Composer of the Week - any thoughts on the format?

[Chris Newman]

Ouch! What I am saying is that it is 2 prime-time hours every weekday, every week. Do we need the repeat, and if so, why at that time?

I think that the answers are CotW is (a) a popular programme, (b) it is convenient for the early lunch, high tea and drive-time slots (c) it is economical to produce providing work for the Cardiff Beeb (d) and mainly that Radio 3 cannot afford to provide another programme so as with BBC 3 and BBC4 TV repeats are the order of the day.

[Flay]

Points taken and accepted, Chris

[french frank]

repeats are the order of the day.

But it's not clear why the old system of leaving a week's gap between the repeats wasn't continued.

I particularly asked RW why the programme was repeated the same day and can't quite remember what the answer was. There was something about Jenny Abramsky (late of this parish) saying how could Composer of the Week have two composers and there it sort of petered out.

[DracoM]

For the repeat slot, what about a half hour showcase for Youth Orchestras of UK / Europe, followed by a similar showcase for school choirs in UK? They used to do this and it would have the immediate effect of getting young people and their parents to listen to R3? And it would be relatively cheap. Get the relevant ensembles to send in their own demo recordings. These days many places have pretty good standards of kit.

[cloughie]

Ouch! What I am saying is that it is 2 prime-time hours every weekday, every week. Do we need the repeat, and if so, why at that time?

I agree Flay, in this era of iplayer it looks like lazy programming to me.

[Barbirollians]

Frankly, the last thing we need is Radio 3 "refreshing " one of its best programmes .

I can hear it now - Rob Cowan does Dvorak and talks to his special guest( insert tedious minor celeb ) who tells him why he/she loves Dvorak

[JFLL]

Frankly, the last thing we need is Radio 3 "refreshing " one of its best programmes .

I can hear it now - Rob Cowan does Dvorak and talks to his special guest( insert tedious minor celeb ) who tells him why he/she loves Dvorak

I would hope that Rob Cowan would revert to his true persona as an expert on historical recordings!

I suspect that the rather lukewarm response to my query was partly because CoW is, warts and all, something like what Radio 3 used to be like on a routine basis, so should be prserved because the alternative is likely to be worse. That's probably true, alas.

I was very interested in FF's details of the programme from 1997. What stands out, as well as the much greater variety than now, is that complete works were played, for example, Dvorak's 7th Symphony (40 mins) and d'Indy's Symphonie sur un chant montagnard (30 mins). That brings me to another gripe about today's CoW. My heart sinks when I see all the pieces labelled '2nd movt.', '4th movt.' etc. If I want that I can go to Classic FM. Most symphonies are no longer than 30-40 mins, so it's not as though there isn't time to play them in full.

There must still be a number of presenters on R3 who could front the programme from time to time, e.g. Rob Cowan, Stephen Johnson, James Jolly, Ian Burnside, Sarah Walker, Susan Sharpe, Jonathan Swain, Christopher Cook, Catherine Bott, Lucy Skeaping, Penny Gore, Verity Sharp (and for aught I know Petroc Trelawney has a secret passion for Stockhausen).

[Barbirollians]

I would happily send Trelawney and Cowan straight back to Classic FM and they can take Sara Mohr Pietsch, katie Derham and Sean Rafferty with them

[Don Petter]

I was very interested in FF's details of the programme from 1997. What stands out, as well as the much greater variety than now, is that complete works were played, for example, Dvorak's 7th Symphony (40 mins) and d'Indy's Symphonie sur un chant montagnard (30 mins). That brings me to another gripe about today's CoW. My heart sinks when I see all the pieces labelled '2nd movt.', '4th movt.' etc. If I want that I can go to Classic FM. Most symphonies are no longer than 30-40 mins, so it's not as though there isn't time to play them in full.

That thought has crossed my mind as a minor annoyance with the current CotW. I seem to remember a few weeks ago we heard just the first two movements of a three movement work. The missing movement was of less than ten minutes duration. Surely in a week's programmes, totalling five hours, some rearrangement could have avoided such an anomaly?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

My heart sinks when I see all the pieces labelled '2nd movt.', '4th movt.' etc. If I want that I can go to Classic FM. Most symphonies are no longer than 30-40 mins, so it's not as though there isn't time to play them in full.

... I don't entirely share your reservations about DM: he's one of the very best presenters on R3. But I do share S_A's annoyance that so much biographical chat is presented on the programme. There are ways of giving technical information (about Harmony, Structure, the composer's working methods etc etc) to a non-specialist listener in an informative, non-threatening manner that are being ignored in the present format. So perhaps a greater variety of presenters might be the way to achieve this? Certainly many of the names you suggest might be able to do so - I would add Robert Warby and Sara Mohr-Pietsch. No, not the infuriating person with that name who presents the Breakfast Club programmes, but the highly intelligent young woman who co-presents Hear & Now and who did such an excellent job with the Discovering Music double on the Brandenburg Concertos.