Essential Classics - The Continuing Debate

[Ein Heldenleben]

When, at any time of day, would you find a succession of complete pieces like that nowadays? It's all movement at a time, ClassicFM style

On Through The Night , the Monday Lunchtime Concert , In Concert and that’s about it. R3 certainly haven’t gone down the snippet route to save money. It takes a lot more effort to put three hours with thirty plus pieces together than half a dozen half hour works like symphonies . So they must be convinced that’s what the majority want.

The “problem” with Essential Classics is that some of the music is nether essential nor classic and by taking single movements out of multi movement works you lose some of the meaning and quite a lot of the total musical effect. However I don’t want to disparage those who do like this form of music listening - sometimes I do . There are probably a lot of them and I suspect they either don’t join this forum or if they have keep their opinions to themselves.

[french frank]

R3 certainly haven’t gone down the snippet route to save money. It takes a lot more effort to put three hours with thirty plus pieces together than half a dozen half hour works like symphonies.

My understanding is that the cheapest from of music broadcasting is presenter-led CD sequences. How much can now be automated in choosing tracks and background info where needed?

So they must be convinced that’s what the majority want.

Yes, but ... they are actively pursuing a younger, more casual, less informed audience - and adjusting what they serve up to suit that audience. This is managerialism:

1) We want more listeners
2) We decide what will appeal to them
3) We give them what they'll want

However I don’t want to disparage those who do like this form of music listening - sometimes I do . There are probably a lot of them and I suspect they either don’t join this forum or if they have keep their opinions to themselves.

It isn't a question of disparaging the people who like it. It's a question of disparaging what R3 is serving up now, most of the time. If people who do prefer this kind of music listening take it as personally insulting, that's up to them. Love me, love my dog - smelly and unloveable though he be.

[smittims]

I do wish some of the many readers of this forum , who post rarely, if at all, would join in more and give us their veiws. I hope we regulars don't appear too forbidding. I usually catch the last half-hour of 'Classical Live; and though it's riddled with adverts and inanities there are often pieces I enjoy, by composers I've never heard of in sixty years of listening, even if I don't want to hear them again, for instance, Shirley Thompson's Semplice Sempre and Julia Perry's Short Piece for Orchestra, both in last Thursday's programme. .

[vinteuil]

So they must be convinced that’s what the majority want.

... ah, 'majority'. Once you introduce that as a criterion the battle, nay the war - is lost

.

[Howdenite]

I do wish some of the many readers of this forum , who post rarely, if at all, would join in more and give us their veiws.

I'm one of those readers. I started listening to Radio 3 when I arrived in UK in 2000. I learned so much about classical music from listening! I sometimes stayed home specifically to listen. Most Saturdays I was tied to the radio and I remember staying home for several weeks on Sunday afternoons to follow a particularly interesting programme on Britten's operas. Now I listen from 2-4 on Saturday on the occasions I listen live. I do still try to keep up with Record Review. Otherwise, I listen to occasional concerts that are flagged up here. During the week, I only listen if driving, and often get so irritated by the chat and mess of little bits that I turn the radio off. I find it terribly sad that Radio 3 is so chat heavy when it used to be excellent and offer so much to learn from.

[cloughie]

On Through The Night , the Monday Lunchtime Concert , In Concert and that’s about it. R3 certainly haven’t gone down the snippet route to save money. It takes a lot more effort to put three hours with thirty plus pieces together than half a dozen half hour works like symphonies . So they must be convinced that’s what the majority want.

The “problem” with Essential Classics is that some of the music is nether essential nor classic and by taking single movements out of multi movement works you lose some of the meaning and quite a lot of the total musical effect. However I don’t want to disparage those who do like this form of music listening - sometimes I do . There are probably a lot of them and I suspect they either don’t join this forum or if they have keep their opinions to themselves.

…and taking your nom de plume - when did you last hear the wonderful R Strauss work in full on R3?

[hmvman]

I guess I'm another who doesn't post very much on the forum. I look at it every day and enjoy some of the discussions and have learned things from them. I would put myself in a similar situation to Howdenite. I've been a listener to R3 since the 1970s when I became hooked on classical music as a teenager but in recent years my listening has reduced greatly as there's less and less of interest on offer. Like Howdenite I only listen to EC in the car or very occasionally when the radio at home gets left on R3 after 'Breakfast' and I soon get irritated by the chat and the short, bitty music selections and so soon turn off or over to another station; if I'm at home and near to the internet radio I tend to listen to YLE Klassinen in the mornings.

Most of my R3 listening now is via Sounds to catch up with Record Review, Composer of the Week, Jazz Record Requests and Through the Night. Breakfast is pretty much the only programme I listen to live as part of my getting up and breakfast routine.

I was thinking back to when R3 had specialist programmes such as brass band music, organ music, choral music etc. Not every programme was to everyone's taste but that was accepted as being part of a specialist radio station. Nowadays, with everything being market-led or listener number-led, the specialist programmes are deemed unacceptable because some people will switch off. R3 is trying to be all things to all listeners all of the time and the result, it seems to me, is the inevitable bland sameness of the programming. I used to love the little, odd pieces of music that were played as fillers when live concerts finished early. There's no place for that kind of thing in the homogenised R3 of today.

[oddoneout]

Yes, but ... they are actively pursuing a younger, more casual, less informed audience - and adjusting what they serve up to suit that audience. This is managerialism:

1) We want more listeners
2) We decide what will appeal to them
3) We give them what they'll want

Number 3 is "giving them what we think they'll want" or( in my view more accurately), and following on from Number 2 - what we decide they'll want.
Which leads to the perennial question of if this non-stop chat'n'bits'npieces is what is perceived* to be what the new(as yet to be acquired) audience wants, where does that leave the existing audience, which doesn't want it?

I remain unconvinced as to the evidence(quality or even existence) for the assumption, hence "perceived".

[AuntDaisy]

…and taking your nom de plume - when did you last hear the wonderful R Strauss work in full on R3?

Point well made.

But, courtesy of Andrew's wizardy, I think "Ein Heldenleben" was a November Afternoon Concert or TTN a few weeks ago.

[oddoneout]

I guess I'm another who doesn't post very much on the forum. I look at it every day and enjoy some of the discussions and have learned things from them. I would put myself in a similar situation to Howdenite. I've been a listener to R3 since the 1970s when I became hooked on classical music as a teenager but in recent years my listening has reduced greatly as there's less and less of interest on offer. Like Howdenite I only listen to EC in the car or very occasionally when the radio at home gets left on R3 after 'Breakfast' and I soon get irritated by the chat and the short, bitty music selections and so soon turn off or over to another station; if I'm at home and near to the internet radio I tend to listen to YLE Klassinen in the mornings.

Most of my R3 listening now is via Sounds to catch up with Record Review, Composer of the Week, Jazz Record Requests and Through the Night. Breakfast is pretty much the only programme I listen to live as part of my getting up and breakfast routine.

I was thinking back to when R3 had specialist programmes such as brass band music, organ music, choral music etc. Not every programme was to everyone's taste but that was accepted as being part of a specialist radio station. Nowadays, with everything being market-led or listener number-led, the specialist programmes are deemed unacceptable because some people will switch off. R3 is trying to be all things to all listeners all of the time and the result, it seems to me, is the inevitable bland sameness of the programming. I used to love the little, odd pieces of music that were played as fillers when live concerts finished early. There's no place for that kind of thing in the homogenised R3 of today.

Yes and yes. I liked the "specialist/special focus" programmes as it was a chance to hear, easily, repertoire that otherwise might not cross my path, and in the process widen my knowledge of both the music and features of its performance.
The programming is now the equivalent of junk food - unsatisfying and not beneficial.

[LMcD]

I do wish some of the many readers of this forum , who post rarely, if at all, would join in more and give us their veiws. I hope we regulars don't appear too forbidding. I usually catch the last half-hour of 'Classical Live; and though it's riddled with adverts and inanities there are often pieces I enjoy, by composers I've never heard of in sixty years of listening, even if I don't want to hear them again, for instance, Shirley Thompson's Semplice Sempre and Julia Perry's Short Piece for Orchestra, both in last Thursday's programme. .

God forbid that I should appear to be forbidding!

[Ein Heldenleben]

Point well made.

But, courtesy of Andrew's wizardy, I think "Ein Heldenleben" was a November Afternoon Concert or TTN a few weeks ago.

Yes I heard the TTN performance when I couldn’t take the bits and pieces on Saturday morning any more !

Some Excellent recent posts on this thread by the way . Looks like the “ silent majority” are either staying silent or not a majority.

[LMcD]

Yes and yes. I liked the "specialist/special focus" programmes as it was a chance to hear, easily, repertoire that otherwise might not cross my path, and in the process widen my knowledge of both the music and features of its performance.
The programming is now the equivalent of junk food - unsatisfying and not beneficial.

I enjoyed (and still enjoy on audio cassette) a series called 'Cocktails' that featured British dance bands, and also a series dedicated to English madrigals.

[smittims]

Glad to hear from some new voices here.

My 'ideal' Radio 3 would reintroduce those specalist programmes such as 'Music for Guitar' and the organ recital, from which I learnt a lot. I'd expand it to other instruments such as the oboe or bassoon, examing the history and repertoire of the instrument . This is the sort of thing Radio 3 could do very well, and wouldn't be done anywhere else. Sadly, though,this is all too 'elitist' for Sam's Brave New World.

[rauschwerk]

It's not just the programme-free format that bothers me. Where is the music of the great composers I loved in my teens and early twenties (and still do)? Where is the music of Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Britten, Bartok and their contemporaries? (Hindemith, Roberto Gerhard? dream on!) A perusal of the LPO 2024/25 season raises exactly the same question. I'm reminded that Aaron Copland once said, "So many concertgoers want to be lulled. But we composers want to stir people up."

And if they play Grieg's 'March of the Trolls' once again, I swear I shall scream as I turn the radio off!