Here’s my 2020 Survey of Classical Music on Radio 3, the 12th I’ve undertaken. As with everything else, Covid has had a considerable impact on the live concerts with a higher proportion of songs, chamber & piano pieces. The huge unprecedented increase in non-classical works being played in the usual classical music slots noted in 2019 continued unabated, increasing by a further 29% and has now trebled from 10 years ago & accounts for around 10% of the chunks/pieces in classical programmes! The published playlists continue to remain a nightmare with many instances of duplications within & between programmes, mis-attributations.
Anniversary composers were of course dominated by Beethoven. The opportunity for the other anniversary composers such as Reicha & Bruch, was limited in the extreme, in fact Bruch has less chunks/pieces broadcast than he did in 2019! There’s the continuing promotion of women composers, particularly certain favoured ones. There are the usual favoured composers whilst many other notable composers such as Honegger, Holmboe, Tippett, Berwald, K A Hartmann, Henze, E Carter, continued to be generally poorly represented. Many of R3 favourite warhorses were broadcast in record (since 2009) numbers complete or in chunks including: Ravel’s G Major Concerto & Alborado del Gracioso, Appalachian Spring, The Planets (accounts for nearly 40% of Holst broadcasts), Concierto de Aranjuez (almost half the Rodrigo broadcast), the ‘American’ Quartet, Peter Grimes Sea Interludes.
The opportunity to explore R3s huge archive of broadcasts created by the lack of many live concerts was exceptionally disappointing. Instead playlist programmes continue to dominate. Overall, rather a depressing year.
As usual, a list of all composers with 50 or more pieces/chunks broadcast is in the thread below. If there are any composers not in this category that you would like to know the figures for, please let me know.
The *against a composer indicates the highest number of pieces/chunks by that composer since I began my survey in 2009, whilst the # indicates the lowest number since 2009.
The R3 Symphony survey will follow shortly.
Anniversary composers were of course dominated by Beethoven. The opportunity for the other anniversary composers such as Reicha & Bruch, was limited in the extreme, in fact Bruch has less chunks/pieces broadcast than he did in 2019! There’s the continuing promotion of women composers, particularly certain favoured ones. There are the usual favoured composers whilst many other notable composers such as Honegger, Holmboe, Tippett, Berwald, K A Hartmann, Henze, E Carter, continued to be generally poorly represented. Many of R3 favourite warhorses were broadcast in record (since 2009) numbers complete or in chunks including: Ravel’s G Major Concerto & Alborado del Gracioso, Appalachian Spring, The Planets (accounts for nearly 40% of Holst broadcasts), Concierto de Aranjuez (almost half the Rodrigo broadcast), the ‘American’ Quartet, Peter Grimes Sea Interludes.
The opportunity to explore R3s huge archive of broadcasts created by the lack of many live concerts was exceptionally disappointing. Instead playlist programmes continue to dominate. Overall, rather a depressing year.
As usual, a list of all composers with 50 or more pieces/chunks broadcast is in the thread below. If there are any composers not in this category that you would like to know the figures for, please let me know.
The *against a composer indicates the highest number of pieces/chunks by that composer since I began my survey in 2009, whilst the # indicates the lowest number since 2009.
The R3 Symphony survey will follow shortly.
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