Essential Classics - The Continuing Debate

[Richard Tarleton]

Never mind.

[french frank]

I was packing - had it on in the background. Just about to leave on holiday. Hardly paying attention. That's my story and I'm sticking to it . Just back Clue - where could your hotel balcony bird list include red kite, Egyptian vulture, booted eagle, Alpine and pallid swift, blue rock thrush, Scops owl....

Spain? (I won't add 'killing several birds with one stone').

[Richard Tarleton]

Spain? (I won't add 'killing several birds with one stone').

Menorca - that particular combination of large raptors in summer (but not all the others you get in Spain, or Mallorca) unique to Menorca, pallid swift generally coastal....A room at the front of the hotel might have netted Cory's and Balearic shearwater, instead of which we overlooked pine woods

[Bryn]

... Clue - where could your hotel balcony bird list include red kite, Egyptian vulture, booted eagle, Alpine and pallid swift, blue rock thrush, Scops owl....

We know a song about that, don't we?

It's them Spanish ruddy kites as what is proliferatin' roun' 'ere.

[french frank]

Menorca - that particular combination of large raptors in summer (but not all the others you get in Spain, or Mallorca) unique to Menorca, pallid swift generally coastal....A room at the front of the hotel might have netted Cory's and Balearic shearwater, instead of which we overlooked pine woods

Packing for which definitely an excuse for listening to Essential Classics - a programme surely on the wrong station

[Richard Tarleton]

Packing for which definitely an excuse for listening to Essential Classics - a programme surely on the wrong station

Well, yes, point taken - I will plead in the defence that there were medical and other reasons which I won't go into for this particular choice of destination. The clues for my last two trips would have included lammergeier, wallcreeper and snow finch

[salymap]

Essential Classics CD this week, Last Night of the Proms. Essential Choice today Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Suite -BBCSO-Sargent.

Honestly, with all that choice, there are dozens of things that could make more impact.

[Nick Armstrong]

Rather a good advert for the Law this week in the shape of Sir Nicholas Bratza as guest...

Classy customer

[teamsaint]

somebody let Rob off the leash one day this week. I guess the bosses are all still in Tuscany .

Feldman and some other good stuff. Can't remember what though !!

Perhaps there is hope.

[Barbirollians]

Rather a good advert for the Law this week in the shape of Sir Nicholas Bratza as guest...

Classy customer

I hope nobody told Theresa May - she would have been outside with an icepick.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

somebody let Rob off the leash one day this week. I guess the bosses are all still in Tuscany .

Feldman and some other good stuff. Can't remember what though!!

Perhaps there is hope.

The Feldman was an excerpt from the (70+ minute) work Piano & String Quartet in the recording by the Kronos Quartet and Aki Takahashi:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Morton-Feldman-Piano-String-Quartet/dp/B001F3KZ24/ref=sr_1_cc_2?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1378061033&sr=1-2-catcorr&keywords=feldman%2C+kronos+quartet

It was played at the suggestion of Django Bates who was performing at the Proms that night. This led to one of Rob's worst segues "and from one Django to another; Reinhart - and here he is playing ... "

[Domeyhead]

I had the misfortune last week to inadvertently tune in to the pointless and inappropriate tribute/homage/retrospective/whateveritwas to "film music" on Essential Classics, thus proving that even the programme name itself is an oxymoron. What were they thinking when they played Arnold's execrable St Trinians music for Gods sake? It was the bottom of an extremely wide and shallow barrel anyway, but to whom exactly was this sub Billy Bunter swannee whistle and silly effects fest directed? Film music without the film is not the same as ballet music without the dance, but somebody at Radio 3 is so paranoid at the thought of being accused of being "highbrow" or (heaven forbid) "elitist" that they come up with this concept as way of getting us all to "lighten up" or even "smell the coffee". Radio 3 is now staffed with people who are so afraid of liking serious music they have turned it into a kind of Blue Peter fun club where we can all nod, wink, grin and hug each other constantly with our delight, or to put it another way, "tweet".
The concept was wrong, the selection puerile and the execution embarrassing, but so long as there was a single tweet flooding in from someone in support of this tripe I'm sure everyone on the programme was happy.

[Nick G]

Yesterday RC played the theme music from a Joanna Lumley hosted documentary on the river Nile. I fail to see how suxh music is either film music, or essential, or a classic. I switched it off after that, but I've more or less given up with R3, having come to it at the ripe old age of 21 in the mid-1980s, and finding myself attracted to its low key (compared with R1) presentation and lack of chit chat. Oh, how times have changed. The TV presentation of Glastonbury seems more highbrow than R3 sometimes.

[french frank]

Yesterday RC played the theme music from a Joanna Lumley hosted documentary on the river Nile. I fail to see how suxh music is either film music, or essential, or a classic. I switched it off after that, but I've more or less given up with R3, having come to it at the ripe old age of 21 in the mid-1980s, and finding myself attracted to its low key (compared with R1) presentation and lack of chit chat. Oh, how times have changed. The TV presentation of Glastonbury seems more highbrow than R3 sometimes.

Hello, Nick G - and welcome!

Spare a thought for the unhappy presenters and producers - with three weeks to fill they're bound to scrape the bottom of the barrel at some point.

There is something very weird about all this - if you want to "celebrate" film music, BBC Four's three programmes, each an hour long, seem a handsome way of doing it. But three solid weeks, infecting virtually every programme - the Controller must have been given an ultimatum by the Queen that if he didn't make Radio 3 a mass market service he'd be executed. Desperation.

[Anna]

. But three solid weeks, infecting virtually every programme - the Controller must have been given an ultimatum by the Queen that if he didn't make Radio 3 a mass market service he'd be executed. Desperation.

But. If the object of the film music theme is to attract new listeners, what happens to those new listeners once Radio 3 switches back at the end of the month to a strictly classical mode?

Surely they won't stick around and those of us who have given up may not drift back ... The whole concept seems very flawed (imho) and I don't see what R3 actually gains.