On An Overgrown Path

Those who read my recent post BBC Radio 3's big mixtake will not be surprised by today's news that the classical station's audience plunged 8% during a 12 month period when the total UK radio audience grew by 2%. I was certainly no fan of Nicholas Kenyon and Roger Wright during their tenures at Radio 3. But at least they dumbed the station down with flair. Current incumbent Alan Davey 's mixtape-led dumbing down is not just 100% flair-free, it is positively cringe-inducing. There is nothing else to say other than repeating the final paragraph of my earlier post . The livelihoods of five leading orchestras and a choir, and the future of the largest new music commissioning budget in the world depend on the healthy survival of BBC Radio 3. You only need to listen to Radio 3's daytime programmes to understand that the patient's vital signs look very bad indeed, and to realise that drastic and painful surgery is urgently required to provide any hope of sur...

Nicholas Kenyon in the Guardian declares God save The Last Night of the Proms post-Brexit and the Telegraph reports that Anti-Brexit campaigners to hijack Last Night of the Proms with EU flags . When will classical music finally realise that until it stops taking the Last Night of the Proms seriously, classical music will not be taken seriously? A usual I am steering well clear of that annual gathering of the twittering crowd, and instead am off to Crete off to sample some contemporary modal music . A post last year described how exciting and overlooked music was evolving in Crete under the visionary leadership of Ross Daly . Recent listening that has set my pulse racing has included two outstanding new CDs from Ross' pupils. On Thrace lyra prodigy Sokratis Sinopoulos teams up with virtuoso percussionists Bijan and Keyvan Chemirani , and - strange but true - Ensemble Intercontemporain cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras . The programme includes Lutoslawki 's Sacher Variation,...

Reaction to Alan Davey’s appointment as controller of BBC Radio 3 has been predictably facile. The Guardian fulfilled its role as part of the BBC PR machine with a sycophantic piece by arts editor Charlotte Higgins titled Alan Davey: why Radio 3 have hired well in this former punk enthusiast . It takes a lot to reduce me to tears of laughter, but Ms. Higgins assertion that “Within the BBC itself, audience figures are not the main priority for Radio 3” certainly had tears of mirth rolling down my cheeks; as did her assertion that Alan Davey’s appointment was justified by the size of his CD collection. In the opposing camp, Norman Lebrecht’s outpouring of vitriol suggests that the designate Radio 3 controller dented Lebrecht’s Rolls Royce in the Arts Council car park at some time in the past; either that or Lebrecht craved after the post that Davey was appointed to. Among the fence sitters, the self-styled Friends of Radio 3 used the appointment of a new controller to express - fo...

Roger Wright's recently announced move from the BBC to Aldeburgh has been described elsewhere as a " bombshell " and " surprising "; but personally I would describe it as another predictable step in the remorseless suburbanization of classical music . Roger Wright has not left the BBC: he has been moved sideways by the music establishment to a "safe house" at Aldeburgh. As has previously been pointed out here , the chairman of Aldeburgh Music council Simon Robey is also chairman of the Royal Opera House , while Aldeburgh Music president Lord Dennis Stevenson of Coddenham is a director of Glyndebourne productions as well as listing consultancy to Universal Music in his parliamentary declaration of interests . Their colleague Laura Wade-Gery sits on both the Aldeburgh Music council and the Royal Opera House board of trustees, another Aldeburgh Music council member David Robbie is a former non-executive director of the BBC , and the Barbican Arts Cen...

Today we have a new pretender to the title of 'Face of the Proms' . But fifty years ago the Proms had a very different 'face' and the story of his rise and fall still has considerable relevance. Between 1947 and 1966 Sir Malcolm Sargent conducted no less than 508 Promenade Concerts * and from 1950 to 1957 was chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. It was Sargent who first alerted the BBC to the TV ratings potential of the Proms with his theatrical Last Nights as seen above, and his heavyweight TV exposure made Sargent - nicknamed 'Flash Harry' - the first classical music household name in the UK. In an age where success is measured in social media impact it is significant that Nicholas Kenyon - who was director of the BBC Proms from to 1996 to 2007 - describes Sargent during his Proms tenure as "the most socially famous conductor in the country". But despite his popularity Sargent fell from grace with the BBC. His autocratic manner was di...

Audience data for UK radio stations for the first quarter 2012 was published while I was travelling. This quarter includes the nine days during which BBC Radio 3’s much-hyped Schubert Experience was broadcast, but the BBC-centric UK media and blogs that did  the hyping  and hyping   still failed to report that the data records a distinctly bad experience. In Q1 2012 the audience for Radio 3 fell to 1.902 million listeners, a drop of 15.8% from the same quarter the previous year. Hours per listener did increase, but total listening hours (audience x hours per listener) – the key measure of a radio station’s health – plummeted by 13.6%. Writing on the Radio 3 blog network controller Roger Wright, who has implemented an unprecedented series of audience chasing initiatives including a classical chart , disingenuously declares that "audience figures are only one measure of our success". Radio 3’s dismal Q1 performance follows an established trend that is the result of tw...

Elizabeth Maconchy's The Land, a suite for orchestra was given its world premiere by Henry Wood and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at a Promenade Concert in August 1930 and the twenty-three year old composer's Prom debut received Dudamelesque press coverage including the headline 'Girl Composer's Triumph'. It may have been Elizabeth Maconchy's first Proms performance but it definitely was not the first performance by a woman (sorry girl) composer. But what was? My money would be on the October 1902 performance of the Dance from Ethel Smyth's opera Der Wald . But I have never been very successful at betting and I await correction by collaborative readers. With the exception of Nicholas Kenyon's notorious female free 2006 Proms season , for which the Queen made him a night of the male composers , women composers are better accepted than women conductors - both at the BBC Proms and elsewhere. Is it because the Karajan-style macho male stereotype still domi...

Alex Ross has quite rightly highlighted the absence of any women composers in the New York Philharmonic's 2011/12 season. That programming faux pas is a reminder that Nicholas Kenyon famously created an entire BBC Proms season without any music by women , for which he received a knighthood three months later. Elsewhere there has been some , but not enough , progress towards gender equality in classical music. But, with a few notable exceptions, the symphony has remained an all male preserve. One of those notable exceptions is the muscular Second Symphony of the Welsh composer Grace Williams. This was recorded by Vernon Handley , who never received a knighthood for championing women composers, and the (then) BBC Welsh Orchestra for the long defunct BBC Artium label and the recording was issued on the 1980 LP seen above. This important 20th century symphony has proved its enduring merit by living on in recorded form under license to the Lyrita label where it is available on the ...

The BBC's latest Freedom of Information disclosure , which itemises the expenses of senior staff, makes interesting reading. BBC Proms director and Radio 3 controller Roger Wright, whose salary is over £190,000 , spent £1308.83 last September on 'internal hospitality' for 'staff entertainment/annual event' . That must have been quite a party, but not enough it seems. Soon afterwards another £1032.85 went on 'Internal hospitality, Staff Entertainment, Annual Event - Radio 3, Perf Groups, Proms Awayday'. It is not all bad news though, and I do draw some consolation from the £38 spent in February this year on '4 CDs featuring Arnold , Stanford, Villa Lobos' . But does this mean the the BBC record library has been closed? - presumably to save costs. But all these are small change compared with the £6083.24 which Roger Wright claimed for 'Hotels - Room' on his personal expenses across twelve separate claims, the majority of which fall within the ...

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Sometimes I fear that certain themes are overplayed here. Yes, I mean the treatment of musicians of colour , the death-wish of the major labels , ageism, the neglect of female musicians and other minorities , the role of the musician in dissent and the idiocy of the BBC . Maybe I should devote more space to the latest wunderkind signed to Universal Music. But then I have one of those moments and I realise that, like Byron, I was born for opposition. Just such a moment occured this morning. When writing posts I try to confirm facts from at least one independent source. Yesterday I found plenty of confirmation that Odaline de la Martinez was the first woman to conduct a BBC Prom . But I could find no confirmation of my memory that it was a 1994 concert performance of Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers . Something felt wrong with the date - could almost 99 years of Prom concerts really have passed before male supremacy was breached? A comment posted by a reader to my article supporte...

1972 - Stockhausen's Carré for four orchestral groups is performed twice in a late-night Promenade concert, rehearsal shown in photo above. Other Proms include the first UK performance of Elliott Carter's Concerto for Orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez and George Crumb's Echoes of Time and River. 2008 - Proms season includes Stockhausen's Klang (13th and 15th hour), Kontakte, Stimmung and two performances of Gruppen in one concert. There is also Xenakis coupled with Vaughan Williams , and four works by Elliott Carter including two UK premieres, plus lots of Messiaen and Vaughan Williams and a programme of twentieth-century music mixed with renaissance polyphony . (Wish I had thought of that ). Are things getting better under new Proms director Roger Wright ? Well, there is also music from Doctor Who as shown in the ridiculous BBC photo opportunity above, dancing round a maypole in Kensington Gardens, and musicians "popping up" on street corners,...

Overgrown Path has been saying it for years - BBC Proms - a multicultural society? , BBC Proms 2006 lacks eternal feminine , Music gets in the way of running BBC Proms , and BBC Proms last night - I flee the country . Now other people are saying it - Hodge attacks Proms: they're narrow and lack the common British values: The culture minister, Margaret Hodge, will today criticise the Prom concerts as one of many British cultural events that fail to engender new common values or attract more than a narrow unrepresentative audience. At last people are finally waking up to the fact that the BBC Proms in their present form are outdated, irrelevant and unworthy of the BBC's marketing hype as 'the world's greatest music festival'. But government intervention will only make the situation worse, unless the cause of the problem is tackled. History is the key to understanding the present problems. The first Promenade Concert took place in 1895, and it was twenty-seven years ...

Chandos Records has a new blog and it looks rather familiar. Now they need some decent photos and album covers and to work out how hyperlinks work. Talking of technology Jean-Michel Jarre is performing his 1977 album Oxygene live at the Albert Hall in March and he is using the original Mellotron , string-ensemble Eminents and VCS 3 synthesisers for the gig, not a computer or pre-recorded track in sight. He thinks the analogue sound is better, and he's not the first to say it . Jarre has a classical pedigree, he studied at the Paris Conservatoire and also with the father of musique concrète , Pierre Schaeffer at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales . More in the Independent . Staying at the Albert Hall Vernon Handley may not yet have his Knighthood , but my sources tell me he has a 2008 BBC Prom after a long absence from the venue. This is the first season for the new Proms director (and BBC Radio 3 controller) Roger Wright after the Michael Ball years of Nicholas Kenyon . At lea...

" I completely agree with you, but can't say so publicly because I depend on work from the BBC " is a message I am receiving with increasing frequency. And the confidential messages are coming from some surprisingly high profile personalities. Monday's post about the knighthood for former BBC Radio 3 controller and Proms director Nicholas Kenyon generated a record number of private messages of support. As well as dismay over the knighthood for the creator of BBC Radio 2.5 there was also widespread outrage that there was no similar award for one of the greatest ever champions of British music. Vernon (Tod) Handley was born in 1930, and has probably recorded more British music than any conductor, living or dead. He is an acclaimed interpreter of Elgar , Bax , Vaughan Williams , Finzi , and many other composers. I can remember a Gerontius with his Guildford orchestra and choir in 1976 that was as good as any I have ever heard. But Tod isn't just a special...

Envy? Try some other 'Es' ... Expensive, egregious and ennobled . The source of that 'envy of the world' quote is here. Photo (c) 2007 On An Overgrown Path . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Norman Lebrecht's book may may have bitten the dust . But there is always Alex Ross' new magnus opus and much more beyond if you are looking for words on twentieth-century music. My header image shows a personal favourite music, Michael Nyman's Experimental Music - Cage and Beyond (CUP ISBN 0521653835). It was written in 1974, and although the 1999 edition didn't update it there is a new, and valuable, discography. Elsewhere Mark Grant recommends Albert Glinsky's Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage , (University of Illinois Press ISBN 0252025822) while on these pages composer and violinist Elaine Fine argued the case for Peter Conrad's Modern Times, Modern Places (Knopf ISBN 037540113X). I have recommended Paul Giffiths' A Concise History of Western Music (CUP ISBN 0521842948) to several readers, and fellow blogger Garth Trinkl bought it, and confirmed that the chapters on twentieth century music are thought-provoking. Nicholas Kenyon's exce...

Tomorrow night West End star Michael Ball sings an evening of show tunes at the BBC Proms . Outgoing Proms director Nicholas Kenyon justified his appearance with these words: "I think he is one of the great, intelligent singing artists alive today. He deserves a place at the Proms just as much as performers in the great classical tradition. Our job is to cover the whole waterfront". Which resonates with a story from 1995, when Nicholas Kenyon was controller of BBC Radio 3 . Here is the story from the late Humphrey Carpenter's excellent official history of the network . And the words in the headline are not mine, they come from that very same official history. Radio 3's new 9-10 am programme would be called Morning Collection , and would be presented by Paul Gambaccini [photo above], the transatlantic-born disc jockey whose 'music for lovers' programme on Classic FM had been a target of some mockery in the statuion's early days ... He would now joi...