I don't know whether any Forumites have caught up with this excellent mini-series on Radio 4, or whether this is the right place to mention it.
However, anyone looking for an antidote to the anodyne gobbets of Vivaldi, Schubert and Cole Porter being served up this morning on BBC's so-called "dedicated classical music" channel would have had a marvellous time listening to this imaginatively conceived and brilliantly executed little series of three programmes, in which three "classical" composers and three "popular" musicians were commissioned by Radio 4 to each write a short piece evoked by a British landscape important to them.
We've had Courtney Pine and Anna Meredith's London, Kizzy Crawford and Gwilym Simcock's Port Talbot, and Highland/Lowland Scottish variants from Julie Fowlis and James MacMillan (today). The idea was to examine the compositional process from sight to sound, with comments from each of the composers on the "alternative" take from their colleague, and the results were fascinating and beautiful.
Today's James MacMillan premiere - a three-minute piece, appropriately entitled Playing the Skyline, for the RSNO's brass and percussion with schoolchildren from Cumnock - was a belter. It's repeated tonight, but you can Listen Again for the next twelve months.
How sad that we have to go to Radio 4 for this sort of imaginative approach to contemporary music as part of our "ordinary lives". Radio 3 has Cole Porter as composer of the week. What a camp, kitsch dereliction of duty. How can the R3 producers live with themselves?
However, anyone looking for an antidote to the anodyne gobbets of Vivaldi, Schubert and Cole Porter being served up this morning on BBC's so-called "dedicated classical music" channel would have had a marvellous time listening to this imaginatively conceived and brilliantly executed little series of three programmes, in which three "classical" composers and three "popular" musicians were commissioned by Radio 4 to each write a short piece evoked by a British landscape important to them.
We've had Courtney Pine and Anna Meredith's London, Kizzy Crawford and Gwilym Simcock's Port Talbot, and Highland/Lowland Scottish variants from Julie Fowlis and James MacMillan (today). The idea was to examine the compositional process from sight to sound, with comments from each of the composers on the "alternative" take from their colleague, and the results were fascinating and beautiful.
Today's James MacMillan premiere - a three-minute piece, appropriately entitled Playing the Skyline, for the RSNO's brass and percussion with schoolchildren from Cumnock - was a belter. It's repeated tonight, but you can Listen Again for the next twelve months.
How sad that we have to go to Radio 4 for this sort of imaginative approach to contemporary music as part of our "ordinary lives". Radio 3 has Cole Porter as composer of the week. What a camp, kitsch dereliction of duty. How can the R3 producers live with themselves?
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