Prom 16: Ibiza/Cobblers Prom (29.07.15)

[Barbirollians]

I assumed she had just been listening to Essential Classics or Breakfast

[french frank]

We don't even get cricket on R3 nowadays - for which I'm very grateful!

But now there's Radio 5 Live for sport, and that gets even more money than Radio 3. And has a part time digital service.

[Dave2002]

But now there's Radio 5 Live for sport, and that gets even more money than Radio 3. And has a part time digital service.

Sorry - I removed the post which contained that quote about cricket as I'm not sure it was all factually accurate.

I was trying to compare RTE Lyric FM with R3. I may revisit this in another thread, and hopefully get the facts right.

[ardcarp]

We don't even get cricket on R3 nowadays - for which I'm very grateful!

Unfortunately we get it on R4 Longwave. Most annoying as the Longwave signal can be picked up in most of continental Europe (well the Northern bits anyway). In such places they may well be interested in BBC News but not cricket.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

But now there's Radio 5 Live for sport, and that gets even more money than Radio 3. And has a part time digital service.

Are yor referring to R5 Sports Xtra? That's a part-time digital overspill channel. R5 is fully digital, but is also still appears on AM radio with lots of interference, sounding like a pre-electric 78 in this area.

[Barbirollians]

Unfortunately we get it on R4 Longwave. Most annoying as the Longwave signal can be picked up in most of continental Europe (well the Northern bits anyway). In such places they may well be interested in BBC News but not cricket.

Ah but some of us on holiday are !

[ahinton]

Terrible from Klein, yes, classic case of snobbery, inverted or not...
Purest Cant.

It's the newest cliche isn't it? Sneering at any Classical (define Classical, etc.) music lovers who complain about Proms Does Ibiza whilst never answering why Radio 1 doesn't do Beethoven, or Roussel, or Bartok... why does only Radio 3 have to include "everything" (define everything, etc.).

When I listened regularly to Rock, Pop, Dance, Indie etc., I tried to combine or alternate it with Classical, Modern Orchestral etc... but personally I couldn't, even on alternate evenings. For me, the whole ethos of "Art" music was another world from "Commercial" music, however you define them (which isn't easy). If others can do it, well, good for them, but I can't avoid the thought that their take on the Symphonic must be on a different perceptual level, whether superficial, or sincere, or not.

But Ibiza Promtastic is about as superficial, exclusive - or rather excluding, as it gets; and Suzy Klein's silly, vague, self-important attack on listeners who don't want or like it is just modish, a sort of crowdsourcing of lazy opinionation.

I couldn't agree more.

But who's this Roussel that you mention?

...(!!!)...

Anyway, I read "her" piece in RT; "disappointing" seems a mild descriptor for it. What point is she trying to prove, to whom and for what reason and purpose? Whatever if anything it might be, it's entirely lost on me. So much so, indeed, that the sooner she's mopped up to participate in Celebrity Apprentice Bake-Off, Strictly Come Sewing Bee or Britain's Got Kleine Talent the better for us all, one might say. Oh, dearie, dearie me!...

While she visits her personal cobbler in order to have one of her pairs of Manolo Blahniks repaired, might one speculate upon whether or not her date of birth has anything to do with this?...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I came across this kind of attitude when teaching. When I became Head of Music in a school, I was told of the astoundingly successful nearby school that had a whizzo jazz orchestra and concert band. "Was I OK about that?" I most certainly was, and I made absolutely no attempt to emulate them. Within two years, our school was more successful musically than theirs was, with a far higher percentage of pupils participating in extra-curricular activities than in the whizzo school (which was also in a posher area). It was difficult to break the mythological aura created around the whizzos, but in time we became the preferred school for music and half the area youth orchestra was from our players. We also had the best GSCE Music results.

Brilliant, you may say, but then a new head teacher arrived who thought like our BBC presenters. Children could not possibly like the sort of music we were doing. "My son likes Queen", he told me. Then he started playing Jenga, removing the stability of the school's music a little at a time. Three orchestras and 4 choirs soon became one orchestra, a feeble band and one choir. I was powerless to stop it from deteriorating further, so I handed in my resignation without another job to go to. The school continued to dumb down and eventually closed.

The parallels are alarming.

[richardfinegold]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-33425935

Disappointing.

My advice would be that if the BBC Core listeners are to be insulted as a bunch of shoemakers, then vote with your feet. In these days of Internet Radio there are hundreds of other worthy stations from all corners of the globe. Write or email telling them you've switched and why

[Nick Armstrong]

More advice in the lengthy comments section under this article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...presenter.html

Or you can 'have your say' by voting using the Mirror's buttons! http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/b...lusion-6016322

[Pabmusic]

Suzy Klein said suggestions the BBC was "teetering worryingly at the top of a slippery slope" were "a load of old cobblers".
"Electronic dance music is dazzling in its primal energy," the presenter of Radio 3's In Tune programme continued.

[Earlier meeting of BBC types]

A: How are we going to get an audience for this Ibiza concert?

B: Beats me. The types who like electronic dance music will never even glance at the Proms schedule. They'll be out there in the clubs anyway.

C: So why did we agree to include it?

D: Just wait - we'll get an audience. We'll create one.

A, B & C: ??

D: Yes. With a little help from...

A, B & C: ???

D: CONTROVERSY

A: But there's no controversy - it's a late-night, mid-week Prom.

B: We wouldn't expect a big audience anyway.

C: No-one's said a thing about it, as far as I know.

D: But they will when they know there's controversy...

B: What controversy?

A: You mean like the CBeeBees Prom - was that its title?

C: Don't know. Never listened to it.

D: Attention. Here's how we do it. We need a gimmick, an issue - like Top Gear tried (but they went a bit OTT so we can't emulate them).

C: I don't like blood.

D: No. So we pick a soft target... Let's see...

A: How about...

B: People who like classical music!!

A, C & D: !!!!! Great!!!!!

B: Yes, all nerds anyway. They'd be angry about an Ibiza Prom, wouldn't they?

D: Very. They'd complain about...

A,B & C: Dumbing down!!

D: Elitists! Can't you imagine what they'd say? That Radio 3 Forum up in arms!

A, B & C: That what forum?

D: Some rum types on that forum, I can tell you. There's a strange one called Pabmusic, who...

A, B & C: We can guess! Super-nerds. Figures of fun. No danger from them at all.

D: Precisely. So we publish the news that there's a controversy...

C: But there isn't...

D: Be quiet. It still hasn't sunk in, has it. Look, we get someone respected to blog that there's murmurings of discontent from...who shall we say?...

B: Elitist Proms snobs. But who should we task?

A: That Suzy Klein looks as though she might have been to Ibiza.

B: Or at least have heard of it.

D: Yes, Suzy Klein. She can say that electronic dance music is... I know - "dazzling in its primal energy" and that "great music festivals must embrace great music, in its many guises".

A: Yes. And the nerdy classical-music types are "snobs and scaremongers".

B: Scaremongers?

A: Yes, for saying that the BBC is teetering at the top of a slippery slope.

D: Teetering worryingly...

C: Have they said that?

D: They will.

B: She could even say something like: "I love dancing to an addictive club anthem as much as I adore listening to a Brahms symphony".

A & D: [Roars of laughter]

C: But what if you're too old to dance like that? What if you just like Brahms?

D: Then you shouldn't be listening in, should you. It's clearly not for the likes of you.

C: Well, I just think this is all a load of old cobblers...

D: Now, there's a thought...

[ardcarp]

[ahinton]

More advice in the lengthy comments section under this article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...presenter.html

Or you can 'have your say' by voting using the Mirror's buttons! http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/b...lusion-6016322

The Daily Telegraph responses are almost unanimously against this stance - but it's no wonder that you used a laugh emoticon in the Daily Cracked Mirror one, given that the text of the poll is "Should modern music styles be included in the Proms?" and it's such a shame that this doesn't enable "voters" to clamour for more Ferneyhough et al.

[ahinton]

My advice would be that if the BBC Core listeners are to be insulted as a bunch of shoemakers, then vote with your feet. In these days of Internet Radio there are hundreds of other worthy stations from all corners of the globe. Write or email telling them you've switched and why

"A load of cobblers", indeed? The Proms should presumably be a Schumann-free zone. Absurd as these Kleinian pronouncements are, I cannot say that they had me in stitches - and poor Sir Henry (who cannot answer back), being dragged into an "argument" by someone who simply cannot see the Wood for the shoe trees! A heel she may be, but she has no sole, so it's time that she held her tongue.

That said, let's remember that Ms Klein is but one R3 presenter and, whilst she may not be entirely alone in spouting forth such puerile inanities, there are plenty of others who would not venture anywhere near such territory and yet would anyone here brand such as McGregor, Macleod, Handley "snobs"? So let's not "vote with our feet" as a consequence of being put off R3 by the gush of one presenter's attention-seeking pronouncements; speaking for myself, I'm certainly not inKleined to do that.

Perhaps it's time for Ms Klein to move sideways to R4 as its Balearics correspondent although, having said that, I already feel sorry for Ibiza in all of this...

By the way, has anyone noticed that R1 is broadcasgting an all-Ferneyhough programme next week? We must consider ourselves fortunate that it will not be presented by Eine Kleine Popmusik...

[Richard Tarleton]

Further to the addictive club anthem/Brahms symphony false dichotomy, she goes on (in the original Radio Times piece) to say: "though I treasure Mozart's operas, I'll never tire of the pin-sharp rhymes and rhythms of great rap. Who says you're not allowed to enjoy all of it?"

Well - who? Did anyone say that? The article smacks desperately of getting her retaliation in first. And she displays the lamentable lack of understanding of the classical music audience (in all its demographic complexity) that has typified R3 in the Wright era. The 18-30 audience for this sort of thing is an ephemeral one. It's in no way comparable to - indeed the absolute opposite of - having a glimpse of classical music at Glastonbury (see her penultimate para). Indeed the organisers of the latter, Ms Eavis and co, seem to have a pin-sharp understanding of their audience.