Building an essential library ?

[Alison]

Quite an enjoyable couple of hours I suppose.

I’m sure my dad used to have a sort of guide to a basic library published by Gramophone in a smallish booklet. Repertoire selections with recommended versions.

Was half expecting John Wilson’s Hollywood Soundstage to feature, possibly as Nicky Armstrong’s submission.

[Nick Armstrong]

Was half expecting John Wilson’s Hollywood Soundstage to feature, possibly as Nicky Armstrong’s submission.

[gradus]

Highlights for me, the glorious Suk Brahms first violin sonata (but cruelly faded out), the Karajan Carmen with the stupendous Price and Corelli and the Richter Apassionata with its silent-movie Ukrainian folksong coda. I intensely disliked the solo-voiced performance of the B minor Mass and am at a loss to understand how anyone could consider it the finest performance on record and it sounded to me like the other two critics thought similarly.

[Barbirollians]

No problem with Suk / Katchen in anything .
Ditto Britten .
But Josef and Rosa Lhevinnne’s Mozart 2 Piano D major is one of my Desert Island Discs - one of the greatest piano recordings I’ve ever heard. The inestimable Marina F-W put her finger on it - the modern pianists sound too uniform.

Also the Perahua/Lupu.

[kernelbogey]

It's a very odd programme...

I listened to about an hour of it, tuning in just as something was being said about what turned out to be the Richter Appassionata - but which somehow I heard as being from a musician deaf from birth.... and I hated it. Agree with many of the reservations of posts above.

[smittims]

Alison, you have invoked memories of 'Recommended Recordings' a Gramophone publications booklet they put out inthe 'sixties at a time when for some reason they weren't printing the complete catalogue.

For a schoolboy on pocket money, it was the only way to find out what was available: not much then for someone adventurous in listening . But through it I discovered that there was a label called 'Lyrita' (though I didn't know how to pronounce the word) who were recording Bax and John Ireland, and the Bax 6th with Norman del Mar was one of the first two stereo discs I saved up for.

[kernelbogey]

...in the 'sixties at a time when for some reason they weren't printing the complete catalogue.

Thank you: I had until now completely forgotten about that catalogue; I now remember many hours' covetous browsing it as a teenager.

[Bryn]

Thank you: I had until now completely forgotten about that catalogue; I now remember many hours' covetous browsing it as a teenager.

Indeed, likewise. Oh for the return of the days when the full-page advertisements in The Gramophone were printed on pages without editorial content on either side, and could be simply torn out to offer a more compact storage option, too.

[kernelbogey]

Oh for the return of the days when....

[BBMmk2]

I didn’t agree with the Taneyev. I didn’t warm to that. Why were all the recordings from an earlier time, though?!?!?

[cloughie]

I think maybe the hour was inessential listing to forum members, most of whom already have their ‘essential library’ bulging several times at the seams!

[smittims]

Well, yes, there is that of course, but what struck me about this discussion is that here again we have what was clearly meant to be a bright idea from Radio 3 management and we all thought it a flop. Added to 'dumbtime' , 'snippets' jamming pop into classical on 'Breakfast' and so on, is there any evidence that anyone actually likes these 'bright ideas'?

[Petrushka]

What BBC radio lacks is a station that performed the function of the old Radio 2. There were a number of good programmes in the light classical field such as 'Your Hundred Best Tunes', 'Friday Night is Music Night', 'Marching and Waltzing' and many more which proved a useful stepping stone to Radio 3 for those whose interest was sparked by catching a piece they liked on one of these programmes. This is how I made the transition to Radio 3 in the 1970s.

It is pointless Radio 3 trying to perform a link to itself when the audience needs to be brought gently in from other BBC output. Radio 2 was the perfect vehicle back in the 1960s and 70s for linking listeners to both Radios 3 and 4 with the endless variety of music, comedy shows and light drama to the more serious fayre on R3 and 4.

[DracoM]

It is pointless Radio 3 trying to perform a link to itself when the audience needs to be brought gently in from other BBC output. Radio 2 was the perfect vehicle back in the 1960s and 70s for linking listeners to both Radios 3 and 4 with the endless variety of music, comedy shows and light drama to the more serious fayre on R3 and 4.


Totally agree!

[Ein Heldenleben]

What BBC radio lacks is a station that performed the function of the old Radio 2. There were a number of good programmes in the light classical field such as 'Your Hundred Best Tunes', 'Friday Night is Music Night', 'Marching and Waltzing' and many more which proved a useful stepping stone to Radio 3 for those whose interest was sparked by catching a piece they liked on one of these programmes. This is how I made the transition to Radio 3 in the 1970s.

It is pointless Radio 3 trying to perform a link to itself when the audience needs to be brought gently in from other BBC output. Radio 2 was the perfect vehicle back in the 1960s and 70s for linking listeners to both Radios 3 and 4 with the endless variety of music, comedy shows and light drama to the more serious fayre on R3 and 4.

So true . The “re-profiling” of Radio Two to classic pop/ rock and the placing of light classical, lighter Jazz and Great American Song book etc to Radio Three was a culturally retrograde step in that it denied all those art forms a truly mass audience.