Exactly the misguided path taken by so many in recent years: Gramophone, The Times, Church of England, BBC2 - the list goes on!Originally Posted by amateur51
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Exactly the misguided path taken by so many in recent years: Gramophone, The Times, Church of England, BBC2 - the list goes on!
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An interesting idea but I doubt whether it is the case.
The online schedule and playlists appear to mirror those printed in the Radio Times, which devotes a restricted space to Radio 3. This makes me wonder whether there is an internal agreement between the department of the BBC that maintains the online schedules and BBC Worldwide (who publishes the Radio Times) that, in advance of the actual broadcast, the online schedules will only show what the Radio Times prints. (Most of the playlists seem to have appeared on the schedules shortly after the broadcasts occurred.)
In many instances the lack of any information of the works being broadcast was both frustrating and gave the impression of a cavalier attitude to Radio 3 listeners. But it might well be the ridiculous situation of the Radio Times tail wagging the BBC Schedules dog.
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Apart from anything else, the post-broadcast playlists appear in a form which corresponds to the Listen Again recordings so that you can indeed pick and choose what you want to hear. Why should the broadcasts be any different? And what's the point of taking the choice - to check in advance or not - away from listeners?
The implication is also that listeners will only choose to listen to what they know and enjoy, rather than choosing new works. In fact, the reverse is often the case: people want to be introduced to new works, not hear the same old warhorses all the time.
You will know then, ff, that I voted for No2, 'Good idea, broadly well done but with some flaws'.
Which is, of course, the right answer.
Why? I hear you splutter.
No 1. Excellence can't be watered down by 'on the whole' qualifications. Ruled out.
No 3. A sad cop out.
No 4. 'Mozart' and 'a bad idea' are contradictory, and those who selected No 4 immediately realised the contradiction and tried to cover up. Ruled out.
No 5 As for 4, without apology, but with the preposterous position of arriving at a conclusion before the trial.
'Flaws' with 'broadly' are the operative words here, and much constructive criticism has been brought to bear in dealing with them, even by those who, unfortunately, voted for the wrong options.
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PatrickOD, do you never think it is right to make a judgement about a project except on the basis of experience? What about, for instance, the current proposal for NHS reforms or the proposal to sell off a proportion of the country's woodlands? Or what if there were a proposal for a month of broadcasts on R3 in which each day featured the works of only one composer (a different one each day)? Would you always think it right to suspend judgement?
And did you listen to all of the 12-day broadcast? If not, then by your 'trial' analogy, you have failed to weigh up all the evidence :-p
Anyway, Lunchtime O'Boulez of Private Eye obviously would have voted wrongly, by your assessment. Here is his view:
"Whoever thought this was a good idea - stand up controller Roger Wright - deserves a head transplant. It was torture. Not that Mozart isn't wonderful, but blanket-bombing does no one any favours, least of all Mozart himself. Funnily enough, Wright said precisely that five years ago when asked if he was planning a Mozart marathon for the composer's anniversary in 2006. 'Our view' he replied, 'is that with Mozart end to end, the overall effect would be detrimental to the music.'"
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"Mozart" and "a bad idea" may be contradictory to some, but that's to misunderstand the point. Playing Mozart's music is a good idea, but to play "every note" (apart from the ones they forgot) end-to-end and without any musical contrast, was (in my opinion) a ludicrous idea, and I suspect that all those who voted in this way would hold a broadly similar view.
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Eine Alpensinf sums it up well; a ludicrous idea. But equally - of course - there were some 'good things' (it wd'v been a complete catastrophe for Radio 3 if there had been not one single good programme during the twelve days ) - so option 4 was the obvious choice. And more of us went for that option than any of the others. What sensible people we are...
I'm sure they'd say the contrast came in the form of the presentation, interviews, drama, and novel juxtapositions of works. And given that context, even the late-night dedications show had its place. Strictly speaking, "blanket bombing" would be if they played everything in order as quickly as possible, which would have truly been lazy and pointless, wouldn't it.without any musical contrast,
As I said, this is the kind of programming you definitely won't find anywhere else: for good or bad, it sets R3 apart and has everyone talking about it. If a handful of people hate everything about it, so what? I think it would be more useful if we were all specific about what exactly went wrong and how we think something like this might improve next time rather than wasting our breath trashing the whole concept. For example, the concern over the playlists seems very valid-- if you could persuade someone to give you straight answers about that, you'd be getting somewhere.
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Option 5 made no mention of whether there were any good programmes or not. It emphasised that it was worse than just a bad idea - it was a terrible one (or 'ludicrous', to put it another way). So it was perfectly possible to vote for option 5 even allowing for the presence of one or two good programmes.
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Perhaps they should have played the Mozart symphonies but played the wrong minuets/ slow mvts!
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