Spare me another newsreader given privileged access to programming

[french frank]

Perhaps bringing an audience to R3 would be better served if these shows appeared on Radio 1 or those other BBC youth channels, so that our potential audiences were exposed without having to find our little ghetto.

Friends of Radio 3 spent the best part of 20 years trying to persuade the various parts of the BBC that R3 targeting programmes on an audience that wasn't listening was a bit pointless. If they want to attract people to R3 they could start by a few gentle promotions like 'Step into Our World' from some years back (voiced by Rob Cowan and using some hi-tech not then used in advertising). But if they want to build up an audience for classical music it should form a regular, integral part of other BBC music programming, just as R3 now has Unclassified, Late Junction and a large part of Night Tracks (to say nothing of Piano Flow, Tearjerker, Happy Harmonies, as and when).

There seem to have been two invariable rules at the BBC:

1) classical music on BBC radio is on Radio 3

2) It is up to Radio 3 to build up its audience, for classical music - or anything else, really. Whatever.

[LMcD]

'An evening with Leonard Bernstein' might attract some people who've seen, or heard of, 'Maestro', and some of his existing admirers may also tune in. I discovered Elgar, not because I thought 'Ah, a programme about Elgar', but because I was a regular viewer of Monitor.
I never really enjoyed 'Face The Music' because I found Joseph Cooper so insufferably patronising, especially to Bernard Levin. I seem to recall a particularly irritating mini-lecture on how to pronounce 'De Falla'.

[smittims]

Your account, LMcD, mirrors my own. The first record I bought (for tuppence at a jumble sale) was a single 78 of sides 5 and 6 of the 1927 recording of Elgar's second symphony. I took it home. played it, and my life was changed. I didn't need any 'expert' to 'explain' it to me . It just hit me and nothing was the same afterwards.

[LMcD]

Your account, LMcD, mirrors my own. The first record I bought (for tuppence at a jumble sale) was a single 78 of sides 5 and 6 of the 1927 recording of Elgar's second symphony. I took it home. played it, and my life was changed. I didn't need any 'expert' to 'explain' it to me . It just hit me and nothing was the same afterwards.

I have several 'favourite' composers, but nobody moves me quite like Elgar.

[Nick Armstrong]

Your account, LMcD, mirrors my own. The first record I bought (for tuppence at a jumble sale) was a single 78 of sides 5 and 6 of the 1927 recording of Elgar's second symphony. I took it home. played it, and my life was changed. I didn't need any 'expert' to 'explain' it to me . It just hit me and nothing was the same afterwards.

My equivalent was a school friend lending me his LP of Shostakovich’s 15th, written only a few years earlier (the Ormandy recording - I immediately liked the grey cover of DSCH peering through the large “15”) - the first movement “hit me and nothing was the same afterwards”, if I may quote you.

[smittims]

Glad to hear that. I've always thought Shost 15 one of his best, and the Ormandy recording gets it well.

Elgar's music has always exerted a curious power of evoking a personal appeal and loyalty in certain listeners, from Ivor Atkins in 1890 onwards.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I have several 'favourite' composers, but nobody moves me quite like Elgar.

[oddoneout]

Steering this back a bit - how many listeners would have a lightbulb moment (such as recounted in the past few posts)as a result of the programme in question do you reckon?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Steering this back a bit - how many listeners would have a lightbulb moment (such as recounted in the past few posts)as a result of the programme in question do you reckon?

None because all the music in this programme I’d heard before. In contrast the ambitious Lunchtime Cello recital the repeat of which is being replaced by Clive’s Christmas today had 3 pieces completely unfamiliar to me.


5 Canciones Populares Argentinas Op.10 by Alberto Ginastera

Arturo Márquez Lejania

Dmitry Shostakovich Sonata In D Minor Op.40

Gareth Farr Shadow Of The Hawk

[hmvman]

Generally speaking, people seem to like the familiar at Christmastime.

[french frank]

None because all the music in this programme I’d heard before. In contrast the ambitious Lunchtime Cello recital the repeat of which is being replaced by Clive’s Christmas today had 3 pieces completely unfamiliar to me.

I was going to say: it depends who's listening. For me, it would be the usual format of presenter playing a sequence of pieces of, on average, c. 4+ minutes duration each, with the odd piece of non-classical. Nothing to create much effect judging by last week's playlist.

[vinteuil]

Generally speaking, people seem to like the familiar at Christmastime.

... but is it the role of Radio 3 to supply 'the familiar'?

.

[french frank]

... but is it the role of Radio 3 to supply 'the familiar'?

.

The problem is that Radio 3 has had less of a "role" for many years. Andy Kershaw came over from Radio 1 to Radio 3 and brought a bit of Radio 1 to Radio 3. Elizabeth Alker has come over and introduces a bit of 6 Music to Radio 3. Laufey, Devonté Hynes, Baby Queen and a whole stream of others over recent years come to add their own thing to Radio 3 rather than to fit some Radio 3 "role". I could go on but wouldn't want to be controversial

[cloughie]

I have several 'favourite' composers, but nobody moves me quite like Elgar.

Absolutely, particularly the ‘bridge’ from movements 2 to 3 of the1st Symphony… and how infuriating it is when the bleeding chunkers on Inessential Interference when they decide to cut off at the end of Movt 2

[vinteuil]

Elgar's music has always exerted a curious power of evoking a personal appeal and loyalty in certain listeners...

... and in other listeners, a very strong dislike.

.