The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place

[Suffolkcoastal]

Me too - I would like to hear his take on Job.

Definitely seconded!

I was at the RAH for that RVW concert and it was certainly my highlight of the year.

Another RVW work I would like to hear Manze conduct is Sancta Civitas, plus my 2nd favourite RVW symphony, the 9th.

[EdgeleyRob]

Job,RVW 9th symphony,I get goosebumps just reading those words.

[ardcarp]

I woke at 8 this morning and poked the R3 button hoping to hear something seasonal. Part of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, came the announcement, it's "Lord when our haughty foes assail us". Great, I thought. But guess what? It was played in an arrangement for brass ensemble. Why??? If we can't hear the genuine article on Christmas Eve, then when?

[EdgeleyRob]

I only discovered this morning that there's been a flippin advent calendar thing going on,blimey.

[antongould]

I only discovered this morning that there's been a flippin advent calendar thing going on,blimey.

Oh do try to keep up ER........

[cloughie]

I only discovered this morning that there's been a flippin advent calendar thing going on,blimey.

Have you been missing the choclates?

[EdgeleyRob]

Oh do try to keep up ER........

[antongould]

I couldn't have written that better myself.
But for me even 5 or 6 times a year is too much.
Twice or thrice is for me more than enough for works which I know well already.
An unknown work is listenend to a couple of times in a very short time, e.g. 4-6 times within 2 or 3 days. After that, it can take years before re-visiting the work again.

I have got the experience that listening to (a very big trunk of) the whole output of a composer opens new perspectives and views. For me in that respect there are two types of composers: 1. the composers whose works cause a kind of addiction (for me: Beethoven, Bach, Wagner, Sibelius, Webern, Berg, Vaughan williams) with "withdrawel symptoms" and 2. those who don't (Chopin, Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Bruckner, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Britten, Walton).
Why? Who knows?

I never really got time to enter this interesting, if not new, debate as the the festive bash gathered speed. I am like ER -there are certain pieces I find myself listening to many times during any given period and I guess I always will. Coming late and slowly to classical music maybe one of the reasons was that in "pop" there was IMHO only a limited amount of really good stuff and tons of the ordinary/mundane.
As classical has been around much longer than pop there is obviously much, much more of it about and I find, dare I say, a lot of what is off the well trodden path rather ordinary. So each to his/her own but I have to own up to listening to a number of works quite frequently which possibly explains why I do not have the problems with Breakfast and EC most people do!

[PianoSteve.]

What gets me is the repetition of certain works introduced as thouigh we've never heard them before. There is also a high frequency of American music and Handel!

[Suffolkcoastal]

What gets me is the repetition of certain works introduced as thouigh we've never heard them before. There is also a high frequency of American music and Handel!

Definitely not true of R3 as a whole. American music has nose-dived in frequency under the current regime and is now largely represented by the same handful of works, by a handful of composers.

[Black Swan]

I totally agree that American music is relegated to a few over played works. I don't have a problem with Handel. I wish there was something to look forward to in 2013 instead of more of the same old same old on Breakfast.

[JFLL]

But here’s something which pleased me. Boardees will know how I bore on about the 11.00-12.00 Breakfast slot, viz. the lack of listings of important works and performances during the later part of this hour. Well, today at 11.00 under ‘Rob’s Essential Choice’, Radio Times listed Scriabin’s Prometheus and also Schubert’s A Minor String Quartet (with the Alban Berg Quartet). Similarly, tomorrow we have Liszt’s Piano Sonata and Haydn’s Symphony no. 93 (Brüggen), and on Friday Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem and Schumann’s Fantasie in C op. 17 (Pollini). I’m quite sure that hitherto only the first of these pairs would have appeared in the RT.

So here’s a toast to Rob C for perhaps doing something about this (I did send him an email a while back) -- reclaiming (part of) Breakfast for the discriminating listener.


P.S. I eagerly turned to next week’s RT to see whether this practice is to become permanent, but alas it’s not yet apparent, as all the works at 11.00 next week which are trailed happen to be symphonies which probably don’t allow time for a major work afterwards.

[kernelbogey]

Adinsell's Warsaw Concerto on Breakfast right now. I heard it only two days ago, Friday, on TTN. Do producers have no way of checking?

[Bax-of-Delights]

So Martin Handley travels up to Salford from his home in Kent (I believe that's where he lives) on Friday night and then, one presumes, stays for two nights at a local hotel just to present Weekend Breakfast before returning home after the Sunday show? Are there absolutely no facilities at Broadcasting House in London for radio transmission any more and how much more does all this travelling take from the budget one wonders?

The Sunday "Your Call": fellow had heard a piece of music in 1977 as the signature tune to "Royal Heritage" but had never found out what it was - until 2 years ago. He obviously hadn't been a R3 listener - the piece was "Zadok the Priest", which as Suffolkcoastal will attest has been one of the most played pieces on R3.

[cloughie]

So Martin Handley travels up to Salford from his home in Kent (I believe that's where he lives) on Friday night and then, one presumes, stays for two nights at a local hotel just to present Weekend Breakfast before returning home after the Sunday show? Are there absolutely no facilities at Broadcasting House in London for radio transmission any more and how much more does all this travelling take from the budget one wonders?

With all the music making that goes on in the Manchester area surely there is someone more local who could do the job knowledgably!