A love letter to Radio 3

[Nick Armstrong]

https://open.substack.com/pub/neilk/p/the-company-of-friends-the-miracle?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

[gradus]

Perhaps 'Joint Best...' along with R4.

[antongould]

Another one of your aliases eh Rumpole …..gave the game away when you mentioned listening with your late night spliff ……

of course I agree with every word ……. as I am sure will many others hereabouts …..

[cloughie]

https://open.substack.com/pub/neilk/...utm_medium=web

So many good points there. I don’t agree with all of it but in the scale of things maybe for 2023 we are perhaps more fortunate than we sometimes think about what Radio 3 brings us. ‘On’ and ‘Off’ buttons are always there for our convenience!

[Serial_Apologist]

Well... nearly....

[Old Grumpy]

Perhaps 'Joint Best...' along with R4.

[Old Grumpy]

of course I agree with every word ……. as I am sure will many others hereabouts …..

Indeed!

[eighthobstruction]

....all that passing on, in the first paragraphs (on the left hand side no doubt me Lord) made me a bit peckish, and when I came back to the text I thought,I, I thought I, I thought I.....um....it's ok i'll finish it later....

[smittims]

If we criticise R3 so much it's because it matters. I don't suppose many would bother to criticise Radio 1. However good R3 is, and it is very good, theres no room for complacency; quality is under threat.

[RichardB]

Thanks Nick, I enjoyed reading that. I think R3 still compares fairly well to equivalent stations elsewhere in Europe - its Dutch counterpart, which I have the car radio tuned to, is not at all dissimilar, although they do have frequent "blind listening" programmes which I find highly diverting and which are a trick R3 seems to be missing - there was a feature the other day on Die Schöne Müllerin where my favourite turned out to be a recording by Ian Bostridge whose work I had previously not liked at all. I do wish R3 was more committed to the less flavour-of-the-month aspects of 20th and 21st century music - for example, with the best will in the world, I can't see anything in the music of Florence Price (as opposed to plenty of other African-American composers like George Lewis, Julius Eastman, Anthony Braxton or Olly Wilson). I still listen to it whenever I'm in the UK though. (And often when I'm not.)

[french frank]

I agree with a lot of the analysis, but am perplexed by the conclusion that R3 is 'in a golden age of rude health'. Admittedly, he begins with 'I think', indicating a recognition that his conclusion is entirely subjective. It means no more than 'I like it because this is just the kind of thing I like'. It is not "true", however many people agree with it!

I don't agree with George Bernard Shaw's "the majority [is] always wrong" but he did preface it with "The minority is sometimes right" - which I do agree with. Though in this case 'the majority' does NOT think that R3 is in a golden age of rude health. They don't think anything about it at all.

[Nick Armstrong]

…for example, with the best will in the world, I can't see anything in the music of Florence Price (as opposed to plenty of other African-American composers….)

I’m glad it’s not just me - I’ve never been able to see the inclusion of so much of her stuff as anything more than a ‘tick box’ exercise… (and I go out of my way to avoid it).

As opposed likewise to the work of plenty of other women composers - I’d say that my principal debt to R3 in recent years has been to open my ears to the music of Louise Farrenc, Charlotte Sohy, Doreen Carwithen, Hélène de Montgeroult, Mel Bonis etc etc

[RichardB]

I’m glad it’s not just me

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good reasons why her work should be given an airing and her important place in music history acknowledged. There's more to music than what it sounds like, after all, and if the box being ticked has "do something to redress the imbalance cause by the long history of racism in the classical music world, and create fertile ground for the emergence of future more diverse generations of creative musicians" then it does need to be ticked. It does seem on the other hand that next to the box is written something more like "look as if you're doing something". It would be a much better idea to have a greater diversity of programmers and producers at Radio 3 than the present lot choosing what they think they ought to be programming, however good their intentions.

[french frank]

There's more to music than what it sounds like, after all

[Nick Armstrong]

Don't get me wrong…

Yes points taken.

I still don’t mind if I never hear a note of Florence’s music again…