Music on the telly

[Radio64]

..apologies if such a thread already exists, but I couldn't find one.

Anyway: Symphony (BBC4)

[Dave2002]

..apologies if such a thread already exists, but I couldn't find one.

Anyway: Symphony (BBC4)

I think this has been on before, but no harm in pointing it out again. Friday night is often pretty bleak on TV anyway. Then, of course, there's football! So far I have managed to avoid any of the current bout of matches.

[Radio64]

thanks Dave, but let's not talk about football, eh?

[Stillhomewardbound]

'West Side Story' vs 'Glyndebourne: the Untold Story'

I watched two BBC music documentaries back-to-back last night.

Both were 90mins and both had strong stories and larger-than-life characters to profile.

One did its job splendidly, the other seemed to be the product of all the ingredients having been flung against the wall and then scooped up into a bucket as they fell to the floor.

The first was the 'making of' documentary based around the recording of Bernstein's 'West Side Story' with messrs Bernstein, TeKanawa and Carerras which I was watching on 'You Tube' (BBC 1984). It was extremely well measured and edited with great care. It had a narrative through-line and took advantage of it's long slot to pace itself and interweave the mundanity of the recording process with the inevitable fireworks. Similarly it's movement between the actuality and the 'talking heads' was very fluid, and most importantly it had built in to its scheme reflective pauses and lingering shots here and there. 'Thinking breaks' as you could call them, for the viewer.

As for our second doc, 'Glyndebourne: the Untold Story' (BBC 2014), it simply had known of these qualities. As happens in documentaries these days it had to open with the inevitably 'busy' scene. A couple being rushed across a meadow by their eager dog and a breathy voice-over, something like 'I'm George Smiley and this is our dog, Hector, oh and my wife is a very famous cook', or some such empty bombast'. However, the doc, having set its stall out, 'sort of' carried off on its trail with all the randomness of the dog, Hector, who was apparently calling the shots.

Photographically it looked like it had been shot on one of the cheaper video cameras and there was little depth or colour to the picture while most of the talking heads were shot in an uncomfortable, tight head-and-shoulders crop. This meant there was little sense of the world or the environment about these people and without the presence of any known interviewer or interlocutor their contributions ran back-to-back with each other in a unimpeachable flow of glowing adulation.

The documentaries only sense of narration emerged in a happenstance way dependent on whatever the contributor had said in the bit before. For too long we seemed to be caught up in a ping-pong loop between a Glyndebourne historian and a Glyndebourne archivisit, then Humphrey Burton said something like '... and that was all down to John Cox'. Cue then, John Cox who mumbled 'er, I'm too modest to say it was all down to me', or something like that.

Now, I'm sorry to be so glib about this doc, but the fact of the matter is, it never gave me cause or moment to care much about the institution that is Glyndebourne. Indeed, for what seemed like a twenty minute segment, Hector became totally engrossed with something in the corner of the meadow, and what followed was a mini 'life of' Richard Strauss. Yes, I could glean that Glyndebourne had done a fair bit of Strauss and Der Rosenkavalier and there was an intelligent designer talking about his sets for one of the recent productions, but once again, why I was meant to care or feel involved, I'm not too sure.

Oh, and apparently, Peter Hall was on board at one point as Artistic Director and responsible for some of Glyndebourne's most successful productions, and there they left it. How kind of them to dispense with a golden reign in a single sentence.

Oh, sorry. Ooops, I've just checked back to the iPlayer listing and I may have to eat some of my words as it reads: "Documentary delving into the world of opera house Glyndebourne in its 80th anniversary year by examining a new production of Richard Strauss's comic opera, Der Rosenkavalier."

Well, actually, no! I don't think I will eat my words, as I hadn't read that beforehand and even reading it now, I'm not convinced that that was the job this documentary did. Even more ironic I find is the production title: 'Glyndebourne: the untold story'. So lacking was this shapeless affair in any cogency that it is not wholly unfair to say that here remains a story untold. Certainly, for a documentary about an opera house (and one with a extensive video archive as Glyndebourne's) there was precious little by way of excerpts from past productions. Instead, most of the interview clips had wallpaper instrumentals beneath them presumably swiped off some 'Opera's Greatest Instrumental Bits' CD. Was this a work-around for the expense of paying royalties on video clips?

There used to be a maxim in broadcasting which apparently counts for nothing now. It went along the lines of 'tell them what you're going to say, then tell them, and then tell them what you've told them'. It's the art of story telling, I suppose, and its as old as time itself, so I'm curious as to how, with productions like these, that requirement is no longer deemed to be necessary.

Oh well, back to 'You Tube' it is, I suppose.

[teamsaint]

Good luck to your excellent thread, Rads.

judging by my thread, it'll need it.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?7999-Music-coming-up-on-television