Music and Chat and the wrong kind of listener

[DracoM]

For the umpteenth time this season, I have tuned in to listen to a piece to have chat leading from the preceding piece, into a chat about je ne sais quoi into the inevitable interviewette 'I got in rehearsal this afternoon' into further chat with another Z-list 'expert' 'celeb' no doubt taking a fee for the 'chat-ette' etc before huzza! Soloist walks on and we start, except that I know I am bracing myself for the chat that at the end leads out of this piece into.....well, you get the picture.

[a] if I already know the piece, the surrounding persiflage is dully banal, and I am impatient for the music
[b] if I do not know the music, then I can't see why a chat-ette with whoever is of much importance and I am impatient for the music?

So.....?

Either way, I simply cannot see what the Proms Team hopes a listener with some / no knowledge will gain out of this rigmarole apart from providing paid employment for anonymous chatters.

If I do know the piece / artist in some way, then the talk is pretty superfluous, and so often just so much air and bubbles. If I do not know the piece, then I am being conned into thinking that what is being said is important.

I just turned off. Well, I thought, this is so annoying. I can LA it and cut out the dross. Why listen to it live? And then I thought, but if a lot of people think like this, where is R3 going? I've heard a lot saying it, but this Proms season has really made me wonder: their presentation is now actively so regularly getting in the way of the core product, that I wonder if THEY have actually lost sight of what the 'product' is?

Or am I just the wrong kind of listener?

[Simon Biazeck]

It makes me wonder if the BBC are seeking to justify this 'high art' by making it accessible in an environment where everything is dumbed down. It's as if we need some celebrity evangelist parachuted into every broadcast to convince us that it's just so great! if I don't like/appreciate/understand something I can make my own mind up about how I continue thinking about it.

[kernelbogey]

This highlights two R3 obsessions.

One is interviewing musicians who often have little interesting to say about the music. Sometimes, i suspect, they want to get the interview over (because they have been rehearsing and want to think about the work and their performance); and often, because English is not their first language, they do not have the capacity to talk fluently about the music. I wish they could be allowed just to perform.

The other obsession is dialogue, which seems prized over the speech of a single broadcaster. It isn't necessarily more interesting and is frequently less. I suspect this to be an over-reaction to what is regarded as 'old style' R3.

(I assume DracoM's post was inspired by the Prom. I find the 'guest' Jim Cunningham adds little.)

[Oddball]

Or am I just the wrong kind of listener?

No I think you are exactly well and entirely correct.

The music should speak for itself. But extended chats with highfalutin opinions offered by interviewer/ interviewee just get in the way of the music. In fact with some programmes on Radio 3, there is so much chat, that one is lead to believe that the music is just a by-product of the chat, and it is not really necessary to listen to the music at all.

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes and no. I know comparatively little about classical music but want to learn more. I also want to see R3, and indeed the rest of the BBC, upholding broadcasting standards appropriate to station.

The programme questioning the usual assumptions about Brahms was helpful to me. It made me more open-minded. Small amounts of information in cd programmes are also welcome.

But today in the Prom the use of the word "awesome" - twice - grated. It reminded me of the language of an eight year old child. I also found the description of Berkeley having tried to set fire to another chorister's hair off-putting. Ditto connections with Eton. I approached the piece feeling that it had been written by a cross between Clegg and Cameron.

[Chris Newman]

Apart from the excuse to sit in a comfy chair whilst waiting for the Prom and a couple of hours of standing to come I have found quite a few of the Pre-Prom events at the RCM highly enlightening. The Programme about Brahms with Stephen Johnson and Kenneth Hamilton was terrific stuff as Lateralthinking1 says. The chairman was a woolly guy but SJ and KH just got on with it striking fascinating sparks. The Rachmaninov night with Noseda was greatly improved by input from players from the BBC Phil and Sarah Walker. On the day when the NYOGB played members of the Aurora Orchestra introduced compositions by young composers from the Proms Inspire Young Composers Competition: it was exciting and showed great promise.. Andrew Litton and Charles Dance made a memorable pair and were great fun. I think these Literary Proms will get a better audience if they advertise the reader(s). Sara Mohr-Pietsch and the players of the LSO were a tremendous introduction to Colin Davis's Missa Solemnis. Ever since I began to listen to music on the Third Programme (1961 I think) I have learnt much from the interval talks and features. Things could be much worse.

[Ventilhorn]

Originally Posted by DracoM
Or am I just the wrong kind of listener?

No I think you are exactly well and entirely correct.

The music should speak for itself. But extended chats with highfalutin opinions offered by interviewer/ interviewee just get in the way of the music. In fact with some programmes on Radio 3, there is so much chat, that one is lead to believe that the music is just a by-product of the chat, and it is not really necessary to listen to the music at all.

I am in full agreement with the OP's sentiments. My bete-noire is the interviews/discussions with those who are both too young and too inexperienced to know what on earth they are talking about. For me, I would prefer music or a reading which has some relevence to the composers' life or output and for TV, just a wander round the Albert Hall by a lone cameraman, showing who and what is there, but with discretion and NO interviews

VH

[DracoM]

Trouble is that the generation of producers etc now making progs / decisions have all been brought up in the current tradition and simply cannot see that there is any other way. i.e. chat, dropping in to talk to friends, recording inconsequential blather in between bits of music is how their lives are lived on air and in RL. Maybe they just do not see what the problem is. Maybe they really do think that what they are doing is how it is. And in a way that is even more scary than thinking it was deliberate. The fact that the huge core of what R3 is about is the music reduces their status, and if you want a career in BBC music, you have to find a way / manufacture a way of getting heard. Hence the current lemming like rush to fit in persiflage, get your name in there, make yourself a somebody.

'Music? What do you mean it's all about music? It's a package, we wrap music in a chatty, accessible package, like chocolates - what's not to like? You are yesterday'.

I am about to light the blue touch paper: could this possible have anything to do with the difference made when many of the producer teams are women, for whom such lives of networking through meeting over coffee etc etc are supposedly a major part of defining a role?

TTN is closer to what I'd like.

[BudgieJane]

Of course, you don't get all this crap if you attend the concert in person.

[salymap]

Blue touch paper received. I don't think it's anything to do with women specifically. One or two of the respected older broadcasters [male] have sadly embraced the new format very enthusiastically. I will say no more.