Wright or Wrong? RW blogs about the cuts....

[Don Petter]

Certainly we are spoiled these days... if you have any spare cash after the banks, government, council, electric companies nick their bit, music is so much cheaper to buy than ever before !!

I'd echo that! When I first bought LPs, they each cost the equivalent of about fifty pints of beer - Work that one out, children.

[Chris Newman]

Certainly we are spoiled these days... if you have any spare cash after the banks, government, council, electric companies nick their bit, music is so much cheaper to buy than ever before !!

I certainly agree with you, teamsaint. When I were a lad you got 40 Mars bars for one pound. My first LP cost about £2.50 or £2 10s 0d as we said then. A few weeks after I discovered "bargain" discs....for 7shillings and sixpence (about 36p today) I got the Shostakovich Symphony no 10 and the Leningrad PO with Mavrinsky. After that at about the same price John Dankworth And The London Philharmonic Orchestra with John Dankworth and conductor Hugo Rignold playing the Dankworth/Mátyás Seiber Improvisations For Jazz Band & Symphony Orchestra with Dankworth leading his band, which included a young Dudley Moore, through Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto. After that Carlo Maria Giulini and the Verdi Requiem but that cost about £4 or 160 Mars Bars!!!

[Bryn]

How come you bought some of my favourite purchases of those days? I still have a copy of the Dankworth LP, though more recently found a very fine download of a much clearer transfer. That Saga Shostakovich 10 was my introduction to the work.

[mangerton]

Don't think there's an upper limit for freelances. Geoffrey Smith is over the retirement age, for one. In fact the official retirement age for BBC staff has been 60, with exceptions for senior managers (in case you were counting up the years to go!).

As of 1-10-11, there is no longer a compulsory retirement age for the vast majority of people in the UK.

[salymap]

I bought Dvorak Symphony no 8 [then no 4] with the Czech PO and Vaclav Talich in about 1948. I think there were 5 78 records and cost me 6/8d [33p] per record. I could only afford one disc a week and a wonderful old shop, Drysdale of Woolwich, let me buy them like that. So, as has been said, a few things have got better.

[antongould]

So five weeks with no beer - how did you manage?

[teamsaint]

re prices, things have changed considerably even since my "Punk" days. back then singles were around £1 i think, roughly equivalent of £5 today (1 hours minimum wage work).
chart albums in places like Virgin were £3.99 , so around £20/£25 in todays money.

I think there has been an even bigger change in backlist. As I recall, backlist albums were more expensive still, whereas today almost all backlist seems to be cheaper than newer releases.

[salymap]

I certainly agree with you, teamsaint. When I were a lad you got 40 Mars bars for one pound. My first LP cost about £2.50 or £2 10s 0d as we said then. A few weeks after I discovered "bargain" discs....for 7shillings and sixpence (about 36p today) I got the Shostakovich Symphony no 10 and the Leningrad PO with Mavrinsky. After that at about the same price John Dankworth And The London Philharmonic Orchestra with John Dankworth and conductor Hugo Rignold playing the Dankworth/Mátyás Seiber Improvisations For Jazz Band & Symphony Orchestra with Dankworth leading his band, which included a young Dudley Moore, through Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto. After that Carlo Maria Giulini and the Verdi Requiem but that cost about £4 or 160 Mars Bars!!!

The increase that is almost unbelieveable. Radio Times was 2d, so 120 issues for a pound, now £1.20p a copy. Staggering.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

sorry to butt in here, but I caught the last movement of op59 no3, and was absolutely blown away by it. \i happily admit to being no kind of an expert, but this rendition certainly got me "into " the work. i have a version which hasn't been out of my Cd player since.

Did you rate this performance?

No "butting in" involved, teamster, and my apologies for appearing to be addressing my comments just to Ariosto. Yes, I did rate the performance very highly: I called it "cheeky" earlier because of the Brentano's enviable sense of pace and tone which perfectly captured the humour and wit of the work without trivializing it.

Don Petter (#48)

Chris (#51):

I regard the Große Fuge as the best and most important piece of music LvB ever wrote (amongst an incredible amount of also great music!!).

Likewise:

[kernelbogey]

Are there 'many' critics? The day in, day out, all day moaning seems a lot but comes from the same 30 or 40 or so messageboarders out of a membership in excess of 800 - plus a few journalists who will move on to something else next week. Of course there's a soupcon of a point, but we get 168 hours of varied programming each week & 130 plus programmes to hear on iplayer - but the average wrinkled 60 year old listener tunes in for just 6 hours a week so if you don't like what you hear there's another 160 hours to try each week. [....]

While it is easy to read these posts by the thirty or forty as moaning - and sometimes we are - I read them more as stalwart championing of a set of standards for R3 that seem to have slipped away, at least from the morning programmes. Like other 60+ listeners, whether wrinkly or as smooth of skin as I am ,I came to classical music by a process of exposure to whole works, introduced with informative comment. I perceive a widely held belief among these 'moaners' that setting music before the listener without assumption of her or his prior knowledge and understanding constitutes the best education about, and attraction to, 'serious' music. We seem to stand together against the idea that bread is interesting only with jam: that all the populist ingredients that have been added to Breakfast, and to some extent to the rest of the morning (and perhaps, too, to In Tune) are at best a distraction from the music, at worst an insult to the composers and artists. We go on and on about it because we perceive that Radio Three has taken a wrong turn, and if we do not assert our belief in a standard that has been undermined, the station will continue to drift away from a position that can be respected and venerated.

[Don Petter]

Don Petter (#48)

Just after posting #48, and spurred by Osborn's remarks, I did indeed start a thread relating to a performance in one of last week's lunchtime concerts, which I had managed to hear while in the car:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?3427-Lunchtime-Concert-(7-10-11)-Borodin-Quartet-Brahms-Op.51-2

Now nearly a day has gone by, and there has been no response (apart from ff's interesting aside).

I did try, Osborn, I really did!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes, I saw that thread, DP. Unfortunately, I haven't (yet) heard the broadcast. Watch that space!

[Anna]

Cavatina's just posted, at length, on facebook, mentioning FoR3 " let me ask you this: do you feel in any way that the FoR3's consultation with the Trust may have been responsible for greater cuts to R3's budget than would have otherwise been the case? Don't you feel the tiniest bit guilty?"
Anyway, it's too long to quote it all, you can read it, but surely deserves a reply?
It's msg 41, there is another long one from her further up.

http://www.facebook.com/bbcradio3?sk=wall&filter=1

OOPS SORRY! I've edited your post instead of adding my Reply

I've just read that, Anna, and have no intention of joining Facebook to answer the comments of someone with a pro-Wright agenda. [I must say, I do feel guilty about the even bigger cut to 5Live's budget - 7.5%, whereas R3 only has 4% - clearly FoR3's fault!

The fact is that the budget adjustments are entirely in line with the direction over the past 5-10 years.

I honestly think such sly comments aren't worth replying to.

[BBMmk2]

They should revamp 'The choir' to how it was in paul Guinery's day. Very informative back then without any of the gimmicks used now. Radio 3 is destroying itself, or is that what the gameplay of the beeb is?

[Frances_iom]

FFL I honestly think such sly comments aren't worth replying to.
not wishing to join facebook (like the lottery I leave that for the idiots of the world) but I'm intrigued as to why our over-educated and apparently unemployed/able? American feels this way - has he/she given any reason for holding such beliefs