So what's wrong with Radio 3 Breakfast?

[Don Petter]

9-11: Brandenbergs.

They'll have to play them very slowly (or pad out with half an hour of chat?)

[old khayyam]

They'll have to play them very slowly (or pad out with half an hour of chat?)

I should have said 'Basically Brandenbergs', as in, including other works of a similar tone and texture. Or perhaps any baroque and/or string quartets and/or small ensembles..

[Don Petter]

I should have said 'Basically Brandenbergs', as in, including other works of a similar tone and texture. Or perhaps any baroque and/or string quartets and/or small ensembles..

I'd vote for that!

[Bax-of-Delights]

Seems we're all agreed. Now, just for fun, let us indulge in a little battle of My perfect Day On R3:


5-7am: Matins broadcast each day from a different monastery or convent.

7-9: Pieces for 'light' instruments such as harpsichord, flute, or guitar.

9-11: Brandenbergs.

11-18: (no preference)

18-19: Evensong.

19-onwards: The Deep & Weird. Such as that Sally Beamish and the like.

Saturdays: Broad Palette - jazz, world, avantgarde, improv, et al.

Sundays: Bells On Sunday followed by Morning Worship from a different church/cathedral. The rest of the day would broadcast, live or otherwise, worship from other faiths within the UK.

Please note that across the week there will be plenty of room for talk programmes, provided they are discussing music (at least 90%), and on a deep, philosophical, and oxbridge level.


Not much to ask is it?

Hmmm...fine for the god-botherers among the listeners but I'd avoid all programmes that had any exclusively deistic thrust. Choral Evensong is a once a week programme which I occasionally listen to primarily for the closing organ piece. I did catch a fair amount of today's programme and the homilitic sermons and biblical readings now seem more curiously Victorian than ever.

As other posters have already mentioned; I wish to be surprised by R3. There is absolutely nothing now between 6.30 and 12 noon that will ever surprise me - apart perhaps from the regularity of appearance of virtually all the pieces. Where are
Anton Rubenstein
Granville Bantock (his wondrous Sappho song cycle from which an extract or two could easily be played)
David Diamond (and any number of other American composers)
Anton Webern
Peter Racine Fricker
Edward German
Hans Werner Henze
Alberic Magnard
Bruno Maderna
......etc etc etc.

I learnt about music of all kinds through the Third Programme. Schoenberg's "Jacob's Ladder" was broadcast in the 60's and one could send a s.a.e. to Broadcasting House for the libretto. Now in my mid 60's I still expect to be able to be astonished or surprised by NEW music (this week's Cotw is a good example but sadly the only example) but I can see an eager young ear quickly becoming sated by the regurgitive nature of Breakfast, Essential Classics and In Tune (did I catch "A Short Ride in a Fast Machine" yet again yesterday?). Where will the curious be able to go if it isn't R3?

And just when did the presenters start telling us that a certain performance was wonderful, marvellous blah blah blah or in Katie Dereham's case that the audience were "bowled over" (how does she know?).

[teamsaint]

yup, that machine turned up AGAIN yesterday.

I freely admit to having a very modest knowledge of classical music, but even I find the schedules desperately repetitive. Rachmaninov Paganini thing yet again this afternoon.
I also absolutely agree that for me, the beauty of good music radio is to be confronted with music that I would not otherwise encounter........and this happens depressingly infrequently during the daytime..............and I have to get some sleep at nights !!

[Frances_iom]

And just when did the presenters start telling us that a certain performance was wonderful, marvellous blah blah blah or in Katie Dereham's case that the audience were "bowled over" (how does she know?).

I think KD must be extremely fortuneate in that all pieces she hears are fantastic etc etc - bit like the horn of the unicorn but then she is paid to gush not necessarily to think and seems incapable of turning off the stream of thought - usually once I know she is 'presenting' the afternoon I switch off

[Word]

I think KD must be extremely fortuneate in that all pieces she hears are fantastic etc etc - bit like the horn of the unicorn but then she is paid to gush not necessarily to think and seems incapable of turning off the stream of thought - usually once I know she is 'presenting' the afternoon I switch off

'Usually' would imply that you do sometimes listen to Afternoon on 3 yet, in my experience of her presenting that programme, though she will comment on how a performance was received she rarely offers her opinion of said performance and doesn't 'gush'.

When it comes to live concerts or recitals - I think it would be very strange (and more than a little conceited) for a presenter not to find at least some aspect worthy of praise/acknowledgement.


As for the above valiant efforts to find common ground on what people like or would like to hear on Radio 3, particularly on weekday mornings; the idea of being surprised sounds like something that could be 'sold' to RW, though presumably it would have to be framed within more mundane programming as I don't suppose it's possible to be perpetually surprised.

[teamsaint]

'Usually' would imply that you do sometimes listen to Afternoon on 3 yet, in my experience of her presenting that programme, though she will comment on how a performance was received she rarely offers her opinion of said performance and doesn't 'gush'.

When it comes to live concerts or recitals - I think it would be very strange (and more than a little conceited) for a presenter not to find at least some aspect worthy of praise/acknowledgement.


As for the above valiant efforts to find common ground on what people like or would like to hear on Radio 3, particularly on weekday mornings; the idea of being surprised sounds like something that could be 'sold' to RW, though presumably it would have to be framed within more mundane programming as I don't suppose it's possible to be perpetually surprised.

oh i don't know. the staff behind the bar on Seafrance seem perpetually surprised at the demand for sandwiches, coffee and beer.
The accountants at portsmouth fc seem perpetually surprised at the need to pay PAYE .
The bosses at R3 seem perpetually surprised at the listeners wishes.
English batsmen seem perpetually surprised at the need to score more runs than the other team.

[Frances_iom]

I do listen - if it is a live concert fine until she comes on to fill in - sometimes I listen in spite of her because I want to hear the work but often I hit the mute button during a break and don't bother going back to programme (possibly like SR (thofor different reasons) I'm allergic to her style)

[Norfolk Born]

We're a bit backward here in Suffolk - we still spell Brandenburg the old way!

[Panjandrum]

'Usually' would imply that you do sometimes listen to Afternoon on 3 yet, in my experience of her presenting that programme, though she will comment on how a performance was received she rarely offers her opinion of said performance and doesn't 'gush'.

Do you spend all evening googling "Katie Derham" to see who is bad-mouthing her, and then charge like a latter day knight errant to the fair lady's rescue?

[Bax-of-Delights]

'Usually' would imply that you do sometimes listen to Afternoon on 3 yet, in my experience of her presenting that programme, though she will comment on how a performance was received she rarely offers her opinion of said performance and doesn't 'gush'.

When it comes to live concerts or recitals - I think it would be very strange (and more than a little conceited) for a presenter not to find at least some aspect worthy of praise/acknowledgement.

Au contraire, I find KD the worst of the "gushers" with a veritable cornucopia of superlatives spilling from her golden lips in a Niagra that washes all before it. I, too, now avoid all programmes where she is the presenter.

The result, sadly, is that this life-long listener to the Third and R3 is now fast becoming a stranger to 91.3 on the dial.

[french frank]

Do you spend all evening googling "Katie Derham" to see who is bad-mouthing her, and then charge like a latter day knight errant to the fair lady's rescue?

And fair enough! All points of view are valid, particularly when this is just a matter of individual preferences.

Add: I've just been reading Menuhin's note 'My first meeting with Elgar' on the sleeve of his recording of the violin concerto.

He felt he shared the occasion of recording the work, and the associations, with the British people, listening 'in the same spirt of comfortable surrender as when one settles into the trusted and familiar folds of a beloved armchair'.

It captures how I used to feel about Radio 3. Now it just seems brash and larky.

[antongould]

It captures how I used to feel about Radio 3. Now it just seems brash and larky.

.................and we two haven't had this debate for at least 47.62 days but it is a new/another Breakfast thread.

The world has, sadly some would say, become more brash and larky should R3 in looking for a new audience ignore this?

We could go back to yoof and attention spans................but picking up on some of the points raised - I feel R3 should be surprising us and bringing in the new - but is Breakfast really the place to do it? Far better bring back this programme everyone seemed to love CD Masters(?) with Jekyll Cowan as opposed to the now, in the general view, Hyde Cowan!

If Breakfast is to bring a new audience then a fair proportion of the composers and pieces will be new to them as they were to me and still can be - this morning we had Grace Williams (Welsh you see boy) who I had heard on Heffer but with IMHO a much better piece and Thomas Ades who I really should know better.

But I'm off again - I like SMP's presentational style it is IMHO bright without being gushing, and dare I say it, modern!!!!

[french frank]

The world has, sadly some would say, become more brash and larky should R3 in looking for a new audience ignore this?

The problem - never addressed by the BBC - is that it's an 'either/or': you can't cater properly for two audiences which range from both ends of the knowledge/depth spectrum. Radio 3 has opted to give over the mornings to the (potential) new listeners. This was where (before the new Breakfast began in 2007) the largest number of listeners chose to listen, ergo the largest number (my rough estimate*** about half the total R3 audience) of 'old' listeners. Proportionately, compared with other stations, Radio 3 has a higher sustained morning audience than the other stations.





It's an awful lot of people who are being told to listen to their CDs, listen to the On Demand iPlayer (only a tiny percentage of total listening is done this way, 2010 figure 0.4%) or come back in the afternoon or evening. In Tune is also a 'new listeners' accessible programme.

One can at least understand the volume of complaints .

***Morning on 3 - 800,000, CD Masters 620,000 = 1.42m, less those who listened through both programmes, say, 420,000 (generous), making a total of 1m morning listeners.