New Year, New Music; NMS, Sat 4/1/19; 10:00pm

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What began aa few years ago as a month-long initiative seems to have shrivelled to this single 2-hour programme in the "for the already-initiated" slot.

Scant information about the works/composers featured in the programme on the Beeb website, save that "R3 Presenters" have chosen "favourite pieces of Music" written in the last 20 years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000cz0h

[Quarky]

What began aa few years ago as a month-long initiative seems to have shrivelled to this single 2-hour programme in the "for the already-initiated" slot.

Scant information about the works/composers featured in the programme on the Beeb website, save that "R3 Presenters" have chosen "favourite pieces of Music" written in the last 20 years.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000cz0h

It was an interesting episode, if nothing else to observe that the choices by the 12 presenters were true to type, in that they corresponded to the type of music played in their programmes. I did wonder however about SMP's choice Become Ocean.

Unfortunately nobody has yet managed to muzzle Kate Molleson, who almost spoilt my enjoyment of Rebecca Saunders' item.

[Bax-of-Delights]

I presume Elizabeth Alker has never heard of Tonto's Expanding Head Band. Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff formed the group in 1971 and were knocking out the same kind of electronic music that Alker finds 'new and exciting" some 50 years ago.

[Richard Barrett]

I presume Elizabeth Alker has never heard of Tonto's Expanding Head Band. Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff formed the group in 1971 and were knocking out the same kind of electronic music that Alker finds 'new and exciting" some 50 years ago.

Indeed.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It was an interesting episode, if nothing else to observe that the choices by the 12 presenters were true to type, in that they corresponded to the type of music played in their programmes.

- I hadn't realized when I posted the OP that the programme was just a compilation of pieces that are going to be scattered around the daily schedules throughout the week.

I did wonder however about SMP's choice Become Ocean.

Wasn't that Tom Service's choice? (The John Luther Adams' work that allowed TS to embark on one of his Thesaurus binges?) SM-P's choice was Anna Meredith's mid-life crisis piece Nautilus. Considering SM-P's and TS's active involvement in promoting real News Music, I thought both their choices were dull, derivative, lukewarm pieces - I couldn't help wondering if chosen for the daily schedules rather than for any intrinsic value.

Unfortunately nobody has yet managed to muzzle Kate Molleson, who almost spoilt my enjoyment of Rebecca Saunders' item.

Not even Suzy Klein could spoil my enjoyment of anything by Rebecca Saunders - and fair play to KM, she chose the only work played in the programme that was really worth devoting time and attention to (and, to be honest, that will still be performed in 50, 100, 250 + years).

I presume Elizabeth Alker has never heard of Tonto's Expanding Head Band. Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff formed the group in 1971 and were knocking out the same kind of electronic music that Alker finds 'new and exciting" some 50 years ago.

- that was something that kept occurring to me throughout the programme: with the exception of the Saunders, all the pieces sounded cosily like previously-existing Music. Again, I wondered if this was in consideration of what were perceived as the preferences of the daytime schedule R3 audiences? SUCH a wasted opportunity - so much wonderful, inventive, life-affirming Music written since 2000, plenty to inspire hope and confidence for the future of humanity and its creative capabilities, and yet they chose so many dead, dull, insipid pieces as works which had most impressed them. An embarrassment (of "poor-es").

[Richard Barrett]

all the pieces sounded cosily like previously-existing Music

I wonder how much contemporary music these people actually know about. Do they go to concerts they aren't professionally involved with, or listen to any recordings that don't come to them through "official channels" of one sort or another? Granted there's a lot of music about, but there's such a deadening preponderance of lazy thinking and of the "usual suspects" (of which RS is one, whatever the merits of her work).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wonder how much contemporary music these people actually know about. Do they go to concerts they aren't professionally involved with, or listen to any recordings that don't come to them through "official channels" of one sort or another?

Well, SM-P does - she's been seen at HCMF events at which she's had no professional involvement with (she was there last November, but wasn't involved in the broadcasts, for example). And for all his manifold faults, so I think does TS - difficult to say, as he turns his listening into a "professional involvement" at every opportunity - and KM. But the others ... ??? (A huge imbalance of English/American composers featured, too - which further suggests that many of the presenters allowed to make a choice don't get out very much.)

Granted there's a lot of music about, but there's such a deadening preponderance of lazy thinking and of the "usual suspects" (of which RS is one, whatever the merits of her work).

But in Saunders' case it is "the merits of her work" - which are many, varied, and astonishing - that make her a "usual suspect". The same cannot be said of the other composers featured in the programme - if the works chosen are representative of their output.

[Bryn]

Damn it! The online schedule does not identify who chose what. I have not yet listened to the programme and, given the comments so far, do not relish devoting a couple of hours to doing so, though I have skipped through via Sounds. I will just add that I feared the worst when I noticed that the two best qualified presenters in this field, Robert Worby and Sarah Walker, were not to be found within the cohort of choosers.

[Quarky]

- I hadn't realized when I posted the OP that the programme was just a compilation of pieces that are going to be scattered around the daily schedules throughout the week.


Wasn't that Tom Service's choice? (The John Luther Adams' work that allowed TS to embark on one of his Thesaurus binges?) SM-P's choice was Anna Meredith's mid-life crisis piece Nautilus. Considering SM-P's and TS's active involvement in promoting real News Music, I thought both their choices were dull, derivative, lukewarm pieces - I couldn't help wondering if chosen for the daily schedules rather than for any intrinsic value.


Not even Suzy Klein could spoil my enjoyment of anything by Rebecca Saunders - and fair play to KM, she chose the only work played in the programme that was really worth devoting time and attention to (and, to be honest, that will still be performed in 50, 100, 250 + years).

Apologies - yes it was Nautilus I was referring to - It didn't show in the play list I was looking at.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I will just add that I feared the worst when I noticed that the two best qualified presenters in this field, Robert Worby and Sarah Walker, were not to be found within the cohort of choosers.

No - Worby's exclusion seemed particularly "pointed", I thought.

[Richard Barrett]

Well, SM-P does - she's been seen at HCMF events at which she's had no professional involvement with

Crossing town to see another event chosen by the same "curator" isn't quite what I had in mind.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Crossing town to see another event chosen by the same "curator" isn't quite what I had in mind.

Not quite the same thing - AFAIK, she wasn't involved in any of the broadcasts from this year's Festival, but chose to come up to Huddersfield in the middle of November to attend concerts at the first weekend. I think that that shows a greater commitment to concert-going than what I think you had in mind.

Given her work at Dartington (as well as for the BBC) it would be difficult to separate neatly her many "professional involvements" from her personal enthusiasms, wouldn't it? Wouldn't she have to have some personal enthusiasm for the area in which she has chosen to work, given that, with Breakfast and Choir & Organ on her CV, she could have upped to ClassicFM or somesuch had she wanted?

Which is why I was amazed that she was so enthusiastic about such a poor piece of work by her "friend".

[Serial_Apologist]

Having heard the whole programme, I was reminded of one of the poorer episodes of Mixing It - less for the cross-generic adventurousness of the latter programme, but in thinking that a programme of that kind, were Radio 3 ever to re-introduce one, would have been a more appropriate place for the bulk of what was presented.

[Richard Barrett]

Having heard the whole programme, I was reminded of one of the poorer episodes of Mixing It - less for the cross-generic adventurousness of the latter programme, but in thinking that a programme of that kind, were Radio 3 ever to re-introduce one, would have been a more appropriate place for the bulk of what was presented.

IMO Radio 3 has, as the result of a sequence of quite deliberate policy decisions, made itself basically irrelevant as a vehicle for listeners to hear and get to know what's going on in contemporary music. What little remains is parochial, apologetic, unexciting and no amount of gushing can disguise this. Maybe this is an issue with radio in general.

[Bax-of-Delights]

I presume Elizabeth Alker has never heard of Tonto's Expanding Head Band. Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff formed the group in 1971 and were knocking out the same kind of electronic music that Alker finds 'new and exciting" some 50 years ago.

And here's "Riversong" by the same - produced 50 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy6NXJFDrDY