Enough Schubert

[Carmen]

How stupid could I have been! I've only just realised that this Schubertian saturation has been nothing more than an extremely clever ruse to lure back us bruised and battered children of R3. Come 7 o'clock on Sunday morning, there will be a mass switching on of radios, when we will all flock back, waking up "to music, news and the occasional surprise" (as detailed by Radio Times), all dished out by the incurably bouncy Clemency Burton-Hill. I can already hear the rubbing of hands and slapping of backs at Broadcasting House.

[cloughie]

Cheer up - it could be Wagner (1813 - 1883) next year!!

With or without bleeding chunks?

[David-G]

I am afraid I shall be getting withdrawal symptoms come Sunday, and will have to turn to the iPlayer.

[Bax-of-Delights]

I've never been that keen on Schubert - although the Unfinished was one of my very first LP purchases back in the 60's. I have occasionally switched on R3 in the last few days only to be confronted by those damned songs. Here's Dudley Moore doing a great job:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idBZPteNJxs&feature=related

I had a long car journey yesterday and switched between R4 and CFM. The terrifying thing about CFM is that once you strip out the adverts you could be listening to Breakfast and/or Essential Classics. Same music, same self-puffery, same inane name checks.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The Tchaikovsky Experience included TtN.

So did last year's Mozartathon.

(In fact, I thought the Beethathon and Bach-to-Bach programmes also seeped into the night?)

[Quarky]

I've had enough, see, I don't KNOW any German, so after several car journeys this week I don't think I can listen to a German song ever again.....

Do you have the same reaction to a Wagner Opera, or a Viennese Operetta? And what about this one - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUnS-...eature=related

But I sympathise with this view, beacause most English people don't know any German - in fact there is an anti-German ethos is the media (all those WWII war films!)

However Schubert was a German speaker - in common I guess with three quarters of the composers that are performed on R3. So it seems to me that any serious student of classical music should have a working knowledge of German. Certainly to get the most out of his lieder, one has to know what the song is all about.

So is this a criticism of us insular English, or a criticism of R3, in pushing out a vast quantity of German songs, that most of its listeners will find unintelligible, and quickly switch off? Both I guess.

[BBMmk2]

Schubert and his songs are not everybody's cup of tea, like with me,

[Pabmusic]

So is this a criticism of us insular English, or a criticism of R3, in pushing out a vast quantity of German songs, that most of its listeners will find unintelligible, and quickly switch off? Both I guess.

[James Wonnacott]

I don't find any problem with other languages that I don't understand (I only understand English and some Church Latin anyway). I enjoy Italian and French opera for example, but I do feel that German does not lend itself to being sung.
I also dislike the sort of "mooing" sound, particularly from Tenors, when singing Schubert.

[Flay]

I also dislike the sort of "mooing" sound, particularly from Tenors, when singing Schubert.

Is that an umlaut effect?

(what's this awful opera on just now? It sounds like Mary Poppins)

[John Skelton]

Anyone listening planned via the schedule could go to http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/ for translations that if not a monument to the translator's art at least give the gist.

There are things to complain about with the 'experience' / total saturation coverage idea, but complaining about songs being sung in German seems just about the feeblest (to me).

[Stanfordian]

Well done Radio 3! On behalf of Classic FM I would like to thank the controller and the program planners for the 9 day 'wall-to-wall schubertiad'. Let me state unequivocally that I love most of Schubert's output but that what attracted me to classical music as a young man was its 'infinite variety' and I certainly regard spending 9 days listening to the same composer's output or even worse to the endless dissecting of his life and the structure of his works with mounting irritation and the realisation that I will have to resort to that 'classical music jukebox' CFM!O tempore o mores.

As much has I love listening to Schubert I had about enough after a couple of days. With around 600 songs with almost all of them sung in German importantly I can’t understand the texts that Schubert clearly took so much care to set. I'm not sure why the programmers choose to have this Schubert festival after all, unless I'm missing something, this isn’t a significant Schubert anniversary year. What is especially galling for me is how Radio 3 blanked the 29th January this year the actual day of the 150th anniversary of Delius’s birth. Our good friends at CFM out of due respect played Delius throughout that day.

[Mary Chambers]

I know this has been said, but there are plenty of available translations of Schubert's songs. They are mostly not in difficult German. My German is limited, but it does extend to Schubert. If it didn't, I'd look up the translations. Easy.

I've been dipping in and out of the programmes, and I've heard much I don't know - not all of it high quality by any means, which I find rather comforting - not even Schubert is perfect! There has been some very interesting discussion - Graham Johnson always has something enlightening to say, and some of the guests have been quite revealing as well.

[John Wright]

Do you have the same reaction to a Wagner Opera, or a Viennese Operetta? And what about this one - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUnS-...eature=related

I've never listened to much Wagner (other than the overtures and other instrumentalisms), operetta ah well that is tuneful

That youtube example, yikes that tune apparently was the first tune I ever sang as a toddler, apparently it was in the charts in the mid-1950s, and forever on the old Light Programme..... one Frank Weir (sax player) responsible, so here you go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ682P7wivU

[Bryn]

So far, The Spirit of Schubert in HD Sound on the iPlayer adds up to well over 21GB. Lots more to come, but it looks like the whole lot might fit on one dual layer Blu-ray disc.