3beebies aka Breakfast

[VodkaDilc]

Fascinating! Just to take one example of the things which caught my eye:
5.30 Mainly for Pleasure
Lyndon Jenkins plays (!?) some rarely heard works for piano and orchestra

Imagine hearing anything "rarely heard" in the 5.30 to 6.30 timeslot today.

[mangerton]

Don't forget there were reel-to-reel tape recorders and time switches. It would only need half-a-dozen enthusiasts to get together and decide who was going to record which bit!

There were! I had one of each. By 1988 I also had a stereo VCR, which of course had a timer, and which could be connected to a stereo tuner. This gave up to three hours continuous recording.

[ardcarp]

A very old lady I knew died a few years ago. I received a call from her executor saying she had left something to me in her will. My hopes were raised fro a moment because she had a rather nice Bechstein grand....but alas that was not for me; just eight large boxes of reel-to-reel tapes which her late husband had made from 'The Third Programme'. Sound quality appalling as they were done via microphone. It is no doubt an interesting archive....but one I shall have to bequeath to someone else one day!

[Serial_Apologist]

Should anyone want my collection of 40 or so reel-to-reels off of Radio 3 from around 1963 to 1968, all 20th century classical music, mono of course, but with no tape recorder to play them on I'm afraid, they are welcome to contact me. They're mostly 7", recorded at 3 and 3/4, but mostly remarkably good in sound quality.

They're all together in one cardboard box.

S-A

[pilamenon]

Some of them presented the old warhorses, just like now. But here's one I found interesting (all information in the Radio Times):

Thursday 1 December 1988

6.55 Weather, followed by news headlines
7am Morning Concert
Purcell Chacony for strings
707 Daquin Suite for harpsichord No 3 in E minor
7.09 Chausson Poème
7.30 News
7.35 Walton Overture Scapino
7.43 J Strauss II Tales from the Vienna Woods
7.54 Gluck Dance of the Furies; Dance of the Blessed Spirits
8.05 Respighi Suite: The Birds
8.30 News
8.35 Composers of the Week
Balakirev & Cui
9.35 For Leon Goossens
Nicholas Daniel and Julius Drake
Delius Two Interludes (Fennimore and gerda)
Josephs Prelude 'for Leon Goossens's 90th birthday'
Ridout Romance for oboe and piano
Templeton Scherzo caprice
Delius Morning Star
Richardson French Suite
!0.15 Czech Warriors
Dvorak Hussite overture
Janacek Ballad of Blanik
10.40 Late Mozart and Early Strauss (piano recital)
Strauss Stimmungsbilder
Mozart Sonata in F K 533/494
11.25 North Wales Music festival 1988
Mozart Symphony No 39
Schubert Symphony No 8
Beethoven Symphony No 5
1pm News
1.05 Bristol Lunchtime Concert - live from St George's
The First New Musicke: Italian and English Airs, 1600-1650
Emma Kirkby and Anthony Rooley
anon, Robert Jones, Alfonso Ferrabosco elder, Angelo Notari, Claudio Monteverdi, Nicholas Lanier, Alessandro Piccinini.Antonio Cifra, Henry Lawes
2pm Langham Chamber Orchestra
Carl Stamitz Symphony in D, Op 9/1
Rossini String Sonata No 6
Mozart Symphony No 27
2.45 The Oresteia, musical trilogy after Aeschylus
text AA Venkstern, music S Taneyev
5.30 Mainly for Pleasure
Lyndon Jenkins plays (!?) some rarely heard works for piano and orchestra
7pm News
7.05 Third Ear
Seiji Ozawa Musical Director of the Boston SO talks to Michael Hall
7.30 Boston SO - live from the RFH
Webern Five Pieces Op 10
Mahler Symphony No 9
9.05 The Idylls of Theocritus
Readings with music
9.35 Music in Our Time
A Stockhausen Celebration
Oberlippentanz; Ave; Traum-Formel; Xi
(All first UK broadcasts)
Tierkreis
Peformed by Stockhausen/family/associates
11pm Composer of the Week Berlioz
Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale
La Fuite en Egypte
12.00-12.05am News

Now that's what's been missing. That's the kind of schedule I'd definitely listen to. An hour and a half of Stockhausen in the evening! Beautifully balanced across most genres (though no jazz, but were there regular programmes on other days?).

[Serial_Apologist]

Jazz has been badly served by the BBC forever.

[french frank]

Now that's what's been missing. That's the kind of schedule I'd definitely listen to. An hour and a half of Stockhausen in the evening! Beautifully balanced across most genres (though no jazz, but were there regular programmes on other days?).

I think this was under Drummond and jazz was probably then at its lowest. But, yes, there were some regular programmes. Drummond also introduced world music to the schedule.

I like quirky little programmes, like 'Czech Warriors'. I think that was quite a usual device - choosing two pieces to compare and contrast. Nothing had to fit into fixed slots so there were no restrictions on the length of pieces. Remember the time when they didn't have regular programme trails being played in the middle of programmes? . They also mean pieces are chosen to fit the slots.

[Serial_Apologist]

There was a time when RT stated the start times for each item in a programme - very convenient for recording purposes! Then it suddenly stopped, in the mid-1980s, iirc. We were not well pleased and wrote in, to be told that the revamped Radio Times did not allow sufficient space to include them.

[VodkaDilc]

There was a time when RT stated the start times for each item in a programme - very convenient for recording purposes! Then it suddenly stopped, in the mid-1980s, iirc. We were not well pleased and wrote in, to be told that the revamped Radio Times did not allow sufficient space to include them.

It must have been around that time that I attended a meeting which was addressed by John Drummond. I asked how R3 would be served in the revamped Radio Times. (I think it could have been the time when the magazine started trying to include every radio and television station, rather than just BBC ones.) He replied that a dream of his was to incorporate R3 programme listings into The Listener. Now that would have been a magazine worth subscribing to.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

... to be told that the revamped Radio Times did not allow sufficient space to include them.

And the more station they add on to to the two pages allocated to all national radio stations - BBC and commercial - the worse it becomes. Plus the fact that there were once three pages devoted to radio. You wouldn't think it was called "Radio Times". If they want to economise on space to give more time to radio, they could cut out much of the "choice" pages for television, and pension off the nausiatingly opinionated Alison Graham.

[mercia]

Beautifully balanced across most genres

I'm not so sure. A whole day with no choral music, no chamber music, hardly any baroque music, no vocal music, and 3 hours of popular classics. Let's hope the following day made up for it.

[MickyD]

It must have been around that time that I attended a meeting which was addressed by John Drummond. I asked how R3 would be served in the revamped Radio Times. (I think it could have been the time when the magazine started trying to include every radio and television station, rather than just BBC ones.) He replied that a dream of his was to incorporate R3 programme listings into The Listener. Now that would have been a magazine worth subscribing to.

Yes indeed - I remember it carrying excellent articles. But on reflection, wasn't it bizarre that such a magazine produced by the BBC itself, never actually carried R3 listings? Does anyone know why this was?

[aeolium]

The Dec 1, 1988 schedule is a very good one and certainly far better than the average one today, though going further back to late 1970s and early 1980s I remember more talks, programmes like Interpretations on Record with Michael Oliver et al, plays by the likes of Stoppard and Beckett, opera broadcasts from the Salzburg Festival (not all in one day, I hasten to add!). That 1988 programme seems to be very heavily weighted towards music, a trend which started IIRC later in Drummond's controllership and which was accentuated in Kenyon's.

[french frank]

That 1988 programme seems to be very heavily weighted towards music, a trend which started IIRC later in Drummond's controllership and which was accentuated in Kenyon's.

I'll look at the other days of that week. I thought there was a bit more speech than that in 1988. Crucially, speech programmes were more integrated into the whole schedule (jazz only to a certain extent - but that depended upon the controller).

I do think, however, that this schedule would be taken as damning evidence by today's BBC that 'something had to be done' about Radio 3. 'Not fit for purpose', with all sorts of reasons given.

[pilamenon]

Mercia, you'll have to do better than that.

Thursday 1 December 1988

Morning Concert
Purcell Chacony for strings

9.35 For Leon Goossens
Nicholas Daniel and Julius Drake
Delius Two Interludes (Fennimore and gerda)
Josephs Prelude 'for Leon Goossens's 90th birthday'
Ridout Romance for oboe and piano
Templeton Scherzo caprice
Delius Morning Star
Richardson French Suite

1.05 Bristol Lunchtime Concert - live from St George's
The First New Musicke: Italian and English Airs, 1600-1650
Emma Kirkby and Anthony Rooley
anon, Robert Jones, Alfonso Ferrabosco elder, Angelo Notari, Claudio Monteverdi, Nicholas Lanier, Alessandro Piccinini.Antonio Cifra, Henry Lawes

2.45 The Oresteia, musical trilogy after Aeschylus
text AA Venkstern, music S Taneyev

Of course the The Oresteia is opera, and the concert is more Renaissance than baroque, but you don't really think anyone is being short-changed here, do you? There are even a few popular pieces scattered amongst it all. I'm pretty sure that chamber, baroque and choral will be very represented indeed if the sample is widened to several days.

My pick of that day is the hour and a half of Stockhausen in the evening.

Whilst I do agree with aeolium that the speech (as opposed to chat) content could be higher, it's also true to say that these musical programmes would have contained a good deal more informed explanation of the works being played, is it not?