Christmas Day on Radio 3

[Mr Pee]

I've just received my bumper Christmas Radio Times, and have had a quick look at the big day on Radio 3.

From Breakfast until early evening, when the schedule becomes pretty much speech based, I think one could quite easily transport the whole lot, with the possible exception of the Early Music Show, to Classic FM, and and it would sit quite happily there.

7:00:- Breakfast

9:00- Sunday Morning with Rob Cowan

12:00:- Private Passions, with Andrew Lloyd-Webber

1:00:- The Early Music Show

2:00 :- Nine Lessons and Carols from King's.

3:45:- BBC Prom, a family concert inspired by the CBBC series Horrible Histories.

5:30:- The Choir:- Aled Jones introduces Seasonal Choral Favourites. Otherwise known as yet more carols.

Pretty grim, I think you'll agree.

[Anna]

Well, not really Mr. Pee because:

On Christmas Day, who
a) listens to music when there are:-
b) wee beasties overdosing on chocolate and crisps and being sick and refusing sprouts
c) aged aunties who tell you that you need to really, really, boil the sprouts thorougly
d) aged uncles who fart after sprouts and fall asleep
e) there is the Dr. Who Christmas Special which everyone can enjoy

Christmas Day, apart from musial classics like Wizzard, you don't need radio. Just enjoy! Chillax!

[Panjandrum]

Pretty grim, I think you'll agree.

It is ghastly: but perhaps not as bad as that which Anna appears to be facing.

[Serial_Apologist]

It's the usual Xmas Day fare. I think BBC radio should devote at least one day per year to a celebratory day for each of the main faiths. It wouldn't necessarily need to be Radio 3, though if it were to be, say through all-day Other Routes, that might more successfuly attract whole new demographics to the network than Breakfast or Essential Classics - and those regulars with open ears might learn a bit more about non-European music and art forms.

As for me, every year I treat the season as an excuse to dig out all my recorded music with Chistimas connections, and play it through in chronological order, from Mediaeval to Modern. It takes about 3 days to play through in its entirety.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, not really Mr. Pee because:

On Christmas Day,
e) there is the Dr. Who Christmas Special which everyone can enjoy

[french frank]

Pick of that menu:

'Catherine Bott presents an anthology of early music telling the Christmas story through a selection of chants, motets and carols.' That may well be a cut above CFM.


[For the first time in years I shall not be watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special as the younger generation are sloping off to have lunch together and will watch it there]

[Serial_Apologist]

Pick of that menu:

'Catherine Bott presents an anthology of early music telling the Christmas story through a selection of chants, motets and carols.' That may well be a cut above CFM.

I agree.

[For the first time in years I shall not be watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special as the younger generation are sloping off to have lunch together and will watch it there]

[Anna]

[For the first time in years I shall not be watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special as the younger generation are sloping off to have lunch together and will watch it there]

Well, look, even our Divine Leader is watchinig Dr. Who. Christmas without the Cybermen is like, oh, I dunno, Easter without Thumper!!

[Bryn]

You seem to have missed the word "not" Anna.

[french frank]

Well, look, even our Divine Leader is watchinig Dr. Who. Christmas without the Cybermen is like, oh, I dunno, Easter without Thumper!!

I regarded the necessity of having to watch it, with its thises and thats and Katherine Jenkinses and Catherine Tates and David Tennants and Matt Smiths and ooooh, it's been filmed in the deserts of the Middle East this year, to try and understand even a scintilla of the interest in this modern ... phenomenon. I couldn't and now I don't even need to think about it. Nor Harry Potter. Bah, humbug

[Anna]

try and understand even a scintilla of the interest in this modern ... phenomenon. I couldn't and now I don't even need to think about it. Nor Harry Potter. Bah, humbug

Harry Potter is Pants.
Dr. Who exists, in our imagination, therefore he is real.

[french frank]

Anyway, getting back, Christmas Day, 6.30pm-7.45pm:

Words and Music – The Rhyming and the Chiming

Traditionally the festive season brings joyful bells so this Christmas Day edition of Words and Music is dedicated to the theme of bells – with rhyming and chiming from other seasons of life, taking Edgar Allen Poe's onomatopoeic poem as its centrepiece.

There are bells from childhood, marriage and the ordinary round of life as nostalgically remembered in both city and countryside by Betjeman. The sinister side of the sound of bells is brought to life by Dickens in his atmospheric story The Chimes, and in the famous scene from The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers in which Lord Peter Wimsey finds himself in the bell tower as the cacophony carries on about him. And there are alarums from the battlefield and tolling bell of John Donne. But as this is Christmas, Longfellow and Tennyson's ‘Wild Bells’ will see listeners out on a note of celebration and hope for the future.

With music from Rachmaninov, Pete Seeger, Philip Feeney, Grieg and Elizabeth Poston, and many more.

Readers/TBC, Producer/Elizabeth Funning

[barber olly]

I've just received my bumper Christmas Radio Times, and have had a quick look at the big day on Radio 3.

From Breakfast until early evening, when the schedule becomes pretty much speech based, I think one could quite easily transport the whole lot, with the possible exception of the Early Music Show, to Classic FM, and and it would sit quite happily there.

7:00:- Breakfast

9:00- Sunday Morning with Rob Cowan

12:00:- Private Passions, with Andrew Lloyd-Webber

1:00:- The Early Music Show

2:00 :- Nine Lessons and Carols from King's.

3:45:- BBC Prom, a family concert inspired by the CBBC series Horrible Histories.

5:30:- The Choir:- Aled Jones introduces Seasonal Choral Favourites. Otherwise known as yet more carols.

Pretty grim, I think you'll agree.

It will all, I imagine, be pre-recorded. Yes it is CFM2. R3 could have given us oldies a nostalgia trip with 0900 to 1300 being CD Masters with Cowan and Swain! but then that requires someone to think outside the guesta and gimmicks box!

[Mr Pee]

Traditionally the festive season brings joyful bells so this Christmas Day edition of Words and Music is dedicated to the theme of bells – with rhyming and chiming from other seasons of life, taking Edgar Allen Poe's onomatopoeic poem as its centrepiece.

There are bells from childhood, marriage and the ordinary round of life as nostalgically remembered in both city and countryside by Betjeman. The sinister side of the sound of bells is brought to life by Dickens in his atmospheric story The Chimes, and in the famous scene from The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers in which Lord Peter Wimsey finds himself in the bell tower as the cacophony carries on about him. And there are alarums from the battlefield and tolling bell of John Donne. But as this is Christmas, Longfellow and Tennyson's ‘Wild Bells’ will see listeners out on a note of celebration and hope for the future.

With music from Rachmaninov, Pete Seeger, Philip Feeney, Grieg and Elizabeth Poston, and many more.

That sounds as though it could be interesting, and the Early Music Show as I thought might also be worth a listen. But as for the rest- Andrew Lloyd Webber, the CBBC Prom- and Breakfast and Sunday Morning will as usual be Classic FM under the Radio3 banner.

Pretty dissapointing overall.

(PS- I like Doctor Who.....)

[Alison]

Something like a relay of the Christmas matinee concert from the Concertgebouw would
vastly improve matters. When did that perfectly good tradition end I wonder ??