Essential Classics - The Continuing Debate

[vinteuil]

What one would welcome is an explanation as to why there is a preference for playing truncated pieces rather whole works. Like, Why are you doing it? Why is that preferable to playing whole works? Explain in simple language.

... I remember attending the launch party of Classic FM's move into producing CDs. I found myself standing next to the Music Critic of (of all things) The Reader's Digest. In idle conversation I mooted that praps doing an isolated movement - taking the over-used example of the Mahler 5 adagietto - might tempt an otherwise unsure audience into trying the whole thing : I instanced my brother, not a classical music follower, but who I knew did like 'some bits'. He replied with the weary voice of experience - no, what people want after the Adagietto is not the rest of the symphony - they want 'more of the same' Which might mean the Barber, that Albinoni, the b****y Gorecki, &c.

I retired, saddened but unsurprized...


.

[french frank]

... I remember attending the launch party of Classic FM's move into producing CDs. I found myself standing next to the Music Critic of (of all things) The Reader's Digest. In idle conversation I mooted that praps doing an isolated movement - taking the over-used example of the Mahler 5 adagietto - might tempt an otherwise unsure audience into trying the whole thing : I instanced my brother, not a classical music follower, but who I knew did like 'some bits'. He replied with the weary voice of experience - no, what people want after the Adagietto is not the rest of the symphony - they want 'more of the same' Which might mean the Barber, that Albinoni, the b****y Gorecki, &c.

I retired, saddened but unsurprized...


.

Yes. Exactly. Robin Ray said when CFM was set up that today's CFM listeners would be tomorrow's R3 listeners, but that didn't happen - or not in anything like significant numbers. They will flee CFM ads but still want CFM's music - hence my presumptuous claim that that was what RW aimed to give them.

[Serial_Apologist]

... I remember attending the launch party of Classic FM's move into producing CDs. I found myself standing next to the Music Critic of (of all things) The Reader's Digest. In idle conversation I mooted that praps doing an isolated movement - taking the over-used example of the Mahler 5 adagietto - might tempt an otherwise unsure audience into trying the whole thing : I instanced my brother, not a classical music follower, but who I knew did like 'some bits'. He replied with the weary voice of experience - no, what people want after the Adagietto is not the rest of the symphony - they want 'more of the same' Which might mean the Barber, that Albinoni, the b****y Gorecki, &c.

I retired, saddened but unsurprized...


.

The more life is made a matter of survival, with competition between the fittest the means to gaining access to the basic necessities of life, including the psychological prerequisites, the more people will resort to escapism into worlds in which the simplified and immediately seductive can compensate for the complex map of alternatives on which vital decisions are made to depend. For the decision makers the imperative is to maintain a mindset of prepubescent unquestioning over how and for what purposes, i.e. making quick bucks, the time for relaxation and de-stressing is catered. Short-term attention spans shift shed loads of decontextualised product. People get trapped into it, as they are any form of addiction, be it sugar, nicotine, depersonalised sex, etc etc., and the shopping mall, the online purchasing routes to personal fulfilment, the phone-in, supply illusions of empowerment in place of the universal principle of everyone having something to contribute to maintaining harmonious communities and the institutions that can only be protected by collectively defending them. One pays of course the price for understanding all this and adopting a personal stance of opposition, joining one or another of the countercultures looking for alternatives with their own cultural iconographies, but until society as a whole wakes up from its confected dreams and understands all this and what is behind it, it will just go on reproducing itself in the form of fashions, nostalgia, and revisionism.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It makes one wonder what is being curated here?

The word "curated" gives the dastardly practice a sense of respectability. Let's call it what it is: interference.

[zola]

I switched on Essential Classics today for the first time in months since I saw that "Rob's guest" was Vladimir Jurowski. Jurowski spoke for three minutes about Pushkin and then they played Anna Netrebko singing the letter song from Eugene Onegin. I wondered what Jurowski's illuminating comments might be after it finished but no, that was it. Let's hurry along to the next item. Apparently in tomorrow's snippet, Jurowski will talk abouty Gogol. I won't bother listening.

[Serial_Apologist]

The word "curated" gives the dastardly practice a sense of respectability. Let's call it what it is: interference.

I agree, except I would use the term "intermediation". The publicity machine intermediates, or mediates between the art work's original meaning to its creator, and the lack of cultural integrity posited by its substitution, de-contextualised and in broken up form, for an art mirroring its own time. It amounts to a powerful subliminal form of indoctrination.

[Serial_Apologist]

I switched on Essential Classics today for the first time in months since I saw that "Rob's guest" was Vladimir Jurowski. Jurowski spoke for three minutes about Pushkin and then they played Anna Netrebko singing the letter song from Eugene Onegin. I wondered what Jurowski's illuminating comments might be after it finished but no, that was it. Let's hurry along to the next item. Apparently in tomorrow's snippet, Jurowski will talk abouty Gogol. I won't bother listening.

Good, I say, because it means either they failed to hold onto you to add to their listening figures, or that you saw through their desperation to keep your attention.

[Bax-of-Delights]

I switched on Essential Classics today for the first time in months since I saw that "Rob's guest" was Vladimir Jurowski. Jurowski spoke for three minutes about Pushkin and then they played Anna Netrebko singing the letter song from Eugene Onegin. I wondered what Jurowski's illuminating comments might be after it finished but no, that was it. Let's hurry along to the next item. Apparently in tomorrow's snippet, Jurowski will talk abouty Gogol. I won't bother listening.

Unless I’m very much mistaken RC didn’t play the whole of the Letter Song either. I remember it as a very taxing and lengthy aria but was somewhat taken aback at the brevity of today’s offering.

(Just checked on YouTube and the FULL aria is 12+ minutes. The Netrebko offering today was just the final 3 minutes.)

[cmr_for3]

I have the Roberts 93i (bedside) and the Hama DIT2010 (attached to hifi). They work on the same basic interface and I am very pleased with both of them. I bought the Hama over a year ago and since having it I have used it as my main source for radio (internet or DAB). It links via network to files on the laptop, but I also have a 64 GB usb flash drive permanently plugged in which contains all my mp3s and flacs. It can be operated from remote control or smartphone app.

I never cease to be bowled over by this new technology.

Forgive the hijacking of this thread, but I have bought the above ( I also own the Roberts93i) Do you know if 64gb is the maximum size flash drive it can take?

[LMcD]

When inviting suggestions just now for a 'follow on' piece to Weber's 'Introduction to the Dance', Rob said 'there are no wrong answers'. Let's hope this encourages Suzy Klein to come up with something really witty and brilliant.....

[Cockney Sparrow]

When inviting suggestions just now for a 'follow on' piece to Weber's 'Introduction to the Dance', Rob said 'there are no wrong answers'. Let's hope this encourages Suzy Klein to come up with something really witty and brilliant.....

Hi Suzy - if you are looking here, how about the Dave Clark Five "Bits and Pieces" - when you look on Wickipedia, you'll see its antiphonal - but if that's too elitist you don't have to mention it.

(Believe me, I am no pop music fan but this stuff was the aural wallpaper of my youth. I also see they had a release "Any Way You Want It" - one to edify the "BBC Music" meetings when reviewing progress on the outreach and "audience building" on the morning radio station formerly known as Radio Three).

[Richard Tarleton]

When inviting suggestions just now for a 'follow on' piece to Weber's 'Introduction to the Dance', Rob said 'there are no wrong answers'. Let's hope this encourages Suzy Klein to come up with something really witty and brilliant.....

Let's hope.... (I haven't been listening)

[Bryn]

Let's hope.... (I haven't been listening)

Dedicated to you know who.

[Stanfordian]

When inviting suggestions just now for a 'follow on' piece to Weber's 'Introduction to the Dance', Rob said 'there are no wrong answers'. Let's hope this encourages Suzy Klein to come up with something really witty and brilliant.....

Reminds me of sports day at primary schools where nobody loses.

[Bryn]