etc.
2. On R3, it is apparently a time to play MORE music. Why?
3. This is / used to be a heaven sent little niche in which good writers / musicologists etc could illustrate, educate and illuminate what we have just or are more likely to hear next. i.e. education, etc.
4. Not on R3.

This apparently insignificant bit of inexplicable planning has come to epitomise R3's utter loss of direction, its frantic paranoia, its loss of identity and confidence in itself.

Take this evening: before Mahler 9 with all that that implies: I know we've heard from Mark Elder a bit, BUT this would have been an ideal time for a Stephen Johnson et al cameo snapshot of the work MUSICALLY, not biographically. It would have whetted the appetite, educated the ear, get us up to listen even more carefully. It might - as talks did for me way back - excited me into w hole new world.

But R3 has lost any sense that it has a wonderful chance to educate the next generation of those who might actually become their next tranche of devotees. Are the R3 planners really that keen to lose a bargaining position for the upcoming Charter Review? Apparently so.

As a purely commercial shooting in foot exercise, that strikes me as a sort of exemplary suicide note....Turkeys voting for Christmas?

[Petrushka]

I much preferred those type of interval features that had nothing whatever to do with the music in the concert. The occasional short story, a bit of poetry or a whimsical 20 minutes that might divert and entertain. They were often little jewels of the schedule, lovingly produced and presented. The very last thing I want to hear is more music and I usually mute the volume for 20 minutes and come on here.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Your OP struck so many familiar chords with me, Draco - but this is how R3 generally strikes me nowadays; on the rare occasions when there is something that looks unmissable, it's inevitably presented with so much dross and dissipating material thrown in that it just doesn't seem worth the effort. Practically all my listening to the station is done via the i-Player where the waffle can be skipped (or, in the case of interval Music, put aside for a more appropriate time).

[mercia]

are interval talks produced by a "Talks Department" ? are they 'expensive' ?

[Oldcrofter]

Gosh, what torments you fellows and fellowesses suffer - now it's the interval that causes you agonies ! If it's not the execrable pronunciation of Szczyzicki or the second horn who split an F sharp - it's the interval !

Why not turn the sound down, go and make a coffee, phone a friend, go to the loo, read the newspaper, pour yourself a glass of your favourite tipple - wo'evah - and return refreshed as the last wretched words or the interval die away - and just enjoy the second half

[DracoM]

Not suffering, just incredulous. I raised intervals etc and what has happened to them as a tiny cameo of what is happening to R3.

[Lento]

I'm afraid I tend to watch the telly if the interval is music and I am intending to listen to both halves of the concert. I would have thought most people need a break from music before tackling Mahler 9. I wonder how many people did listen live to the whole thing, with interval music. Interesting to hear the Brahms btw, and thought the choir coped very well: not sure about the presenter's comment about them probably being glad to have got through it owing to its difficulty. Seemed a bit of a back-handed compliment.

[DracoM]

And his deeply insensitive comments AFTER the Mahler about how exhausted they all looked. Poor stuff.

Donald Macleod used to have a fund of highly appropriate quotes from relevant critics, musicians etc to round off such memorable concerts, and that guff after the Mahler would have made Mark Elder weep after such a fine, meticulous, and generally very well played performance. I do hope somebody rapped that guy on the knuckles.

[Serial_Apologist]

And his deeply insensitive comments AFTER the Mahler about how exhausted they all looked.

Oh no - really?

[Roslynmuse]

Firstly, I agree that interval music is not the best way of filling a concert interval, and I too hanker after what Petrushka rightly refers to as the 'little jewels in the schedule' that we had in days gone by. However, if music is going to be played, I would like to know from the website/iPlayer what that music is.

As the thread seems to have also turned into a discussion of last night's concert, I'd like to say that as an audience member at the Bridgewater Hall, it was a most wonderful concert - glorious sounds from the orchestra (and choir in part 1), and an interpretation of the Mahler that seems to have deepened and matured since Mark Elder's last outing of the piece four years ago. The wonderful sonorities that the Hallé produced in their Parsifal Prom last summer were conjured up again in the symphony's final pages, and the structure of the piece seemed inevitable rather than, as sometimes, sprawling. The orchestra was, I would say, visibly moved by the experience (and how often does one see that?) - how about, R3 announcers, realising that less is more after a piece like that and letting the ecstatic reception speak for itself?

Back to intervals - a first for me tonight, again at the Bridgewater (BBC Phil, Elgar Violin Concerto with James Ehnes, RVW 9, Andrew Davies): the woman in front of me brought out a large bag of popcorn minutes before the RVW was about to begin (and it was one of those noisy, crinkly bags too) - perhaps she thought it was an Intermission rather than an interval? (She popped it under her seat as the maestro came on the platform.) BBC Phil audience on good form tonight - a couple of mobile phones in the Elgar, one right at the end of the 2nd mt, the other during that extraordinary 3rd mt cadenza; and a couple of thwacks as bling dashed against the rails on the front row of the circle seats...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It's incompetence really. Some theatres do it in the intervals of stage musicals. I seriously wonder about the people who make these decisions.

[bluestateprommer]

1. Intervals are when you clean the palate and prepare for new delights. You can walk about, sip a drink, talk to friends etc.
2. On R3, it is apparently a time to play MORE music. Why?

I can think of a pragmatic reason, if I may be so bold as to posit it, speaking perhaps as an American who "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing". Namely, that it's probably a lot cheaper to take a recording that is already in R3's library and air that, rather than a newly produced interval feature that features spoken narration that has to be recorded and produced, for essentially a one-off use. I say this as a wild guess in the context of what I gather to be budget woes at the BBC. Presumably R3, like all the divisions of the BBC, has to be concerned with budget tightening (if not outright axeing), and is trying to economize where they can. Thus, commercial recordings that already exist and don't need "production" may be a more practical option in that sense. It would be nice if R3 had an infinite pot of money to be able to produce enlightening, informative, and fresh (new) interval features for their concerts. But no one has an infinite pot of money for such things these days.

(Well, the Koch brothers have enough money to try to ruin the US government, but that's another story not of relevance on this thread.)

Anyway, just sayin', in a very speculative manner.

[french frank]

Why not turn the sound down, go and make a coffee, phone a friend, go to the loo, read the newspaper, pour yourself a glass of your favourite tipple - wo'evah - and return refreshed as the last wretched words or the interval die away - and just enjoy the second half

One could do that. But half of the point is the absence of what people would like to hear during the interval break because it was positively enjoyable. The other half is the presence of what is considered the worst option for a concert interval.

But BSP is on the right lines: we have been told that Radio 3 can't afford interval features and music is a cheaper option.

[Don Petter]

But BSP is on the right lines: we have been told that Radio 3 can't afford interval features and music is a cheaper option.

I, too, think he has found the right connection.

Thinks: Does this make this a BSP thread? (Plumbers' joke. )

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Why not turn the sound down, go and make a coffee, phone a friend, go to the loo, read the newspaper, pour yourself a glass of your favourite tipple - wo'evah - and return refreshed as the last wretched words or the interval die away - and just enjoy the second half

In general, this is what I do, but it's not very satisfactory. An interval talk is better, as it gives the ears a change and a rest. Going out to do something different means there is a high risk of missing the beginning of the second half. The only safe bet is to put up with it.