Essential Classics - The Continuing Debate

[Parsloe-Parsloe]

Whatever Happened to Surprises

That could because we've all switched off from morning listening now that Radio 3 has become so utterly crass at this time.

My question to Roger Wright is: "What is the point in having 2 x Classic FM?"

I still listen to Radio 3 Breakfast and Essential Classics on occasion in the hope that they will have seen the light and stopped the drift into CFM. Sadly I cannot remember the last time I heard something on either that made me really listen, that surprised me. Endless JS Bach introduced in reverential tones, Russian Romantics and Brahms played in beige. So much inoffensive wallpaper music (sorry Bach lovers, I hope soon to found the Anti-Bach League). The reason I began listening to Radio 3 many years back was to hear new things, new composers, the byways of music, not more or less the record collections my parents and their generation had. I entirely agree with the sentiment expressed above - why match Classic FM?

A word in fairness: COTW does now and then meet the surprise remit - the Sigurdsson on their Iceland jaunt was a revelation, and sent me to i-tunes as soon as I got out of the car that day.

[Nick Armstrong]

I still listen to Radio 3 Breakfast and Essential Classics on occasion in the hope that they will have seen the light and stopped the drift into CFM. Sadly I cannot remember the last time I heard something on either that made me really listen, that surprised me. .

Welcome, Sir Gregory. We are honoured to enjoy the company of the only man ever to have been thrown out of the Café de l'Europe for trying to raise the price of a bottle of champagne by raffling his trousers at the bar. May you prosper here.

I would qualify your comment only by saying that once in a while (sometimes, as a result of an interesting 'guest'), Essential Classics does yield an interesting performance which has opened my ears. Douglas Kennedy at the end of Feb was an example (Sibelius 7, Boston/Davis). But not enough.

[cloughie]

Agreed - simply dropping the constant refrains of "please tweet or text", temperatures and newspaper reviews would improve Breakfast enormously. EC would be rendered half listenable if the patronising "what am I" slot were dropped. (The recent series of interviews during the "Music on the Brink" feature was really rather good.) That and a new name - EC sounds like a Classic FM anthology.

I suggest something simple like 'CD MASTERS'

[Sir Velo]

I see that the Essential Classics webpage has K608 down as being a Fantasia for Mechanical Clock (sic).

[Bryn]

I see that the Essential Classics webpage has K608 down as being a Fantasia for Mechanical Clock (sic).

Quite right too. "Ein Orgel Stück für eine Uhr", i.e. an organ piece for a clock.

[french frank]

Quite right too. "Ein Orgel Stück für eine Uhr", i.e. an organ piece for a clock.

Not a 'clockwork organ'? He wrote to his wife in Oct 1790, 'I have now made up my mind to compose at once the Adagio for the clockmaker...' Anderson thought this was K 515, but noted that it was the same instrument as for K608 and K616.

[Bryn]

Not a 'clockwork organ'?

Dangerously close to:

what?

[french frank]

Yes, that's what google suggested I might want when I searched for 'clockwork organ' I told it, No.

Dangerously close to:

what?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart "Fantasy in F-minor for a clockwork organ (Allegro,Andante,(Allegro)), KV608"

[Serial_Apologist]

This is a wind-up!

[Nick Armstrong]

This is a wind-up!

*groan*

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

What links these 3 pieces of music?

The Rite of Spring, Spring Song, Appalachian Spring.

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Groan

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i confess that i have lost it with Mr Cowan .... instant he speaks the radio gets it .... i fear this is incurable before noon

[vinteuil]

i confess that i have lost it with Mr Cowan .... instant he speaks the radio gets it .... i fear this is incurable before noon

... I lost it with him ages back. I don't share his tastes, pertick'ly his clear belief that all the best recordings were made before 1969, and his consequent discomfort with HIPP, - but it's the insufferable sentimental oleaginous need-to-be-loved that makes listening intolerable...

[Sir Velo]

... it's the insufferable sentimental oleaginous need-to-be-loved that makes listening intolerable...

Not only sentimental but increasingly smugly sententious.

[Richard Tarleton]

pertick'ly his clear belief that all the best recordings were made before 1969

...in Prague...