What's your earliest memory of R3/Third Programme

[Nick Armstrong]

R3, LVB and the pit heaps - could there be anything better Rumpole ..... ????

I thought that might get your attention, anton!

[cmr_for3]

Some marvelous stories here. Thanks to all who have posted. Whatever our thoughts on current R3 output (I would love serious talks) it strikes me we incredibly lucky technologically to live in the time we do what with catch up etc. I saw a YT video the other day demonstrating how one had to prepare reel to reel tape to play it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnZXmpMo0XY&list=PLN2yCnHTG_6qxmv_pdBxWxCPsbA1Cl2RI&index=128&t=0s

I know personally I physically could not manage that, so very glad times have moved on.

On a side note I can also remember in the early days of the internet searching for foreign and only finding small clips. These days one can listen to almost any station in the world. If you'd have told me then about the amount of choice we have now I would have bit your hand off. A millionaire could not have bought that choice say 50 years ago.

Of course much like modern TV the extra choice means strict sieving/quality control.....

[LMcD]

‘Sounds interesting’ has never been bettered as a non-classical programme on R3!

Hear! Hear! It was broadcast after the 11.30 p.m. news summary. I believe Derek Jewell was also something of an authority on crosswords.

[eighthobstruction]

As now, as then, I have eclectic tastes....thirsty to listen....in 50's and 60's I would play with my soldiers on living room Axminster rug while listening to the Third Programme; coming from a mavellous (my father called it a steam radio) with all the dusty valves lighting up and emmitting a strange smell for a while....quieter floaty sounds were my favourite but bigger orchestras and symphonies provided loud climaxes as the Germans were beaten by the 8th army on my carpet....the sound from the big walnut veneered radio was marvellous (Phillips, I think) with words like High Fideliy emblazoned in gold....fabulous days with a big coke fire i was allowed to replenish one nugget at a time . Lovely Analogue.

[LMcD]

25th of June 1961 at 8.00 p.m. - Richard II with a cast including John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Rachel Gurney. (Thanks again to the BBC Genome!)

[Petrushka]

As now, as then, I have eclectic tastes....thirsty to listen....in 50's and 60's I would play with my soldiers on living room Axminster rug while listening to the Third Programme; coming from a mavellous (my father called it a steam radio) with all the dusty valves lighting up and emmitting a strange smell for a while....quieter floaty sounds were my favourite but bigger orchestras and symphonies provided loud climaxes as the Germans were beaten by the 8th army on my carpet....the sound from the big walnut veneered radio was marvellous (Phillips, I think) with words like High Fideliy emblazoned in gold....fabulous days with a big coke fire i was allowed to replenish one nugget at a time . Lovely Analogue.

[rauschwerk]

I recall also taping part of a Saturday afternoon concert on spec, as it were - works by Arthur Butterworth (didn't much care for that) and Philip Cannon (Concertino for piano and strings, which I did like, and which was was for a time very popular). Who plays works by those two nowadays, I wonder?

Oops. The BBC Genome tells me that that concert went out on the Home Service.

[Serial_Apologist]

And Boulez's Le Marteau sans Maitre, I would hope. Cornelius Cardew learned to play the guitar specifically to perform in that very first Invitation Concert. I am not aware of him ever returning to the instrument in public performance. Piano and cello were his most frequently used instruments, with a strong and virtuosic emphasis on the former.

I have a recording of that broadcast, in which Alvar Liddell introduced the percussionist as "Richard Bennett".

[Serial_Apologist]

I can remember trying to record (via a microphone into a reel-to-reel recorder) a performance of Britten's Ceremony of carols, from a portable Dansette radio rather like this:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dansette-111-portable-radio-1960s-in-green-vinyl-covered-case-fully-working/184370958243?hash=item2aed5d8fa3:g:t8oAAOSwYy9fFhUN

I was upstairs in my parents' bedroom (better reception/quieter).
Just how I knew that it was going to be on, I don't know.
We sang the piece at school, so maybe the music master told us?

I had my own VHF portable radio by about 1967, as a birthday or Christmas present, and used to listen on that.

I had a portable VHF around that time too. Having no garden I would take it up the road to Kensington Gardens after work on a hot day, prop myself under a tree munching Smiths Crisps, and listen to modern music being broadcast. Passers-by would stare at me smiling back at them while the sounds of the likes of Lutoslawsky, Penderecki and Serocki were issuing forth from my spot in the shade!

At home, anything "intellectual" being broadcast would be dismissed by my father as "philosophy, or in other words some people who have got nothing better to do with their lives asking why we are here". He called The Brain's Trust "The Train's Bust".

[eighthobstruction]

....as with several of us on this bored....very soon this would be replaced by the accompaniment of TV Test Match Cricket (often with the curtains closed to stop sun reflection)....and later; in my case, Cream, Jimmi Hendrix, and Led Zepplin....the toy soldiers now replaced by A Level revision....I didn't get back to R3 until the 90's....

....to those in S_A father mode....[I guess]....chaps who looked down their nose at me in my patched flares and flying hair [Naked and Dead in hand]....I used to say under my breath, "What did you do in the Raw, daddyoe??"....

[kernelbogey]

25th of June 1961 at 8.00 p.m. - Richard II with a cast including John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Rachel Gurney. (Thanks again to the BBC Genome!)

I remember that well: Richard II was a set book for either O or A level English. Gielgud was a wonderful Richard, bringing so much beauty to the king's narcissistic great set-pieces.

[kernelbogey]

Music Magazine with Anna Instone and Julian Herbage (Sunday mornings). Didn't hear that very often until I stopped going to church.

Michael --?-- presented the same, or possibly differently named, programme on Sunday mornings. The name of the programme and his surname both escape me. He had a very good radio voice and style.

[Nick Armstrong]

As now, as then, I have eclectic tastes....thirsty to listen....in 50's and 60's I would play with my soldiers on living room Axminster rug while listening to the Third Programme; coming from a mavellous (my father called it a steam radio) with all the dusty valves lighting up and emmitting a strange smell for a while....quieter floaty sounds were my favourite but bigger orchestras and symphonies provided loud climaxes as the Germans were beaten by the 8th army on my carpet....the sound from the big walnut veneered radio was marvellous (Phillips, I think) with words like High Fideliy emblazoned in gold....fabulous days with a big coke fire i was allowed to replenish one nugget at a time . Lovely Analogue.

Post of the month?

[cloughie]

Michael --?-- presented the same, or possibly differently named, programme on Sunday mornings. The name of the programme and his surname both escape me. He had a very good radio voice and style.

...and you remembered it all when you wore a younger man’s clothes! Why do we bother Fawlty?

[Rjw]

‘Sounds interesting’ has never been bettered as a non-classical programme on R3!

Sounds interesting with Derek Jewell
He cost me a lot of money as I was quite often tempted to buy the albums he played, eg 666 by Aphrodite's Child!