Butchers chops on speed

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Well I think this is something that France Musique does extremely well across a wide range of idioms, with streaming channels, real time & archieved performances & concerts and informed feature programs. I've no idea of their budget, presumably in much excess of R3 but whatever, it's extremely good value.

And on a slightly related tack, I woke up this morning c 7am to them playing longish excerpts from The Lugano Recordings from Martha Argerich, Shostakovich piano trio 2 and a Prokofiev concerto. Excellent but somewhat bleak, this is not your cheery Saturday wake up with R3 lite fare. (Which I see Ed Reardon is now waving a stick at).

[Ian Thumwood]

I love Ed Reardon. Biting satire at its best. The writing is extremely clever.

I have ordered some Prokokiev piano sonatas as I am not familiar with his music other than Peter and the Wolf. It is fascinating listening to unfamiliar classical music although there are areas that have little interest. I tend to listen to music that owes something to jazz or is from that era although 8 really like Scarlatti. It is amusing that Bach is always cited as a major source of inspiration in jazz when you could argue that the parallels between a lot of baroque music and jazz exists. I quite liked L' Arpegiattas mix of baroque and improvisation. I discovered this music for the first time 8n Radio 3.

One of the records that I heard on the radio when I was about 14 was Chick Webb's version of 'Liza' which was played on a local bbc programme. It is brilliant when you hear music that people have raved about and ir turns out to be even better that you expected. The arrangement was once thought to be Benny Carter's but it is no attributed to Van Alexander who passed away at few years ago at the age of 100. It is a record I still find exciting.