Essential Classics - The Continuing Debate

[DracoM]

Good thinking, FF.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Given the genuinely adult-adult presentation skills of Attenborough, Al Khalili, Beard, Wood, Graham-Dixon, Pappano, Bartlett, Don (and many others) the nearest equivalent to the SK presentation style is closer to Kirstie Allsop at best.

I couldn't agree more.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

One plan of action might be guerrilla attacks on R3's Facebook page, seizing every opportunity (they are limited) to complain. Right at the beginning, Breakfast was one of the key programmes that they were regularly flagging up until the complaints became deafening and they diplomatically stopped mentioning it at all. There is probably more impact in posting there than here. If enough people were doing it, they would find it harder to ban everyone.

I couldn't possibly comment.

I think the nincompoop who runs the FB page has blocked me.

[french frank]

I couldn't possibly comment.

I think the nincompoop who runs the FB page has blocked me.

What have you been up to, Alpie?

[ahinton]

Kirstie Allsopp at best.

Isn't that some kind of contradiction in terms?

[oddoneout]

I can't find the Breakfast section(has it got merged with EC by default?) so this grumble will have to go here. As some of you will be aware I have a higher tolerance of the failings and irritations of the morning offerings than others who post on here, but even I ended up shouting at the radio this morning.
As Hull's city of culture tenancy finishes shortly there was mention that it would no longer feature on the weather forecast. Fair enough, but then what happens - open up a debate as to whether it should continue to feature. Cue lots of time wasting tweemail readings about that and other towns' claims to be featured.
What has any of this got to do with R3? It's the sort of exchange that belongs on local radio. I've never really seen the point of the four 'capital' weather readouts anyway, as 4 spotchecks can't give anything approaching a usable take on the weather in any given area,and this farce highlighted just how redundant they are.
Added irritation came from a bad outbreak of Petroc's habit of arbitrarily breaking up a sentence at points completely unrelated to the sense of the text, so that we had '....tenor Simon Lepper playing the piano.' as the singer's name had got attached to the previous bit of the sentence. Read the words before you say them for heaven's sake man - it's what you are paid for.
Apologies for grumpiness, but even I have my limits.

[BBMmk2]

Hosts, this is a good point, re Breakfast?

[Dudelsack]

I've been thinking about this since I read it, Richard - along with Dude's (otherwise excellent post) "SK is fluent and impressive on television" - and I just don't buy it: in what sense is the gurning to camera, the sub-Worsleyan dressing up, the frequent factual errors and misleading assertions "adult"? Given the genuinely adult-adult presentation skills of Attenborough, Al Khalili, Beard, Wood, Graham-Dixon, Pappano, Bartlett, Don (and many others) the nearest equivalent to the SK presentation style is closer to Kirstie Allsopp at best.

It's no bad thing for one's judgement to be challenged, and as it gave Richard T pause for reflection so it has to me. The Latin aphorism 'de gustibus non est disputandum', that there is no point in questioning taste, should be enough to let me off the hook, but those of us who contribute to debates, and make value judgements, about high culture can hardly play that card. What is for certain is that we all bring our own unique perspectives and experiences to bear in judging what we think praiseworthy or not; and opinions are just that, not statements of absolute and provable veracity however strongly held.

RT admits that he might have overstated the virtues of SK on television, and my guess is that he did so not least because of a feeling that an excess of Kleinbashing is less than life enhancing. I too may have been guilty of overstatement, but I can't really recant any more than that. In my life as a television director, as well as much drama I made a number of arts documentaries, albeit at a time when the genre was both more common on the schedules and also had less requirement to be of excessively popular appeal. Oh happy days. But even then I think that SK would have been sought after as a presenter, because most television is about storytelling, factual every bit as much as fictional; and for this practitioner/viewer at least SK is a professional who can perform to the camera, one whom the camera likes, and one who can tell a story.

Unlike the radio microphone, the camera regularly changes its angle and the size of its view, and the skilled presenter understands and is able to adjust facial and bodily gestures to suit the intimacy or distance of the shot. What appears to F to be gurning might well appear to another viewer as a simple animation to underpin expression, an animation which informs and enhances the energy of the performance. And without energy there can be little audience engagement. Yes, I think that SK's ego is well developed, and that she has a range of performative tricks which you either like, tolerate or dislike: the same applies to most successful presenters and to most successful actors. It's showbiz in the end, less truthful I don't doubt, and much less intimate, than radio where the voice alone is the carrier of the message. SK, while different from the arts practitioners and critics with whom I worked and perhaps less diligent in checking her sources, is a person who animates her subjects on screen in a manner which is a fit with the medium and, like it or not, the zeitgeist of the medium.

You are, of course, entitled to say that this represents the triumph of style over content and that radio requires a greater engagement on the part of the listener as well as a greater engagement on the part of the presenter who has to focus her/his words on a single imagined listener. The actor has another actor off whom to play a line, can sense when to pause, can judge when to alter the pace and intensity of the words. The radio presenter has to create the person whom s/he is addressing and imagine her or his reactions. Which medium is more worthwhile? That’s up to each individual. I am glad to have both, but even although my time as a broadcaster was about matching or counterpointing images to words I am reminded of the apocryphal word of the child who said that radio was best because the pictures were nicer on radio. And to return to the subject, ’de gustibus': there really is no point in comparing SK with other presenters. Their subjects and expertise are different so it's not much more useful than trying to compare apples with pears even if it makes for a good put down.

This is probably too lengthy an excursus from the business of discussing a radio programme, but given the criticism which SK generates I thought it worthwhile to put a programme maker’s slant on the difference between a successful screen career and one in front of a microphone. It is possible to combine both, but, as is the case here, success in one is no guarantee of success in another. It's a pity that R3 executives do not seem to realise that, nor do they realise that the story of EC should be the music and that the storyteller should not become the story.

[french frank]

I can't find the Breakfast section(has it got merged with EC by default?)

They aren't separate sections, just separate threads on Playlist Programmes:

The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place.

[french frank]

Another very thoughtful (professional) reply from Dudelsack. It clarified my own feelings in quite a different direction from the topic in question - i.e. why I'm just not keen on television at all, as a medium.

[teamsaint]

The problem for me is that , in a situation where we are paying the wages of the presenter, and allowing them their very favoured status and lifestyle, I really can live without having their very fortunate situation, ( and it IS fortune, there is plenty of talent out there that never gets its chance) rammed down my throat. Displays of ego, vanity, prejudice should have no place either on air, or elsewhere in the media to which BBC presenters have access.

You'd have thought that the BBC might have learned about the dangers of a powerful star system by now, but since the twin pillars of overpaid management and over rated stars ( supported by a very large public revenue stream) still seem to hold the whole edifice up, this apparently isn't the case.

[DracoM]

Maybe this is part of the old 'no such thing as bad publicity' thing i.e. if we are whingeing about presenter X, then presenter X is making an impact and thus attracting attention to the prog / station etc?

Pretty grim, I agree, but...........?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Another very thoughtful (professional) reply from Dudelsack.

- and, apologies in advance for further Off Topic comments here. But ...

What is for certain is that we all bring our own unique perspectives and experiences to bear in judging what we think praiseworthy or not; and opinions are just that, not statements of absolute and provable veracity however strongly held.

Indeed - however, the real point that is being made is whether or not a programme presents factual information accurately and fully. If a television Science presenter describes Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle" as a way of connecting Quantum Physics with why you can't find your keys, or a TV Music presenter says that Debussy's Prelude a l'Apres-Midi d'un Faun as describing a day in the life of a young deer, or a TV history presenter comments that the Domesday Book was so-called because William I mentioned that it would take "until Doomsday" to complete - then it's no longer a case of "opinion" ("strongly held" or otherwise) but precisely of "absolute and provable veracity". Only one of those comments was actually made - guess which and by whom.

most television is about storytelling, factual every bit as much as fictional; and for this practitioner/viewer at least SK is a professional who can perform to the camera, one whom the camera likes, and one who can tell a story.

Unlike the radio microphone, the camera regularly changes its angle and the size of its view, and the skilled presenter understands and is able to adjust facial and bodily gestures to suit the intimacy or distance of the shot. What appears to F to be gurning might well appear to another viewer as a simple animation to underpin expression, an animation which informs and enhances the energy of the performance. And without energy there can be little audience engagement. Yes, I think that SK's ego is well developed, and that she has a range of performative tricks which you either like, tolerate or dislike: the same applies to most successful presenters and to most successful actors. It's showbiz in the end, less truthful I don't doubt, and much less intimate, than radio where the voice alone is the carrier of the message. SK, while different from the arts practitioners and critics with whom I worked and perhaps less diligent in checking her sources, is a person who animates her subjects on screen in a manner which is a fit with the medium and, like it or not, the zeitgeist of the medium.

But this suggests that David Attenborough, Michael Wood, Jim Al-Khalili, Helen Caistor, Andrew Graham-Dixon, Mary Beard, Helen Czersky, Robert Bartlett, Monty Don, Antonio Pappano, Alice Roberts, Robert Winston and many others aren't "in tune" with the zeitgeist, and don't "animate[ their] subjects on screen in a manner which is a fit with the medium", which is immediately palpable nonsense. Why is "Classical" Music regarded as "fair game" for inaccurate and misleading statements - is it because BBC TV doesn't think that the subject isn't important enough to need presenters of that level of competence and authority?

there really is no point in comparing SK with other presenters. Their subjects and expertise are different so it's not much more useful than trying to compare apples with pears even if it makes for a good put down.

I disagree - thank you for the positive assessment of my "put down", but that is not the point. The point is that I believe that the repertoires of the Western Classical traditions merit serious treatment, with the same attention paid to accuracy of fact and respectful presentation of difficult ideas and concepts that is demonstrated in other documentary programmes. To suggest that a programme on apples needs to be discussed with less attention to accurate detail than one on pears is one that seems to me to be demonstrably unsustainable. Indeed, whilst taking advantage of your kind permission to describe this as "the triumph of style over content", I would - in all seriousness - wonder how else it could possibly be described. There is more here than what you describe as "Klein bashing" (a comment that an unsympathetic reader might regard as an attempt to trivialise an important issue) - it is, for me at least, the core question of how important the Arts - and the Musics of the Western Classical Traditions in particular - are to people, and how important it is that complex ideas are communicated to the wider public. The comment that SK is "perhaps less diligent in checking her sources" and the suggestion that somehow this is of lesser importance than having "a range of performative tricks" is far more damning of her - and of the BBC - than anything I could have imagined.

It's a pity that R3 executives do not seem to realise that, nor do they realise that the story of EC should be the music and that the storyteller should not become the story.

[Dudelsack]

:The point is that I believe that the repertoires of the Western Classical traditions merit serious treatment, with the same attention paid to accuracy of fact and respectful presentation of difficult ideas and concepts that is demonstrated in other documentary programmes.

I do think that you make a very important point here, and for you it is the starting point of any discussion about a R3 programme and its presenter. I'd be happy to continue a dialogue with you but I realise that we come at things from very different positions: you as a listener who is deeply concerned about a lack of rigour in certain current broadcast offerings, a listener who has every right to be angry that the licence fee is being squandered and who wishes to be vocal in the view that the barbarians are not just at the gate but well and truly through it; I from the position of someone who has (had to) come to terms with the compromises of making programmes for broadcast, compromises inevitable in reconciling the range and aspirations of a group of creative people with varying amounts of talent and knowledge with the need to justify programme spend by amassing a reasonably large audience. These are the realities of programme making today, realities which did not exist when the Third Programme first took to the air and the BBC had a monopoly of air time in the UK. I am not suggesting that things are good, nor that we should be silent in our concerns, simply that the realpolitik of broadcasting appears to require the cutting of corners which many would have hoped were sacrosanct.

I think that while you and I might happily continue to find common ground while disputing other areas in a continuing dialogue, that would best be done 'off air' as it were. If what we have both written is able to contribute something to the thinking of other contributors to this thread then that should be enough for now.

I hope that you will agree.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Again, apologies for the off-topic reply, but in my #2712 and #2728, I was referring specifically to (and replying to comments previously made by others including yourself) SK's television presentation, rather than Essential Classics. I would also add that my appreciation of all the presenters I mentioned in those two posts (including the "and many others") is very high, and that I have no wish "to be vocal in the view that the barbarians are at the gate and well and truly through it", leaving aside any attempts to trivialise - again - contradictory comments with such clichéd caricatures.

My position is rather that of someone who demands of Music Documentary programmes made by the BBC the same standards of factual accuracy and expertise that is demonstrated in and expected of documentaries about History, the Sciences, Visual Arts and even Sports commentary - programmes which also face the same "compromises" and confront the same "realpolitik" that you mention, but which do so with far greater integrity and respect for the intelligence of the audience - and with far less glee at "the cutting of corners".