End in sight for Classical Collection?

[salymap]

Well said BoD. There is a vast spread of people on these MBs who don't always push their past experience of broadcasting and programme planning into everyone's face. They know what they are talking about though.

[Nick Armstrong]

Here's my pitch for the new 9-12 slot.

It will be called Legato to show we are serious about music. It will be broadly divided into three sections each day. One third will be devoted to vintage/historic recordings, another third to recent CDs, and sandwiched in between for maximum contrast will be an weekly Artist Focus along the lines suggested by aeolium earlier in the thread. The durations of these sections will be not be fixed, and the first and third sections may be swapped around. All types of classical music will be included, from early to contemporary. Items will be scheduled sufficiently in advance for online and magazines to print proper listings and approximate timings. Occasionally, i.e. at least fortnightly, the schedule will be collapsed to allow for the playing of a complete opera recording, historic or modern, with Artist Focus continuing during the intervals.

This will not be a Through The Night-style CD jukebox, and will fulfil the station's remit to educate. Therefore, the presenter will take care to research informative introductions to each item.

Bravo pilamenon

This seems to be the ideal formula, flexible and sensible and I wish someone at r3 would pick it up

[Don Petter]

So did I more or less. The important thing is, we came to it. Radio 3 didn’t come to us saying ‘I see you enjoy The Beach Boys and Andy Williams. How about trying a bit of classical music? It’s really no difference. No need to take it too seriously. Just relax and listen while you are tidying up your drawers’. No. We found Radio3 because we wanted something different. The next step, if you like.

And, to a great extent, this would still be happening, for free, as CFM listeners fed up with the banter, adverts and chartism tried R3, if only the latter had not capitulated and loaded itself with banter, trails and chartism of its own.

[amateur51]

Could we please discuss the issues without turning the conversation toward personal remarks? I don't have anything to prove, so let's move on. I will say you're right about one thing, though: I haven't made a habit of "avidly" tuning in to presenters I don't like playing lightweight repertoire in the hopes of "playing watchdog" and catching everyone out in factual errors. Being the Mary Whitehouse of Radio 3 just doesn't hold any appeal for me...to each his own.

If only Mary Whitehouse confined herself to spelling mistakes and erroneous Köchel numbers, Euda.

She managed to be the only person in several hundred years to bring a private prosection using blasphemy laws against the only established lesbian and gay newspaper in the UK at the time, which led to its closure. The bitch had powerful friends and knew how to exploit them to achieve her reactionary purposes.

Would that we were only half as effective

[amateur51]

What's there to give away? Do you honestly mean to say you're taking credit for this?

Really? Whatever tone you might take on your website is completely undercut by the contemptuous and callow manner in which many of your supporters refer to R3 management on the messageboards. I don't know about you, but if a group of amateurs eternally mocked me for being some kind of glib, incompetent, "visionless", bureaucratically bumbling arse-clown, I don't think I'd care too terribly much what they said about anything, much less want to work with them. Would you? The idea that people with zero experience in radio or the music industry could possibly know more about what constitutes sound policy for running a radio station than professionals who've spent their entire career in the business is itself alienating and offensive.

In other words, your supporters have a massive image management problem, and I'm not sure what you can do to fix it. Leaving off personality-bashing and whinging over trivialities while concentrating on substance might be a good start.

Euda, while I don't doubt for one moment your professional interest in all this, I think it would be fair to ask you to reflect on your oft-mentioned devotion to and pash for the lutrine top banana at Radio 3 before you box other people's ears for speaking their minds directly and clearly

[aeolium]

Here's my pitch for the new 9-12 slot.

It will be called Legato to show we are serious about music. It will be broadly divided into three sections each day. One third will be devoted to vintage/historic recordings, another third to recent CDs, and sandwiched in between for maximum contrast will be an weekly Artist Focus along the lines suggested by aeolium earlier in the thread. The durations of these sections will be not be fixed, and the first and third sections may be swapped around. All types of classical music will be included, from early to contemporary. Items will be scheduled sufficiently in advance for online and magazines to print proper listings and approximate timings. Occasionally, i.e. at least fortnightly, the schedule will be collapsed to allow for the playing of a complete opera recording, historic or modern, with Artist Focus continuing during the intervals.

This will not be a Through The Night-style CD jukebox, and will fulfil the station's remit to educate. Therefore, the presenter will take care to research informative introductions to each item.

pilamenon, I think that's the best suggestion so far. I still think it would be good to have the option for a morning concert, particularly in the summer when the festivals are on. I'm also wondering about a weekly slot for discussion (and playing) of a famous recording, historical or otherwise - for instance the recent Testament reissue of Furtwängler's 1942 recording of Bruckner 5, which so impressed Karafan on another thread.

I think there is a role for CDs to be used more constructively within R3 than they are at present, i.e. increasingly for more-of-the-same extracts of familiar music. They can be used to showcase music in memorable recordings, and they can also be used to extend our knowledge of the repertoire. The repertoire of recorded music has grown enormously in the last 20 years, and concert programming has not attempted to try and keep pace with it. If we are to avoid an unending diet of the familiar, that unfamiliar music on CD needs to be heard.

[amateur51]

pilamenon, I think that's the best suggestion so far. I still think it would be good to have the option for a morning concert, particularly in the summer when the festivals are on. I'm also wondering about a weekly slot for discussion (and playing) of a famous recording, historical or otherwise - for instance the recent Testament reissue of Furtwängler's 1942 recording of Bruckner 5, which so impressed Karafan on another thread.

I think there is a role for CDs to be used more constructively within R3 than they are at present, i.e. increasingly for more-of-the-same extracts of familiar music. They can be used to showcase music in memorable recordings, and they can also be used to extend our knowledge of the repertoire. The repertoire of recorded music has grown enormously in the last 20 years, and concert programming has not attempted to try and keep pace with it. If we are to avoid an unending diet of the familiar, that unfamiliar music on CD needs to be heard.

I like very much what pilamenon has suggested and what you have creatively added to, aeolium.

I recall many years ago a programme about Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit which covered the poems as well as the music, and which also explored the performing 'traditions' of 'clever' pedal-work and foggied difficult parts in various recordings. It gave me some valuable insights into not only the art that conceals art but also into some of the practical balancing that has to be done in order to 'create' a performance - what Brendel has called 'knowing what has to be done'.

[Paul Sherratt]

>lutrine top banana


?

[salymap]

Euda, while I don't doubt for one moment your professional interest in all this, I think it would be fair to ask you to reflect on your oft-mentioned devotion to and pash for the lutrine top banana at Radio 3 before you box other people's ears for speaking their minds directly and clearly

Am51 I think you'd otter shut up now

[aeolium]

I haven't made a habit of "avidly" tuning in to presenters I don't like playing lightweight repertoire in the hopes of "playing watchdog" and catching everyone out in factual errors.

That you should make such an assumption to me shows how completely you misunderstand the issues here. I'd be amazed if anyone posting here deliberately tuned in to listen to a particular presenter in the hope of picking up on errors. I don't tune in to listen to a particular presenter at all - I tune in to listen to a programme, a concert - the presenter is completely incidental. All I expect of the presenter is to do his or her job competently, which should include knowing their subject. The errors are simply too numerous to avoid. If you think describing a different piece of music under the impression that it is the piece to be played (as happened recently) is trivial, then you have very low expectations indeed.

Do you have any proof that all your complaining about sloppy, substandard presenting and lazy fact-checking has made one whit of difference toward encouraging people to get their acts together? Or have all you succeeded in doing is making yourselves look like you're stuck on trivialities at the expense of more substantial issues?

What do you expect people to do? Ignore it? As you will have seen, people are constantly exercised here with substantial issues - the nature of the Breakfast programme, the later morning provision, the issue of the live concert provision in the evening and its timing: these are not trivial. There have been plenty of constructive suggestions for changes. There has also been praise for things that have been done well. But criticism is an essential part of keeping institutions up to scratch, and it's right that people express criticism where they feel R3 has fallen short of the standards they expect.

[french frank]

Sorry, I was out of action again last night, so missed this debate One or two points:

antongould #98: I think the use of indies might go back to the Birt days when quite a few BBC people left to start up their own production companies. And who, exactly, would they make programmes for, if not the BBC? It’s possibly enshrined in the Charter or Agreement that a fixed percentage of production will be given to indies: there are certainly annual ‘commitments’ to do so as a matter of competition policy.

Eudaimonia #104: Let me point out – again – one thing: this forum and the opinions expressed here are not those of FoR3 unless specifically stated to be so (usually by me, as in #63 “Speaking here for FoR3, not the forum...”). This forum, as you very well know, took over in large part the membership of the BBC Radio 3 messageboards, and therefore no more represents the voice of FoR3 than the BBC boards did. Most of the FoR3 membership doesn’t post here; and most of the people who post here are not registered supporters of FoR3: they are free to express here whatever opinions they wish, but they do so, as individuals, on their own behalf. The majority of the criticisms of Radio 3, presenters, Roger Wright, the BBC &c. are initiated by them, not by me, nor by FoR3.

Just as the BBC did not endorse the comments of contributors on their messageboards, FoR3 does not endorse the comments of contributors here; FoR3 has provided this forum – as the BBC provided its messageboards – for listeners to read and express their opinions.

If you wish to take issue with any member of the forum for something they have said, please address your comment to that member and stop flinging censorious and derogatory remarks at no one and everyone - especially FoR3, about whose business you know nothing whatsoever.

Word #113: Thank you for retracting in some measure your view that the ‘caustic and corrosive’ comments were those of FoR3, or that they had FoR3’s approval.

[DracoM]

< If we are to avoid an unending diet of the familiar, that unfamiliar music on CD needs to be heard. >

Yes, indeed. Fully agree.

The problem however is that a radio platform desirous of not frightening the horses, staying in and cultivating comfort zones, and retaining as big an audience reach as possible, AND locked into serious competition with a rival is on the face of it unlikely to be courageous enough to incorporate such diversity.

If ratings is the name of the game, and for me that is what comes over uncomfortably clearly from the brief, then chancing arms, researching and then pursuing fascinating side roads are very much not on the agenda.

If this leaked brief is an indication of the trajectory of current R3 thinking, then daring greatly seems decreasigly to be of signiificant importance in the R3 mix.

[french frank]

pilamenon, I think that's the best suggestion so far. I still think it would be good to have the option for a morning concert, particularly in the summer when the festivals are on. I'm also wondering about a weekly slot for discussion (and playing) of a famous recording, historical or otherwise - for instance the recent Testament reissue of Furtwängler's 1942 recording of Bruckner 5, which so impressed Karafan on another thread.

Given that this is a 5-a-week programme, one or two weekly concerts would be good. Remember (RW's) 'Morning Performance' programme, which concentrated on the festivals? And that didn't even have the luxury of a 3-hour slot.

Yes, to the point about the use of CDs. There are several record companies that specialise in less familiar repertoire, of the kind that we're seldom likely to get an opportunity to hear in the concert halls. The disappointment of this proposed programme is that it's to be 'essential classics' throughout the week.

I think it needs a format which is a blend of recognisable as its own but which allows for the greatest amount of variety within that format. And perhaps once-a-week features. Like CD Review, it should give advance details of what will be on at approximately what time.

Other suggestions: variety through rotating presenters, allowing them some measure to create their own programmes (though, in principle, I don't like the 'my kinda music' basis) from the available ingredients of CDs and concert recordings, plus their own ideas.

Themes throughout a week - focus on performances of a particular artist/ensemble, on a particular genre, a (short) talk by an expert on some aspect of music (could be, say, Indian classical), a look at a specific era.

If guests, they need to be invited for a reason which fits in with the programme's themes or general brief; not just a vague guest slot, and certainly not a 'celebrity' whose sole function is to propose a piece of music and provide a bit of interest.

[Paul Sherratt]

Draco,

I wonder if it's thought by bbc bosses that the listening audiences don't do daring ?

[amateur51]

Am51 I think you'd otter shut up now

What can you mean

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