Tomorrow is non-stop Liszt

[Anna]

Radio 3 celebrates Franz Liszt's bicentenary with a special day of concerts from all over the European Broadcasting Union. The day starts with BBC Singers in a programme of Liszt's vocal music from Wigmore Hall in London. Then to Raiding where Liszt was born, for some of his symphonic poems, a form which he invented. Liszt's Hungarian background is represented through a performance of his mighty oratorio, Christus from Budapest. After retiring from the concert platform at the age of only 35, Liszt settled in Weimar, and the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra concert from there includes his Faust Symphony. Liszt spent his final years in Bayreuth, and the day finishes with a live concert from the Grosses Festspielhaus featuring his Second Piano Concerto, performed by Konstantin Sherbakov.

And it goes on ........ and on ........ until 20:45 except for a bit of Tannhauser. Well, I'm up for it. Anyone else (I love these total immersions) Edit: It starts at midday

[Bryn]

Crossed fingers that Christus is made available in HD Sound via the iPlayer's on demand facility. I've programmed the Pure Bug to save the DAB mp2, just in case they dump a 56kbps HE-AAC version on us.

[Simon]

I've programmed the Pure Bug to save the DAB mp2, just in case they dump a 56kbps HE-AAC version on us.

Earth to BH ... earth to BH ...

If you are going to contribute to this forum, it would almost certainly be more useful if you'd do so in a language that other people could understand.

We aren't all audiotechnophiles you know!

[MrGongGong]

Earth to BH ... earth to BH ...

If you are going to contribute to this forum, it would almost certainly be more useful if you'd do so in a language that other people could understand.

We aren't all audiotechnophiles you know!

Makes perfect sense to me
and if it didn't , I have a magic box which lets me find out stuff I don't know about

[Bryn]

Be fair MrGG, it might just require the engagement of more than one brain cell simultaneously, and the poor little lad might not have got the hang of Internet search facilities, such as that provided by Google, yet. Do also bear in mind the contempt Marx noted for anything vaguely theoretical among the English. You would not expect the archetypical little Englander to change such ways, surely?

[EdgeleyRob]

I've programmed the Pure Bug to save the DAB mp2, just in case they dump a 56kbps HE-AAC version on us.

[mercia]

I enjoyed the male-voice items with piano
Hungaria didn't do much for me. In parts it sounded like the soundtrack to a silent film, in my view.
Battle of the Huns and Hamlet, but no Mazeppa.
EDIT - shouldn't Liszt day include a solo piano recital?

[Anna]

The BBC Singers leave me cold, but that sort of choral isn't my thing. However I am, to my amazement, enjoying the concert now, possibly because I don't know the works. Mercia - good point - surely there should be more piano?

[Caliban]

The BBC Singers leave me cold, but that sort of choral isn't my thing.

Same here. Wasn't listening today though!

[Bryn]

O.K., for those too indolent to keep up, Radio 3 DAB uses the old, inefficient but robust MPEG-1 audio layer II codec (mp2) to carry its audio information in digital form. Most of the time the data rate for that mode of transmission is 192k bits per second (approximately equivalent in audio quality to a a28kpps mp3 (MPEG-1 audio layer III). The on demand version of the iPlayer offering for Radio 3 variously uses the much more efficient Advanced Audio Coding, Low Complexity (AAC-LC) codec (COder/DECoder) at 192kbps or 320kbps (HD Sound), or High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) at the horribly low data rate of 56kbps. In the past week or so more use has been made of the excellent 320kbps AAC-LC option, but a few programmes have been slipping through with only the low audio quality 56kbps HE-AAC encoding. Last night's Hear and Now programme was one thus poorly treated. Rupert Brun, who heads up the relevant team of iPlayer technos is to be thanked and congratulated on making so many Radio 3 programmes available on demand in HD Sound audio quality. However, more attention needs to be paid to ensuring that the listeners are not lumbered with 56kpbs HE-AAC as the only option via the on demand iPlayer facility.

Now that it's over I note that most of the event was coded only at 160kbps 'joint stereo' mp2 on DAB (due to 5LSX taking some data bandwidth). However, it looks like the iPlayer has come up trumps with an HD Sound rate AAC-LC offering on demand for 7 days.