The way forward for Radio 3 and Sunday Mornings?

[doversoul1]

Well Laura, we’ve been pouring our hearts out for the last seven days. Has it been useful to you?

Remembering your post:

a production Company who are thinking about a putting together a proposal for a new improved Sunday Morning show, so all help would not only be greatly appreciated by me but may also help shape the future of the program!

Is there any chance of our hearing your comment on our comments? Have you any idea how your research might help to shape the future of the programme?

I don’t suppose you could tell us something about this production company’s view on the current programme?

[Barbirollians]

I do think that Radio 3 listeners should appreciate that it must be in the remit of Radio 3 to widen the audience for serious classical music as much as it can and to attract new listeners and we cannot simply say well we would like complete works with no interruptions and announcers simply announcing them all the time .

As someone coming new to classical music in the mid 1980s the evening or afternoon concerts were what attracted me and then Record Review and then really informative programmes like Interpretations on Record .

Whenever I listened to Radio 3 in the day however outside those times much of the programming was dreary and inaccessible and a turn off for novice . Hence , my view is that innovations to attract new audiences should be welcomed but only if as was once said in another context they do not presume knowledge or insult the intelligence of listeners. It is the latter factor that i find so offensive about Breakfast and Essential Classics . Innovations like Your Call would be of interest if they had contributors with anything of interest to say - the reminiscences of someone who would like to hear a work by Tippett because she sang in the choir at the first performance is likely to be of interest - wanting to hear Rachmaninov because someone's husband proposed to her whilst they were playing a record of it is not !

I might be interested in the musical choices or influences of musicians in a slot like on Essential Classics but not in those of any old random celeb . As for Mystery Voices , silly quizzes and playing only movements - they really do insult the intelligence .

As for a sunday morning programme I should like something like music magazine described above and then say an hour slot at the end for an hour of music perhaps by an individual artist , or a lot say on a genre playing a complete work like " American symphonies since 1945 " or " forgotten favourites " showcasing works that were once immensely popular but have now fallen out of favour like Hiawatha or the Rustic Wedding Symphony