Essential Classics - The Continuing Debate

[pastoralguy]

Or listen to Haydn.

Indeed!

I've 'discovered' the 'Razor' 4tet recently and have been playing it a lot. (Although, curiously, only in the motor car. I must bring it in To the house and listen properly).

[mercia]

the guest spot in Essential Classics has moved back 30 minutes but the programme is still rigidly divided into 4 x half-hour + 1 x hour sections. I suppose this is so the quiz people know exactly when to tune in.

..... and also, on Mondays, so we know when the BaL choice will be played

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Today's quiz question was so incredibly easy that it was no wonder (they claimed) to have had so many texts, tweets and e-mails with the correct answer. We might just as well have told the answer before asking the question. Then can the inevitable gushing about the Sydney Opera House's great qualities. (I had the impression that inside the building, it was rather disappointing.

To cap it all, we had a REALLY ENTERPRISING musical clip from the resident Sydney orchestra playing Elgar's P & C no. 1. I like Elgar, but...

[french frank]

the guest spot in Essential Classics has moved back 30 minutes but the programme is still rigidly divided into 4 x half-hour + 1 x hour sections. I suppose this is so the quiz people know exactly when to tune in.

And there isn't even a prize, is there? The key concern, though, is that the schedule should be easily navigable. [Especially for the elderly R3 listeners who need to be 'trained how to press the buttons' on a digital radio, as our Representative of the People explains.]

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

R3 is quite impressively good at taking the joy out of life these mornings ..... as are the Representatives of the People at any time of day or night ...

[Nick Armstrong]

How useless are the website listings too! Before switching off today, there was some lazily-chosen little Tchaikovsky piece - but played in a really slapdash manner so I was curious to see who'd been playing.

On the website you see this:

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Miniature Overture (Nutcracker Suite Op.71a)
PHILIPS

Duhhhh....

Better to have a conductor name than a record label, if they can only run to a single word..

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

What use is a website listing anyway, when it is presented only after the programme has been aired, unless or course, it's all part of a ploy to make Radio 3 an online only station?

I was reminded of this today, when a Lloyd's Bank representative on BBC News was "explaining" the reason for the number of bank closures and redundancies was due to customer preferences, with people using machines in branches and banking online, quite forgetting to mention that these "preferences", however useful (and sometimes not) were brought about by a sustained advertising campaign by the bank itself.

[Nick Armstrong]

Haven't heard La Derham at her foreign language exercise lately (I always think of her when catching R3 announcers making Horlicks with Speaka da Foreigna) ....but it's painful hearing poor old Rob Cowan trying to utter "Magnificat Primi Toni, by Stile Antico"... sounds like a waiter from Sarf Lunnun who's just got a job at a posh Italian restaurant and is still having problems telling customers what's on the menu

PS: "Let's get back to the Morning... and the lovely portrait of the morning painted by Grieg..." Lazy programming, or what?!

[Don Petter]

sounds like a waiter from Sarf Lunnun who's just got a job at a posh Italian restaurant and is still having problems telling customers what's on the menu

He could get round that by emulating Jimmy Edwards as the waiter in an Italian restaurant sketch: 'If you can't-a-smell-it we ain't-a-got-it!'

[Nick Armstrong]

He could get round that by emulating Jimmy Edwards as the waiter in an Italian restaurant sketch: 'If you can't-a-smell-it we ain't-a-got-it!'

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...did anyone hear the thanks form RC for the many listener's supporting Rob after he read out a caustic commentary from an annoyed listener on saccharine violin pieces that replaced serious music - it's nice to be nice innit ... the besetting sin of the british middle classes ... at least to each other but not to furreners eh ... or rude and angry iconoclastic commentators ...

there is no hope sisters and brothers .... the truth and the revolution will die the death of a thousand drips from the monster lemon drizzle cake

[Lento]

This morning's "back to front" challenge (9.30am Fri 7th Nov) not difficult, but very funny to hear. Got rid of any early morning blues!

[Nick Armstrong]

This morning's "back to front" challenge (9.30am Fri 7th Nov) not difficult, but very funny to hear. Got rid of any early morning blues!

Really? Made me cross! So easy as to be a patronising waste of time, was my grumpy thought as I switched off.

[Richard Tarleton]

Yesterday's - about Liszt and Nicholas l - wasn't a "brain-teaser" - it was a historical fact, which you either knew or you didn't. What was the point of asking it? Why guess if you didn't know the answer?

I wouldn't normally have been listening, only we're having work done on the house and it was on in the background to rule out any possibility of Radio 1.....

[Nick Armstrong]

Oh dear, Bungle & Co. were in residence this morning - a complete Prokofiev 5 was reduced to the last movement only ("it must be the new system"). Instead, Mr Cowan played two of the most tedious pieces in the repertoire (imho), Rimsky's 'Russian Easter Claptrap' and Franck's 'Symphonic Aberrations' - irritating, as I had a journey which would have coincided nicely with a chance to hear Maazel and the Clevelanders in Prokofiev 5....