I'm picking up good vibrations


Regular readers will know I am a lapsed BBC Radio 3 listener. But yesterday evening's rare concert performance of Holst's Hymn of Jesus coupled with another rarity Strauss' Serenade for wind and that pinnacle of twentieth century music Elgar's Second Symphony, looked too good to miss. So I anxiously scanned the Radio 3 programme page for the usual above the composer billing for the presenter waiting to leap out of the speakers to aurally mug me, and drew a blank. So I tuned in with trepidation to hear an unidentified presenter, who for obvious reasons I can't credit, complementing rather than competing with the music, and, miracle of miracles, avoiding any mention of BBC New Generation Artists. Holst's Hymn was intelligently introduced and, glory be, the back announcement not only did not crash the reverberation of the final bars of Elgar's Symphony, but it also dispensed with the usual tired clichés in favour of simply identifying the music and the performers. And of course the performance of the Hymn and Symphony exhibited the authority we have come to expect from Mark Elder and the Hallé in English music. Can the energy fields of a presenter really have such an impact? Or was it the aura of Holst's heretical Hymn? Or maybe the Hoegaarden wheat beer that came with dinner? More on the good vibrations emanating from Holst's Gnostic Hymn here.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. Header image of Gnostic pentagram via Snippets and Snappits. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Pliable said…
Email received -

Hello, the presenter you were listening to last night is called Stuart Flinders (I think he may have been credited very briefly at the beginning of the broadcast): I know him as an all-purpose reporter on the BBC North West news.

Thank you for your excellent blog: it’s the first site I turn to every morning.

MS

Many thanks for filling in that gap MS. Now please can someone offer Stuart Flinders a job with Radio 3?
9:02 am
Pliable said…
Via Facebook from Ralph Spurrier - Au contraire: the present bunch of R3 presenters (Jonathan Swain and Christopher Cook excepted for the most part) need to be sat down and played a recording of the concert and told "THIS is how it should be done."
11:24 am
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