Where is everyone?

[aeolium]

I'm with Flosshilde in my reaction to the Proms season. I think it's far too long, dominates too much of the schedule and has plenty of mediocre concerts with core repertoire which can be heard all too often throughout the rest of the year. I probably listen to around a third of the concerts.

My main interests in R3 are (or used to be) in chamber music, Baroque repertoire, opera and drama, with orchestral concerts coming some way behind. I'm also interested in BaL, as much for the discussions on here as for the programme itself. Yet in the summer, even though there are some superb chamber music festivals, R3's coverage of them has been ruined by the butchering of concerts into manageable chunks to fit the schedule*. BaL takes a summer break; Opera on 3 likewise; Baroque music doesn't get much of a showing in the Proms and EMS has been cut back to one programme per week; Drama on 3 has been shunted to a late night Sunday slot and is full of repeats or novel adaptations; and the Proms, or Proms repeats dominate the rest of the meaningful schedule (ignoring the worthless weekday morning programming). So the time I spend actually listening to R3, which has already diminished in recent years, has reduced even further, probably to a mere few hours per week.

I still think there are plenty of interesting discussions on this forum - and it doesn't need a controversy to make a discussion interesting, only people with knowledge and/or enthusiasm about the subject. I thought the thread on Opera Productions was one such, bringing out strongly differing opinions, and also the thread about Elgar which I found informative. What I have noticed is that the majority of threads now are not in response to R3's programmes but simply about the musical, artistic or general interests of people here, so that this is no longer a forum mainly about R3. That says a lot about R3 these days, not the members of this forum. In the bad old BBC forum days (2011), most of the threads would have been modded off

*Edit: But I am really pleased to see that R3 is broadcasting live a number of Edinburgh Festival morning concerts, starting this week

[Hornspieler]

Like a previous poster I am not musically trained and have little useful to contribute to the majority of posts. I will certainly pitch in when I think my expertise will be useful, but crop protection doesnt come up very often ...

Concerning Frank Martin, I once had an enthusiasm for this composer and have twenty CDs entirely or partly devoted to his work. I certainly dont find his music beige or white. It seems to me to be ascetic, and if it was any colour it would be a sort of steely grey. I dont think he will ever be a popular composer, but I found him very rewarding and must try some of them again, I havent played any of those discs for ages.

I remember that in the 1963 Edinburgh Festival, we played Frank Martin's Piano concerto (I think his second) with David Wilde as soloist, for a performance with the Stuttgart Ballet. Can't say it rang any bells for me as far as I recall.

The only other work I heard was his "Petite Sinfonia Concertante" for harp, harpsichord, piano and strings (1945) which was given in the Ulster Hall, Belfast in 1965 with the strings of the Ulster orchestra.
The Harpist was Derek Bell and Harpsichord was played by George Malcolm.
I don't remember who the pianist was - it could have been Havelock Nelson.

HS

[PJPJ]

I'm with Flosshilde in my reaction to the Proms season. I think it's far too long, dominates too much of the schedule and has plenty of mediocre concerts with core repertoire which can be heard all too often throughout the rest of the year. I probably listen to around a third of the concerts.

Is that not true of many concert series? Not that that diminishes the point you are making. A third of the concerts seems quite a lot in view of your interests. I would listen to a few more than that, especially if they involved neglected British composers, but circumstances do not allow it.

Some core repertoire in a new performance is of interest to me, for example Andrew Manze's forthcoming VW (am I allowed to call VW core repertoire?), others I can live without. Unfortunately we all have different ones of interest. I do like listening to Richard Strauss, for example, but there's a danger of overkill in these anniversary years. These are hardly works dusted off for performances once every fifty years. I don't think Strauss will be short of performances in 2015, and be in danger of being considered a neglected composer by 2016. Lots of bums on seats for those concerts may well make other less well-attended concerts more viable - the few comments I've read on these boards do mention lots of empty seats for some of them. I'll stop rambling now.

[gamba]

We may well have exhausted many of our comments regarding music. I am now in the condition of someone with a limited future & am pleased just to be able to wallow in so much which gives pleasure, early Haydn string quartets, for example

I thought a good subject for a thread might be a list of what we now regret, why did I not ..........etc.

Here are a few of mine;

1. Learn to play Viola da Gamba instead of 'cello

2. Buy a road version of the 1927 Delage straight - 8

3. Not keep a beautiful sounding 'cello obtained from the principal 'cellist of the BBC Scottish Sym.Orch.

4. Turning down the opportunity of taking a sledge, all on my own, pulled by 6 Huskies through the Cairngorms on a dark snow-laden winters day.

Would that we could turn the clock back.

[verismissimo]

Grown older and wiser????

Speak for yourself, dear Roehre...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I'm with Flosshilde in my reaction to the Proms season. I think it's far too long, dominates too much of the schedule and has plenty of mediocre concerts with core repertoire which can be heard all too often throughout the rest of the year. I probably listen to around a third of the concerts.

I'm happy with the live concert schedule. It's just the lack of imagination in filling the rest of the daytime non-Breakfast (etc.) schedule with Proms repeats that shows up the paucity of current programming.

[umslopogaas]

#47 HS, I dont have recordings of either of Martin's piano concertos, but there is a CD, so I shall order it. I do have a CD of the Concert pour clavecin et petit orchestre, must remind myself of it. The Petite Symphonie Concertante is one of his better known works, and as I recall, very enjoyable.

[Richard Tarleton]

IIt is interesting to see which composers provoke a discussion and which don't, after listening to Frank Martin on Friday and posting, not a single comment, has anyone listened to any of his music recently?

His Quatre Pièces Brèves for guitar was played only the other day - I'm ashamed to say it's the only Martin piece I know - in Julian Bream's 1993 recording. I like it very much, it was on Bream's ground-breaking 1966 "20th Century Guitar" LP. Written with Segovia in mind (Martin and Segovia were both living in Geneva in 1933), Segovia disliked it as he did anything at all modern and crossed the street to avoid having to talk to Martin. He later asked for a copy after all, having "lost" the first one, which FM, disgusted with him by this stage, refused to give him.

[french frank]

I won't copy the whole of aeolium's last post, but I could have written it myself - even down to the particular programmes that I am/was most interested in.

The thing about the Proms is that they are a BBC event and for a largely different audience. In the Trust's last review they said: "After this year’s BBC Proms festival, we placed some questions on a regular BBC audience survey to assess the association of the Proms with BBC services. Only 18 per cent of adults associated them with Radio 3. Even amongst those people who listen to classical music on the radio, only around a third associated the BBC Proms with Radio 3."

The last sentence suggests that two thirds of people who attend the Proms aren't Radio 3 listeners. And of those who do 'listen to classical music on the radio' most probably listen to Classic FM (unless they're based abroad) - since there's NO WAY a Radio 3 listener could NOT be aware that You Can Hear Every Concert Live On Radio 3 ...

It gives the Proms a different perspective: the Proms aren't 'for' Radio 3 - Radio 3 is 'for' the Proms. But since Radio 3 has to shell out for the shortfall, expenditure v. revenue, it has to make as much use of them as possible. Live, repeats, Christmas repeats ... And because the aim of the Proms is to be, in a sense, 'popular', Radio 3 has to put up with that, Kiss Me Kate and all (tin hat!)

[jean]

Perhaps more people would be posting on this thread if they knew it was actually about Frank Martin...

[Roehre]

Speak for yourself, dear Roehre...

Undeniably I am growing older, but wiser???????????????

[french frank]

Perhaps more people would be posting on this thread if they knew it was actually about Frank Martin...

I've copied most of the posts over to a thread called Frank Martin. I suppose that will stop discussion there stone dead

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

On the contrary, it's increased my interest.

I appear to have caused disagreement by stereotyping Radio 3 into just two programmes.
Sometimes one exaggerates to make a point.

[Roehre]

.......
I still think there are plenty of interesting discussions on this forum - and it doesn't need a controversy to make a discussion interesting, only people with knowledge and/or enthusiasm about the subject. I thought the thread on Opera Productions was one such, bringing out strongly differing opinions, and also the thread about Elgar which I found informative. What I have noticed is that the majority of threads now are not in response to R3's programmes but simply about the musical, artistic or general interests of people here, so that this is no longer a forum mainly about R3. That says a lot about R3 these days, not the members of this forum. In the bad old BBC forum days (2011), most of the threads would have been modded off ....

I've got the feeling, with Aeolium and others, that these boards are increasingly less about what's on R3, and more about other interests of our contributors.
But discussing music on these boards hardly exceeds the level of "I like it" or "I love it" and "the best performance/recording of....".

I concur with "I still think there are plenty of interesting discussions on this forum - and it doesn't need a controversy to make a discussion interesting, only people with knowledge and/or enthusiasm about the subject.", and I recall vividly a likewise vivid discussion between JLW and me about the merits of Beethoven's Ninth's finale, from opposite views -JLW defending it as the only possible finale to 9, I myself loathing the mvt as symphonic finale- which I found very interesting because of the arguments she and I used, all of them contributing to the discussion, and -most important- never attacking personally.
The "opera productions" is another example of this type of discussion.

I have got the feeling that many of our contributors love their music, but are not really interested in it further than that it makes lovely sounds and hence sticking to "the best performance of..."-type of postings. One might even conclude that the music is heard a lot of times, but really listened to....?
The question "why?" seems hardly to be put.

for me it is always a wonderful feeling to (re-)discover connections between Brahms' PC 1 and his German Requiem, Beethoven op.132 and the Ninth, Bruckner 2nd symphony and his Masses, Bach Christmas oratorio and a festive cantata for his sovereign, Webern's Cantata no.2 and Stravinsky's Threni, or (recently mentioned on these boards) Birtwistle and Tippitt, or Monteverdi and PMD and Webern.
Co-incidences, relationships, straightforward [self-]quotations or plagiarism, backgrounds: as soon as such a connection is mentioned, a discussion hardly follows.

Don't we actually listen to music anymore but only use it as background - something R3's Breakfast is basically promoting?

As talking/writing about performances is finite, hence the number of relevant contributions is.
which is a pity.

Just a thought of perhaps one aspect contributing to the present malaise.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

An excellent post, Roehre, and I confess that I'm listening to Frank Martin's Mass for Double Choir on YouTube at this very moment.