Cast your vote

[Bryn]

Hi !

can we please have a few assorted flowers and just a wee bit more expressiveness ( on the "Smile List" ). Say trade out the four Christmas icons. . . . . . ?

[kernelbogey]

[...] It would have been good, for example, to have had a series of programmes looking at his keyboard music both in relation to changes in instrument technology and to the work of other composers around him. This might also have included discussion of aspects of performance practice, such as the use of ornamentation in repeats (something missing from the broadcasts of the pianos sonatas that I have heard) [.....]

I agree with this. It appears that the project was designed to 'hook' new listeners (evidence: trailers with a popular feel to their presentation); consequently there was much duplication with individual movements performed, e.g on Breakfast. This ignored the needs of the substantial audience that listens all day (or most of it) to Radio3, for whom tedium set in.

This could have been alleviated by making the programmes - or at least a selection - available for longer than seven days on iPlayer. There is also a good argument for spreading such a project over a longer period - six weekends perhaps.

In some ways this was a return to seriousness that some listeners think that Radio3 is relinquishing. I would like to see more programmes of a technical nature broadcast - e.g. the idea above about keyboard music - acknowledging that Radio3 has an educational function, and that many professional, practising or aspiring musicians are regular listeners. Likewise more programmes setting Mozart in the context of contemporaries with commentary highlighting the innovations he created and other differences from contemporaneous composition.

[french frank]

Bryn

This is the great revenge!

I was the one who originally (yes, originally) sent those flipping penguins to someone in an email. I can only apologise to everyone at r3ok ...

PS. I regard them as an alien import and am minded to ban them

[subcontrabass]

I am unsure if all CM programmes are available on demand.

There is a Listen on Demand facility. You have to dig around on their website to find it.

[kernelbogey]

....those flipping penguins ....

Dancing a minuet, I think

[Anna]

There is a Listen on Demand facility. You have to dig around on their website to find it.

I've just been back to their website and found that. It appears not to work with Mac, Linux and Firefox. However, looking again at their playlists, as soon as something has been aired it's on the listings together with information about the ensemble, record label, etc. I assume it's easier for them to do this (as it's all recorded music) than in the case of R3 where it is (occasionally) live music but still, not an enormously complicated technical task I would have thought? Just someone tapping the info into a keyboard and thence to the R3 homepage.

[Mark Sealey]

Aside from some of the less than stellar presentational R3-isms, which have been commented on here, the biggest flaw in the concept is a false assumption of listening routines and patterns:

• either one is always able to be awake and able to listen at the times when works one wants to hear are being broadcast (listen again is not yet robust enough to take up the slack), or
• one can dip in and out of a composer (like Mozart) because it hardly matters what one happens to catch.

For example, suppose I wanted to study the symphonies (or, say the concerti for instruments other than piano). I'd then have had to follow such an unusual listening pattern as both would have been impossible and which renders the idea of making everything available for its own sake rather silly.

(Still love Mozart, though.)

[amateur51]

I agree with many of the points made here but I would add that I felt truly lost last Sunday when not only did I have wall-to-wall Mozart on R3, I had pretty much wall-to-wall readings from St James' Bible on R4.

Which bright spark came up with that conjunction?

It was very close to being bullied, I felt

[Lion-of-Vienna]

There was a lot of adverse criticism of the BBC beforehand about 12 days of non-stop Mozart being a waste of broadcasting time and, reading some of the comments above, there still is. However, as a lion who listens to Radio 3 very selectively, I have not found it too bad.

Yes it has confirmed my opinion that a lot of Mozart’s music would have been consigned to Room 101 many years ago were it not for the name on the title page (more than any other major composer perhaps?). However, it has given me a gentle prod that there are masterpieces there that I have not listened to for quite a while, the string quintets for example. It has even got me digging out CDs from my Mozart Edition box that I have not yet listened to.

What I have enjoyed most about the last fortnight has not been the music of Mozart himself but the variety of interpreters that we have heard. Highlights for me have been Brendel playing the 15th Piano Concerto, Horowitz playing the Sonata K281 and Grumiaux etc in the G Minor String Quintet.

[subcontrabass]

St James' Bible

When was King James I of England and VI of Scotland canonised?

[Pianorak]

I can't believe I am saying this - but I absolutely loved it (witht the same reservation (1) in #6), having given the thumbs down in the original poll.
I loved it because a) I never thought I'd grow to like the fortepiano - and now I am no longer hostile towards it and b) I have come to realize there is a lot more syncopation in Mozart than I thought, which means I've learnt something which is always good in my books.

[Bryn]

When was King James I of England and VI of Scotland canonised?

15:51

[amateur51]

When was King James I of England and VI of Scotland canonised?

Well as an atheist and a republican all I can say is 'what do you expect?'

Apols to any tender souls who are offended

[sigolene euphemia]

FUN ! I guess I could select a few off the web ... but knowing me, being American raised... well that would mean EXCESSIVE, would it not ?

So thank you for Walter and Norman and Bruno in their clog flapping of their flippers. And much more joyful than the penguins of cartoonist Steve Bell.

kind wishes with a which to me is rosy cheeks from the frosted air not "embarrassment",

s.

[eucalyptus44]

I've enjoyed much of the Mozart Fest but have now got quite a persistent case of repetitive brain injury with Mozartian trills and cadences constantly rolling round my head. Looking forward to a broad mix tomorrow.