Classical Live is changing its tune

[Serial_Apologist]

Let's hope Germany and Italy, where I believe the arts are still respected if not cherished, don't go the same way

Italy provides the only instance I can think of where the arts did not do so badly under fascism in the 1920s/30s as Germany, and Spain (for the most part); these days however fascism or the new quasi-fasicism represented by Trump and his mates in other countries has gone fully populist.

[smittims]

I noticed what I believe to be a couple of well-known 'howlers' on yesterday's programme. Yes, I know it looks like nit-picking, but at its worst incorrect information broadcast by the BBc is esentially 'fake news' to some extent.

We were told that Dvorak's ninth symphony incorporates 'African-American spirituals'. Cole Porter borrowed a melody from the second movement of the symphony and put it in 'Show Boat' where it became a song 'Going home',. This is often erroneously supposed to be an American tune.

The 'Paradise Garden' in Delius' opera is not 'a pub' as we were told twice, but a garden. There is an old inn there, named after the garden, but the lovers do not enter it. The scene is concerned with the garden and the river.

I realise the wrong versions sound more 'inclusive' or entertaining than the bare facts, but some still believe everything they hear on the BBC, so I think they should be more careful.

[Dave2002]

The 'Paradise Garden' in Delius' opera is not 'a pub' as we were told twice, but a garden. There is an old inn there, named after the garden, but the lovers do not enter it. The scene is concerned with the garden and the river.

I realise the wrong versions sound more 'inclusive' or entertaining than the bare facts, but some still believe everything they hear on the BBC, so I think they should be more careful.

I have heard the Paradise Garden = Pub version so many times I took it to be true. So it really isn't, then?

[LMcD]

I have heard the Paradise Garden = Pub version so many times I took it to be true. So it really isn't, then?

Perhaps it's the Garden of Eden to which none of us can ever return?

[vinteuil]

I have heard the Paradise Garden = Pub version so many times I took it to be true. So it really isn't, then?

... well, in the original story by Gottfried Keller, "Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe", the Paradise
Garden is a tavern, and the lovers dance on the platform on top of the building

.

[smittims]

Yes, as I said, there is an old inn by the 'Paradise Garden ', but the significance of the place is when Sali kisses Vreli in the garden and she says

'Now I understand; this is the garden of paradise. Listen , you can hear the angels singing...'

The point I was trying to make (albeit perhaps laboriously) is that for a R3 presenter to introduce Delius' work by saying it's just a walk down to the pub, is to trivialise it,and to show ignorance of what the opera is about.'

[french frank]

it's just a walk down to the pub, is to trivialise it,and to show ignorance of what the opera is about.'

"Fancy a swift half, Eth?"
"Oh, Ro-o-o-o-o-n ...."

[LMcD]

"Fancy a swift half, Eth?"
"Oh, Ro-o-o-o-o-n ...."

Enter Jimmy Edwards: 'Ello, 'Ello, 'Ello' !

[smittims]

My father claimed to be the only person who could sing both verses of the theme song to Take it from Here. I didn't even know there was more than the first stanza, up to 'the show has begun...'.

[cria]

"Fancy a swift half, Eth?"
"Oh, Ro-o-o-o-o-n ...."

Or "Fancy a quick one. Eth?"
"Ooo ...Go on ..."

[LMcD]

Or "Fancy a quick one. Eth?"
"Ooo ...Go on ..."

That would certainly make her pa glum.

[oddoneout]

R3 online schedules doing their best to confuse, yet again. This afternoon's Classical (not) Live has a lot of blurb about the Proms Mozart Messiah, and no mention of any other items, but the playlist so far shows 5 items, none of which is advertised work, despite the fact it is now well underway.
Linear radio is dead, long live Sounds...

[oddoneout]

Been caught out again. Thought what was listed in the schedule was the order of play, (although an incomplete list as that's always the way) so that the Il Pomo d'Oro bits would come after the Bartok, given the line of asterisks that to me indicated a separate section of the broadcast.
You would have thought by now I would have learnt; I really must get it in my head that it is pointless listening to Classical(not) Live on the radio, as the schedule is deliberately misleading.

[Roger Webb]

[/QUOTE]

The 'Paradise Garden' in Delius' opera is not 'a pub'.............[/QUOTE]

No, but the house next to Delius's birthplace in Bradford was, until recently it was called 'Delius Lived Next-Door'. I've never been there, although I attended the unveiling of the plaque on the birthplace in 1985.

On the subject of gaffs, Georgia's sojourn in Paris - on the very day Bradford became UK City of Culture - omitted to play any Delius (a long time resident of the city......Paris, not Bradford - he couldn't wait to get away from that one!)).....and, of course, composer of 'Paris: the song of a great city'.....or if that is a little lengthy, the Prelude from Delius's one-acter, 'Margot la Rouge' a vivid description of the street outside a bar (yet another 'pub' in Delius she could have said!) at dusk, the rain has just stopped....nothing smells quite like Paris pavements when the rain has just stopped! BTW Ravel made a four-hand piano version of this prelude (also used in Delius's 'Idyll: once I passed through a populous city').....two Parisians for the price of one!

[Master Jacques]

The 'Paradise Garden' in Delius' opera is not 'a pub' as we were told twice, but a garden. There is an old inn there, named after the garden, but the lovers do not enter it. The scene is concerned with the garden and the river.

If we're being scrupulously accurate, the Paradise Garden is a bohemian semi-brothel with an open-air garden which sells drinks, which is why the Dark Fiddler wants to lure Sali and Vreli down there, to test their innocence and goodness. They don't like the place, or its loose-living inhabitants, which makes them realise that their love has no future. So it's on to the river barge for consummation and suicide.

Delius paints the brothel atmosphere more overtly than Keller, who had to be more circumspect. His Paradise Garden is effectively a critique of the dangerous excesses of "artistic" life.

(The deep irony of the name is reflected in Delius's poignant, searingly beautiful Interlude describing their tragic journey to this false Valhalla)