RADIO 3 evening concert intervals - cut the music !

[kuligin]

Much the same can be said for programme notes for orchestral concerts. The Halle ones in th 1960s used to contain musical exanples. I found these useful and informative, but presumably being able to read music is now regarded as elitist.

I remember those programmes, they taught an ignoramus like me a lot, even if some it went over my head, they also told you when the Halle had last played a piece. I thereby found out I was attending the Halle premiere of Janaceks Sinfonietta!

I dont mind the current programmes except for the silly date line telling you a list of events that happened at the same time the music was composed, generally totally irrelevant.

[Flay]

If I may be permitted to but into this fraught discussion.

I don't particularly like music being played in the interval programmes, I would prefer a talk or discussion.

However I hate the way Discovering Music has been ruined. If I remember correctly the original programmes lasted up to an hour, they were made in a studio and any clips were pre-recorded. This made for a sleeker more authoritative production. There used to be an online archive of programmes listed by composer, allowing all the old episodes to be enjoyed at will. I found this most educational when I went through my own musical renaissance. I can't find this archive any more, and what there is seems to be listed by date only.

The format was then changed to have a live presentation before the work under discussion would be performed in full. This still made for fairly good listening (although I could not see the point of having questions from the audience as they were generally of poor quality). Unfortunately now DM has been downgraded so it can barely touch on the subject in question.

[amateur51]

If I may be permitted to but into this fraught discussion.

I don't particularly like music being played in the interval programmes, I would prefer a talk or discussion.

However I hate the way Discovering Music has been ruined. If I remember correctly the original programmes lasted up to an hour, they were made in a studio and any clips were pre-recorded. This made for a sleeker more authoritative production. There used to be an online archive of programmes listed by composer, allowing all the old episodes to be enjoyed at will. I found this most educational when I went through my own musical renaissance. I can't find this archive any more, and what there is seems to be listed by date only.

The format was then changed to have a live presentation before the work under discussion would be performed in full. This still made for fairly good listening (although I could not see the point of having questions from the audience as they were generally of poor quality). Unfortunately now DM has been downgraded so it can barely touch on the subject in question.

A very fair summary, Flay

[jayne lee wilson]

Amusing and interesting discussion! And nice to see some people can get cross without me around

Intervals, shmintervals... crisis - what crisis?

Those 20 minutes are usually spent coping with Mum, cat and dishes of the day fetching tea, coffee and... chewy sticks. Usually collapse in my chair as the greeting applause for part 2 fades...
But no, I'd rather not have music in or around them, even assuming I could listen. If the talk is about the following work I would usually avoid it, otherwise the music's impact would, for me, be diminished. (But a listener coming to Tippett's 2nd for the first time may find it intensified, so...)

Heavens, I'd be grateful just to find an evening concert of sufficient interest to draw me in - what, is Thursday now The Rite Night? Sounds like a job for R2 circa 1975...
Still there's Tippett 1 next Friday - shame about the pairing of these with big, main-course concertos though. But there's always Jonathan Lloyd to look forward to....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Discovering Music began as a 45min programme in the 1990s. A variety of presenters (including Anthony Payne) were involved and illustrations came from recorded performances. Some were very good, others less so (Chris de Souza did a couple of programmes in which he seemed to be suggesting that Barbara Cartland wrote Brahms' First Symphony and Schumann's Second!)

It was then turned into an hour-and-a-half programme with live performers who would play extracts and conclude with a complete performance of the work involved: a sort of high-level open rehearsal and lecture followed by a complete performance. Some of these were excellent - SJ's discussion of RVW's Fifth (in which the orchestra also performed some of the sketches and initial ideas - so that the audience could hear the glorious difference between opening the work with a straightforward D pedal and the actual C natural that the composer used) and SM-P's discussion of the Brandenburg Concertos (in which the various polyphonic layers and Tonal shifts were dissected to sighs of loving recognition from the audience) stand out in my memory as broadcasting at its best. A reminder of how Tovey, Hopkins and Bernstein all used to introduce "ordinary" listeners to the intricasies of how such Music works, presenting techinical terms in such a way that listeners unused to such language could fully understand and hear.

Then a year or so ago, the programme was reduced to a twenty minute "crammer", (?almost?) exclusively presented by SJ and mainly devoted to Orchestral works. It's not as good, and suffers from the tight time-span as much as the NHS suffers from under-staffing. There's too much to discuss in too short a time.

[aeolium]

I think on the whole I preferred the 45 minute DM, particularly when they began to schedule it a few days before a live performance of the work in question, so that the ideas conveyed in the programme were reasonably fresh when you heard the performance. The problem with the longer 90 minute version - and this is true of the current condensed one - was that I found I didn't really want to hear the performance of the full work immediately after hearing a load of extracts. That said, as ferney mentioned, some of the longer programmes were very good (and some not so good, as when Charles Hazlewood interpreted Mozart's D minor piano concerto in terms of Mozart working out his psychological problems with his father ).

I am certainly among those who wants to learn about the use of keys and key-changes within works. Some of the best talks I have heard on music - e.g. Robert Simpson on Fidelio and Hans Keller on Haydn's op 76 quartets - were very illuminating on this subject.

[gradus]

I liked the idea mentioned earlier of digging out good spoken word broadcasts, sometimes connected to the music played but often not. An example that comes to mind was the fascinating short programme in which the Elgar's maid reminisced about her life in the Elgar household and their day to day behaviour. I have managed to mislay the cassette but the recording may still be available at the the British Library National Sound Archive. Ever wondered why the last var is 'Edu'? Apparently it (edoo) was Alice's nickname for him around the house.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I liked the idea mentioned earlier of digging out good spoken word broadcasts, sometimes connected to the music played but often not. An example that comes to mind was the fascinating short programme in which the Elgar's maid reminisced about her life in the Elgar household and their day to day behaviour. I have managed to mislay the cassette but the recording may still be available at the the British Library National Sound Archive. Ever wondered why the last var is 'Edu'? Apparently it (edoo) was Alice's nickname for him around the house.

Yes, there were some wonderful tidbits, weren't there? Fritz Spiegl used to come up with some gems: before a performance of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, he once did a feature on the first performance, using the composer's Conversation Books as his chief source. What were the great man's own thoughts as the concert loomed? "HAIRCUT!" and "If you look at that girl from the side, you can see she's got a splendid bottom!"

I wonder if she was called Joy?

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, there were some wonderful tidbits, weren't there? Fritz Spiegl used to come up with some gems: before a performance of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, he once did a feature on the first performance, using the composer's Conversation Books as his chief source. What were the great man's own thoughts as the concert loomed? "HAIRCUT!" and "If you look at that girl from the side, you can see she's got a splendid bottom!"

I wonder if she was called Joy?

Ode ear!

[salymap]

I liked the idea mentioned earlier of digging out good spoken word broadcasts, sometimes connected to the music played but often not. An example that comes to mind was the fascinating short programme in which the Elgar's maid reminisced about her life in the Elgar household and their day to day behaviour. I have managed to mislay the cassette but the recording may still be available at the the British Library National Sound Archive. Ever wondered why the last var is 'Edu'? Apparently it (edoo) was Alice's nickname for him around the house.

I don't remember the programme with Elgar's maid, but knew he was called Edu by his wife. Think I learned it one of my early visits to the Elgar Birthplace or from his book of letters

Also that, in the last Variation, he always whistled as he came up his front path and that features in the music. Fascinated me as a kid because my dad did that too.

[french frank]

I don't watch many TV progs but did take a look at HRH's Parry fillum. The sight of DON sitting at the piano demonstrating points about the chords in Jerusalem made me think - That's what I call 'enthusiasm' - not just gushing hyperbole about how wonderful something is/was/will be.

[Nick Armstrong]

I don't watch many TV progs but did take a look at HRH's Parry fillum. The sight of DON sitting at the piano demonstrating points about the chords in Jerusalem made me think - That's what I call 'enthusiasm' - not just gushing hyperbole about how wonderful something is/was/will be.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I don't watch many TV progs but did take a look at HRH's Parry fillum. The sight of DON sitting at the piano demonstrating points about the chords in Jerusalem made me think - That's what I call 'enthusiasm' - not just gushing hyperbole about how wonderful something is/was/will be.

[EdgeleyRob]

I don't watch many TV progs but did take a look at HRH's Parry fillum. The sight of DON sitting at the piano demonstrating points about the chords in Jerusalem made me think - That's what I call 'enthusiasm' - not just gushing hyperbole about how wonderful something is/was/will be.

Well, I don't understand how anyone can't be enthusiastic about Parry's music.