The Classic FM-isation of R3 is almost complete

[french frank]

Does anyone here listen much to R3 at night?

I think, Is the Pope Catholic? might be a clue! Some people record it or listen on the iPlayer instead of the daytime offering - a substitute, rather than radio listening as such.

[HARRIET HAVARD]

Does anyone here listen much to R3 at night? In Radio Times the night schedule looks more like a straightforward playlist approach and, perhaps, a little less "trying to please everybody".

Yes, I do now and again. True we don't have to endure the banal yack of the likes of Pet Rock, but the programme content, like so much on the station, is now no more than easy listening, or, at best, the same old chestnuts that are churned out time after time on Breakfast or EL etc. Many years ago Radio 3 had a policy of not repeating pieces within a certain period. From memory that was a period of six weeks. Just as an example of how things have changed, not so long ago the station played the Shostakovich Piano Concerto (No 2 of course) no less than five times within seven days- all in prime time. I have nothing against this work- but surely this is going a little too far.

[subcontrabass]

Many years ago Radio 3 had a policy of not repeating pieces within a certain period.

I recall not all that long ago hearing the same piece (Balakirev's Overture on three Russian Themes) broadcast twice withing two hours - once as the last item in "Composer of the Week" just before 1 p.m. and again as the first item in "Afternoon on 3" just after 2 p.m.

[Don Petter]

I recall not all that long ago hearing the same piece (Balakirev's Overture on three Russian Themes) broadcast twice withing two hours - once as the last item in "Composer of the Week" just before 1 p.m. and again as the first item in "Afternoon on 3" just after 2 p.m.

It just all smacks of 'no-one on the bridge'.

[HARRIET HAVARD]

I must admit I very rarely listen to EC these days, but, out of curiosity have just had it on. And what was playing? Apres-midi.....I really don't have to complete this do I . This piece in particular- along with a few others- is repeated so often on this station that has almost become the station call sign. This was being played at the "request" of a listener, who no doubt heard it during one of the numerous repeats.. And round and round we go, and where does it all stop, no-one knows

I would go as far as to say that, in my humble opinion, Radio3 could have been described as a marvellous teaching resource. How many of us, I wonder, owe their musical experience to the station. But no any more. It is now no more than a playlist station. And then there is the obsession with "this weeks chart toppers". What the hell is that all about?

[french frank]

What the hell is that all about?

Probably, that R3 is like a secondary school which has abolished its sixth form. It does, still, serve a useful purpose (I give that amount of credit to the EC 'enterprise'), but the purpose has been changed without any public announcement or consultation.

[Roehre]

Does anyone here listen much to R3 at night? In Radio Times the night schedule looks more like a straightforward playlist approach and, perhaps, a little less "trying to please everybody".

TtN is most of the year almost the only programme with repertoire which interests me I'm afraid.

Between the end of TtN to the start of CotW I prefer not to lose any time in listening to self-important and generally ignorant presenters spewing drivel, CotW is sometimes of interest, the lunch concert sometimes is, Ao3 ditto, after that for me radio silence as I am not interested in self-important presenters, and the evening concert is also sometimes of interest, but most of the time mainly repeating the war horses.

The Proms are sometimes of interest to me, and for the rest: live is too short to listen to the war horses more than once in a long time.

Hence TtN almost the only programme to which I listen more regularly, though there is an increasing tendency to repeat large chunks from time to time.

[cloughie]

Too general. Some of the best programmes on R3 have been Indies - including the Music Feature (now dropped), CD Masters, some of the drama productions. Breakfast is made by the BBC, and even Essential Classics was given its programme brief when it went out to tender. So if they hadn't offered what R3 was asking for, they wouldn't have got the commission.

I reckon with EC that Rob and Sarah have to watch the brief but slip things in under the radar. I guess many of us we welcome back a 3hr version of CDM but I'm getting weary of mentioning it. The downward dumb continues! CFM's Full works of an evening is often pretty good - caught the end of Herriweghe's Schumann 3 on Monday - not so convincing fourth movement but a lively enough finale!
On the question of warhorses - I'm sure we all like them but I think the small platoon of them is paraded too often and usually in bits, and if we really wish to listen to them there are for most of us plenty on our shelves.

[underthecountertenor]

Does anyone here listen much to R3 at night? In Radio Times the night schedule looks more like a straightforward playlist approach and, perhaps, a little less "trying to please everybody".

I occasionally listen in real time when I'm suffering from insomnia: the concert performances they use are often so bad that I laugh myself to sleep.

[kernelbogey]

I listened to some of Essential Classics this morning in the car - a programme I rarely listen to - and heard the mind-numbingly banal conversation of Sarah Walker and Richard Bacon (who he?); from which I had supposed that 'Suzy Klein talks to conductor Christian Curnyn' about Haydn would have been some relief. But (almost) the same banal level of conversation again, the employment of the modish 'historical present' to talk about the eighteenth century (the past tense is so last century, yeah?) that makes me despair again of the morning output of this station. Such a dreadful contrast with the elegance of CotW on Mozart, JC Bach et al in eighteenth century London. Why does the station have to talk down to its audience so much?

End of rant. I feel a bit better now.

[teamsaint]

I listened to some of Essential Classics this morning in the car - a programme I rarely listen to - and heard the mind-numbingly banal conversation of Sarah Walker and Richard Bacon (who he?); from which I had supposed that 'Suzy Klein talks to conductor Christian Curnyn' about Haydn would have been some relief. But (almost) the same banal level of conversation again, the employment of the modish 'historical present' to talk about the eighteenth century (the past tense is so last century, yeah?) that makes me despair again of the morning output of this station. Such a dreadful contrast with the elegance of CotW on Mozart, JC Bach et al in eighteenth century London. Why does the station have to talk down to its audience so much?

End of rant. I feel a bit better now.

Sadly, its not just R3, KB.

Try the BBC history home page.

If i didnt know better, I would think that those with power and influence wanted to keep the status quo, using the power of the media to demonstrate just how great the status quo is.......

WHAT is Lucy "friend of the toffs" Worsley doing with that crown ?!

(Incidentally, mrs TS turned off the bacon interview in disgust less than 3 minutes in yesterday, and she is a very tolerant woman. So she tells me !!)

[jean]

...the employment of the modish 'historical present' to talk about the eighteenth century (the past tense is so last century, yeah?)...

I cannot understand this objection to the historic present, especially on the grounds that it's something new.

Julius Caesar does it all the time.

Here's Longinus, writing about 2000 years ago:

...If you introduce things which are past as present and now taking place, you will make your story no longer a narration but an actuality. Xenophon furnishes an illustration. “A man,” says he, “has fallen under Cyrus’ horse, and being trampled strikes the horse with his sword in the belly. He rears and unseats Cyrus, who falls” (Xenophon, Cyropaideia 7.1.37). This construction is specially characteristic of Thucydides...

[kernelbogey]

I cannot understand this objection to the historic present, especially on the grounds that it's something new.

Julius Caesar does it all the time.

Here's Longinus, writing about 2000 years ago:

...If you introduce things which are past as present and now taking place, you will make your story no longer a narration but an actuality. Xenophon furnishes an illustration. “A man,” says he, “has fallen under Cyrus’ horse, and being trampled strikes the horse with his sword in the belly. He rears and unseats Cyrus, who falls” (Xenophon, Cyropaideia 7.1.37). This construction is specially characteristic of Thucydides...

While doffing my hat to both Caesar and Longinus, I suggest that it's possible to talk about eighteenth century musical life in a lively way by the use of other aspects of the language. It has become a default tense on Radios 3 & 4 for describing events from the past, for which we have a perfectly good past tense. I don't think that, in this context, I want Mozart's meetings with JC Bach made an acuality: I'm wanting the background to the music being played.

We can, I hope, agree to differ, Jean .

Another sad decline is the use of the what I call the pluperfect to describe what happened before the past thing that I was just talking about.

E.g. Radio 3 announcers were more formal in their speech in the 1970s: the Third programme had been even more formal in this respect.

(Compare: Radio 3 announcers were more formal in their speech in the 1970s: the Third programme was even more formal in this respect.)

I think they're all examples of using language creatively.

[vinteuil]

: I'm wanting the background to the music being played.

.

... that pertickler tense with the verb "to want" !

I'm loving it - not.

[french frank]

I cannot understand this objection to the historic present, especially on the grounds that it's something new.

Julius Caesar [and Thucydides] does it all the time.

Is there a difference though between what is a literary (written) stylistic device for effect and normal spoken English?