Skelly leaving Essential Classics

[Stanfordian]

From my experience the vast majority of young people, unless they are music students I guess, wouldn't be seen dead listening to Classic FM.

[Bryn]

While we are in self-flagellation mode didn’t Kingsley Amis once say that contemporary composers ranked just above sex offenders in public esteem ? I hope he was joking. I’ve often wondered whether a UK politician who could play a bit would dare to perform a Mozart concerto like Helmut Schmidt once did or whether the PR a spin people would talk him/her out of it. They would argue that it’s elitist out-of-touch and fiddling while Rome burns etc.

Some of us here are old enough to remember an English politician by the name of Edward Heath. A reasonable organist and enthusiastic amateur conductor. I recall a serviceable broadcast performance (BBC Oxford) of Haydn's Creation, under his baton.

[Bryn]

From my experience the vast majority of young people, unless they are music students I guess, wouldn't be seen dead listening to Classic FM.

I'm one of the not so young ones who would not, either.

[gradus]

I don't think that classical music has ever been more than a minority taste -amongst my classmates I can't recall any who liked it and that included those learning horn and cello.
Such a shame that the BBC won't leave R3 alone, it's never going to attract many 'new listeners' imv. I'd be happy to pay a dedicated R3/R4 licence fee and forego the rest. What is the budget needed to keep it going for the enthusiasts, surely it can't be that much.

[oddoneout]

Some of us here are old enough to remember an English politician by the name of Edward Heath. A reasonable organist and enthusiastic amateur conductor. I recall a serviceable broadcast performance (BBC Oxford) of Haydn's Creation, under his baton.

A founder and occasional conductor of the European Community Youth Orchestra, now EUYO*. A family member worked with him on one of their courses and spent some time chatting about boats...

*Something else in which Brexit effectively denies participation presumably.

[Padraig]

Some of us here are old enough to remember an English politician by the name of Edward Heath.

I'm sure there is a record somewhere of his playing Mozart, Piano Sonata in A, but I can't find it.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I don't think that classical music has ever been more than a minority taste -amongst my classmates I can't recall any who liked it and that included those learning horn and cello.
Such a shame that the BBC won't leave R3 alone, it's never going to attract many 'new listeners' imv. I'd be happy to pay a dedicated R3/R4 licence fee and forego the rest. What is the budget needed to keep it going for the enthusiasts, surely it can't be that much.

Assuming a million listeners a week £65 * each per annum would cover it...but were it not to be part of the BBC all sorts of things might get expensive. It might lose the free EBU material that makes up Through The Night . It might lose a lot of partnership funding . And you also have the very considerable expense of collecting the money . At the moment that’s all wrapped in the licence fee. The harsh truth is that as one or two forumites have pointed out it all hangs on the popularity of BBC One and , increasingly , iPlayer streams.

* or £135 if you include Radio 4 - but then it gets even more complicated for reasons I won’t bore you with.

[oddoneout]

R3 isn't the way to get young people listening to "classical" music , and I don't think in terms of numbers it ever was, so there is no point in fiddling with programmes that have that as an aim. It misses the target audience and alienates the existing one. If an interest has been sparked, R3 may offer listening which can be followed up - but it is the sparking of the initial interest that is the now non-existent link between a potential audience and the need ( although that could be seen as a matter for debate in itself?) to ensure succession of a R3 audience. The sidelining of matters cultural, to the point of elimination, from what passes as education these days means that, as with introducing languages, the window of opportunity when children are not only receptive to new experiences but also happy to participate, is now well and truly closed.

[Ein Heldenleben]

R3 isn't the way to get young people listening to "classical" music , and I don't think in terms of numbers it ever was, so there is no point in fiddling with programmes that have that as an aim. It misses the target audience and alienates the existing one. If an interest has been sparked, R3 may offer listening which can be followed up - but it is the sparking of the initial interest that is the now non-existent link between a potential audience and the need ( although that could be seen as a matter for debate in itself?) to ensure succession of a R3 audience. The sidelining of matters cultural, to the point of elimination, from what passes as education these days means that, as with introducing languages, the window of opportunity when children are not only receptive to new experiences but also happy to participate, is now well and truly closed.

It got me listening to classical music and quite a few of the forumites from comments above but that was in the days when LPs were phenomenally expensive . Now listening to music of all genres is effectively free...

[Serial_Apologist]

R3 isn't the way to get young people listening to "classical" music , and I don't think in terms of numbers it ever was, so there is no point in fiddling with programmes that have that as an aim. It misses the target audience and alienates the existing one. If an interest has been sparked, R3 may offer listening which can be followed up - but it is the sparking of the initial interest that is the now non-existent link between a potential audience and the need ( although that could be seen as a matter for debate in itself?) to ensure succession of a R3 audience. The sidelining of matters cultural, to the point of elimination, from what passes as education these days means that, as with introducing languages, the window of opportunity when children are not only receptive to new experiences but also happy to participate, is now well and truly closed.

Openness to the history, range and change in classical music, as in jazz, was probably a defining preparation for my own outlook on life. A renewed period of political radicalisation among the young might change attitudes: the current situation of "no future" predicates a vital need for change. I well remember, in the 1970s, when I myself got "involved", many of my working class comrades began questioning musical normalistions under consumer capitalism, and a general broadening and deepening of cultural interests was logically concomitant.

[french frank]

It got me listening to classical music and quite a few of the forumites from comments above but that was in the days when LPs were phenomenally expensive . Now listening to music of all genres is effectively free...

As someone who was a very late arrival on the scene, I'm impressed at/envious of those who discovered and enjoyed The Third/Radio 3 in their teens. I enjoyed what I regard as the closing decade of Radio 3 - the Drummond era. There were more classical programmes that were 'speech-based' like CotW: Sound Stories, Masterworks, Artist of the Week as well as Discovering Music. For those who just want the music - and think Through the Night is the example to follow - I'd disagree, on a personal basis, because I wanted to find out about the music, not just simply listen to it. R3 provided both - the 'fact based' and the music based.

Now the 'fact based' programme is no more apart from CotW which no one dares touch and (sometimes) Record Review. The problem is that the 'bitty' classical programmes now predominate. At least in the days when, as a student, I went to visit friends who wanted to play their latest LP, we did listen to a whole Beatles LP, not 9 songs by different performers (with the odd Great American Songbook number or the theme from Born Free thrown in).

For me, we now have R3INO because it no longer has what I valued. As I said some while back, I do appreciate the difficulties a service like Radio 3 now has but I don't think the BBC has the right approach because, fundamentally, it doesn't care about Radio 3 and its core remit. The controller, I think, has an impossible job - and Drummond hung on to its values because he was that kind of bloke.

[Ein Heldenleben]

There’s a very good summary of the cultural ebb and flow of Radio 3 on the wiki page .Just about every controller gets accused of dumbing down.I’d completely forgotten the great Paul Gambaccini (non) scandal - when he replaced COTW at 09.00 .

[french frank]

There’s a very good summary of the cultural ebb and flow of Radio 3 on the wiki page .Just about every controller gets accused of dumbing down.I’d completely forgotten the great Paul Gambaccini (non) scandal - when he replaced COTW at 09.00 .

That was the point at which I first began to lose confidence. He sounded smooth and self-assured, but I didn't believe he knew any more than I did.

[mikealdren]

That was the point at which I first began to lose confidence. He sounded smooth and self-assured, but I didn't believe he knew any more than I did.

I'm sure you're right, look at what he's done to Radio 4's Counterpoint, it's become a Pop quiz.

[oddoneout]

It got me listening to classical music and quite a few of the forumites from comments above but that was in the days when LPs were phenomenally expensive . Now listening to music of all genres is effectively free...

I wasn't saying that no-one started their classical journey from an encounter with R3, rather that in terms of audience numbers I doubt it was significant even in the 'good old days', so trying to make R3 "appealing" to a younger audience is even more self-defeating now than it was in the days of "this is what we do and how we do it, whether you listen is up to you". The introduction to, and interest-piqueing in, the enormous variety of music generally rendered inaccessible by the term "classical" has to start much earlier and away from a "classical music" radio station.