On An Overgrown Path

The death of André Previn prompts me to reprise the article below. Much has changed in the twelve years since I wrote it, and the optimistic conclusion now rings hollow. One of the changes has been trading the role of classical music animateur for that of social media influencer. To me that seems a very poor bargain. From On An Overgrown Path November 2007 I am a great fan of the late John Drummond , and have quoted him, here, many times . But, I blame Drummond for the present decline in presentation standards on BBC Radio 3. In 1987, when he became controller of the network, Drummond changed the role of the presentation team from 'neutral' announcers to presenters who, in his own words, could "communicate enthusiasm and knowledge". Drummond's change was well intentioned, but terribly misguided. It has been responsible for a disastrous sequence of presenters from Paul 'music for lovers' Gambaccini in the 1990s to Petroc Trelawny and his collea...

Re: BBC Radio 3 - Exclusive Content‏ From: Nadia Ruggiero Sent: 29 April 2009 13:28:23 To: Bob Shingleton Dear Bob, BBC Radio 3 would like to invite you to become an exclusive partner of their Mendelssohn season. We would like to offer you access to a range of events and content in return for support on On An Over Grown Path . For example, the opportunity to attend the rehearsal for A Midsummer Night's Dream complete with Mendelssohn's incidental music at Middle Temple Hall this Saturday 2 May (timings tbc today). Or a live broadcast of the drive-time show "In Tune" presented by Sean Rafferty, taking place at the Birmingham Town Hall on Friday 8th May (travel & accommodation provided). We are happy to approach artists and contributors for interview if you'd be interested in talking to any of them. I would be grateful if you could indicate asap whether you would like to attend either of the above events at your earliest opportunity. I'm also happy to discus...

Last Friday evening at the Barbican, the BBC Symphony Orchestra played Supernova by Guillaume Connesson, a contemporary composer who featured here recently . I lamented to Antoine Leboyer , who introduced Connesson's music to me, that the BBC relay of the concert was marred by intrusive announcements by the Radio 3 presenter. Antoine explained that trop de talk is not unique to Radio 3, as this French joke shows: How do you recognize that you have tuned in to France Musique - the French equivalent of Radio 3 ? It is the one station where they speak all the time. John Cage is the famous champion of silence . But the following quote is from Cage's contemporary William Alwyn, and comes from the newly published biography of Alwyn titled The Innumerable Dance . I love silence. I love the beauty that lies hidden in silence. For silence in music, said Mozart, is of equal importance to sound. I was born in a time when silence could still be heard ... It is not far from silence to b...

A news story, which has just broken in Holland , makes very sweet reading indeed. Here is a free translation: Dutch Culture Minister halts Concertzender closure DEN HAAG 17 NOV 17.35h - Culture Minister Ronald Plasterk has approached the Board of Directors of the Dutch Public Broadcasting System (NPO) to insist that classical internet station Concertzender remain on-air. This promise was made by the Minister in response to questions posed to him by Parliament Member Boris van der Ham (party D66). Concertzender heard last week that the NPO would terminate its financial support as of January 1st. "I am ready to enter into discussion with the Board of Directors to figure out how the valuable contributions of Concertzender to the Dutch music culture can be given an appropriate place in a new structure," says Plasterk. Van der Ham had asked Plasterk for clarification regarding the situation in the middle of October. According to Van der Ham the Concertzender makes a positive c...

My site traffic analysis shows that the enforced closure of Dutch classical music webcaster Concertzender was the big music news story over the weekend . As American expatriate composer Vanessa Lann lamented, the station closure is 'very, very bad for Holland (and the rest of the international listening public)' and as Dutch blogger Rolf Otterhouse wrote , the internet broadcaster is 'an innovative and enthusiast team... with a passion for classical, contemporary, jazz and world music'. Despite this there has been little interest in the fate of Concertzender outside Europe, and, to date, I haven't seen one US music blog run the story. I wonder if the coverage would have been different had an American classical music station been axed? Update 17/11 - Dutch Culture Minister halts Concertzender closure. More music beyond borders here. Header image is geographic plot of all Overgrown Path readers as I write the story at 3.30pm UK time - Californians are in bed, l...

Rolf Otterhouse is not taking the enforced closure of Concertzender in Holland lying down. More power to Rolf. Check out his website here , listen to Concertzender , while you can, here. Update 17/11 - Dutch Culture Minister halts Concertzender closure. 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

The Concertzender Radio heard last night ( you wrote about it on the 8th of September ) that they are being taken off the support of the Dutch Arts Broadcast system, so they are effectively going off the (internet) air. What a huge mistake. It is one of the few excellent sources of culture in this country. Once it's gone, it will be a permanent blight on the Dutch artistic conscience.Very, very bad for Holland (and the rest of the international listening public). Vanessa Lann Here is the story from the Concertzender website: On Thursday November 13th at 5:30pm, the chairman of the Concertzender Nederland organisation came to report to the employees and volunteers that the Dutch Public Broadcasting System (NPO) plans to pull the plug on the Concertzender. In the very near future, all funding will be cut. In a studio in the MCO building in Hilversum, Bierman informed the employees and volunteers present that the NPO no longer considers the Concertzender suitable for the public broad...

Readers who think I have a down on my old employer , the BBC, should try this one for size . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

'According to official listening figures released yesterday ... BBC Radio 3, controversially overhauled last year to loud complaints from some listeners, saw its share of listening slump to a record low. The classical music, arts and culture station sank to its lowest share of listening, 0.9%, and saw weekly reach fall to 1.795m, a drop of 155,000 on the previous quarter and just above its all-time worst figure of 1.78m. The shakeup in November 2006 saw Performance on 3 moved to 7pm, Late Junction moved to a late night slot and controller Roger Wright having to deny charges that he had reduced the amount of live music . Wright, who also took charge of the Proms last year, argued at the time that while there was less "live as live" performance , there was more "as live" recorded pieces and that listeners tended not to differentiate. A Radio 3 spokesman said it was "disappointing to see that classical music listening figures are down generally".' T...

A familiar theme appears in Toronto's Globe and Mail - ' I am almost too depressed about the planned "overhaul" of CBC's Radio 2 to even write about it. What's the point? We've all seen the writing on the wall for some time now, and resistance is futile: The CBC no longer feels there is any point to devoting an entire radio station to the more musically and intellectually complex style of music colloquially, though entirely inappropriately, known as "classical" (more on that tendentious terminology in a moment), because, according to its mysterious studies, no one is interested in that any more. So, come September, there will only be "classical" music (God, I hate that term!) at midday on weekdays; the rest of the air time will be taken up with light pop and jazz. Yes, that's right, explicitly light: In an interview with The Globe and Mail last week, the executive director of radio explained that the station will be playing even m...

Due largely to requests from transatlantic listeners Future Radio's new schedule includes a repeat of my Overgrown Path programme at 12.50am UK time on Monday mornings. This translates approximately to Sunday afternoon and evening on the North American East and West Coasts, find the exact time locally here and connect to the audio stream here . The repeats start today (Feb 3) with a programme of early and contemporary music from the Santiago Pilgrimage. Do catch the excerpts from Jody Talbot's new Path of Miracles if you can, they are well worth hearing. More details here . It may be a small step, but this repeat is recognition that classical music is far from dead, and that adventuous programming produces results. Thank you Overgrown Path readers and listeners for making this possible . Overgrown Path forward programme schedule - all works are played complete: * Feb 10 - John Cage Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra and Frescobaldi Canzoni * Feb 17 - Vaug...

"Way more than 50% of our output is live music ..." claims BBC Radio 3 controller Roger Wright in a revealing article about a new jazz radio station in today's Guardian . But Radio 3's definition of live is slightly different to yours and mine. As I reported here in February 2007 virtually all evening concerts on Radio 3, except the Proms, are pre-recorded. But the BBC counts these recordings as 'live' performances, and the text streamed with their FM broadcasts describes them as 'live concert recordings'. In a wonderful example of BBC corporate-crapola Radio 3 defines 'live' as any music recorded with an audience present. Which has important implications both for musicians who earn their living from live music making, as these recorded 'live' performances can be repeated, and for audiences, who may find real concerts with living breathing musicians disappearing. If Roger Wright turned up at a concert hall for a 'live concert'...

Apologies to readers, who like me, tuned in vain to BBC Radio 4 at 7.15pm this evening to hear the 'reassessment' of Herbert von Karajan's life and work that I mentioned in one of today's post . I picked up information on the programme from today's Guardian radio listings which highlighted the Karajan programme. This information would have been supplied by the BBC publicity department. As programmes sometimes change I went to Radio 4's webpage . This clearly says: 19:15 Front Row 23 January 2008 Arts news and reviews with Mark Lawson, including a reassessment of the life and work of Herbert von Karajan as the centenary of the maestro's birth approaches. Just to make sure doubly-sure I googled 'BBC Radio 4 Karajan' and found another page on the BBC website which confirmed that the programme was being aired today at 7.15pm. So I linked to it . At 7.15 there was no Karajan feature, no explanation, and no apology. Like so many things the BBC does today, ...

Is there too much hammering of the BBC On An Overgrown Path ? A reader in an interesting position inside the walls doesn't seem to think so. Neither do posters on the BBC Radio 3 messageboard . Now find the hidden hammers here and here . Sweet picture from Creative Chocolates of Vermont . 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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

I am a great fan of the late John Drummond, and have quoted him, here, many times . But, I blame Drummond for the present decline in presentation standards on BBC Radio 3. In 1987, when he became controller of the network, Drummond changed the role of the presentation team from 'neutral' announcers to presenters who, in his own words, could "communicate enthusiasm and knowledge". Drummond's change was well intentioned, but terribly misguided. It has been responsible for a disastrous sequence of presenters from Paul 'music for lovers' Gambaccini in the 1990s to Petroc Trelawny and his colleagues today, whose idea of communicating enthusiasm and knowledge is to regurgitate half-digested chunks from a children's encyclopedia of music. The disease isn't just confined to the radio. BBC TV's Classical Star , which is fronted by Radio 3 presenters Charles Hazlewood and Chi-chi Nwanoku, has been described by an eminent musician as 'an obscene pa...

Yesterday's Mendelssohn problems on BBC Radio 3 chimed beautifully with the following story. It is told by the late and great Cormac Rigby , and is about Radio 3 presenter Tom Crowe, who made his many mistakes with great style. The best of all Tom Crowe stories is that wonderful moment when, on a Morning Concert, somebody had mistimed the final record, which I think was the Hebrides overture, and it over-ran its slot, and they weren't fast enough to suppress the Greenwich Time Signal at nine o'clock. And so the closing bars of the music and the Time Signal coincided, and there was a sort of shocked silence from Tom, and then he came on the air and said: 'Radio 3. The time is nine o'clock, and I do hope that the Mendelssohn didn't interfere with your enjoyment of the pips.' From a book with a title says it all, The Envy of the World, Fifty Years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3 (Phoenix ISBN 073802503) by another much lamented broadcaster Humphrey C...

A dummies guide to bad radio presentation on BBC Radio 3 this morning . At 10.20am presenter Sarah Walker introduced Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony with a typically arch pseudo-musicological analysis. She then played the four movements of the symphony. At the end of the final movement the Decca CD ( 466990 Maag, LSO ) was left playing without interruption, and returned to the first track, the overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. This was played all the way through, including several jumps in the CD tracking which went unnoticed. The comedy ended with Sarah Walker back announcing the whole sequence, and disingenuously blaming the Puck up on "technical difficulties". Sarah, a bad workperson always blames their tools. More BBC Radio 3 rude mechanicals here and here . 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 ...

Tip to contemporary composers. If you want your music broadcast beware of the sound of silence. I've been running into problems with extended low level passages on my Future Radio programme . The culprit is the station's silence detector which monitors the studio output. If it senses silence the smart circuitry assumes there is a fault somewhere between studio and the transmitter/web stream, and reroutes the output to a secondary distribution circuit. This then drops the internet stream, and if the silence continues the whole process repeats itself in a loop. In a word - problems. The silence detector is standard issue in the new breed of automated radio stations which operate with minimal staffing. While I was presenting my programme last week I was the only person in the studio complex, and the previous programme was pre-recorded and played by automation. And this kind of automation will become the norm as the long tail of radio grows longer. The silence detector thresholds ...

Technology is changing the way we listen to radio, but classical network BBC Radio 3 is struggling in the brave new digital world. 15% of all radio listening in the UK is now via a digital platform according to research for the quarter ending September 2007 released yesterday by RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research Limited). The data also shows that digital listening showed a big increase over the previous quarter, and that 1.6% of all radio listening is now via the internet . The number of adults who claim to have listened to the radio via a mobile phone also showed a marked increase, up to 9.2% in the last quarter. Unsurprisingly radio listening via mobile phone was most common in the younger age groups, with 23% of 15 to 24 year olds listening this way. 2.8 million adults used their mp3 player to listen to radio podcasts in the last quarter, up from 1.97 million in Q3 2006. Listening to digital only services (radio stations which are only available on a digital platform) also increa...

Email received from the developers of the Radeo internet player (above) in response to my post The day the music died : Thanks Bob! A large part of our motivation to create Radeo comes from the belief that there a many important and significant audiences that are not being served by traditional radio. Terrestrial radio, due to costs and the requirement of geographic audience density, are economically driven to serve the mass market. But there are large audiences, geographically dispersed, that are looking for "more". Perhaps more focused on a style of music, perhaps more musically challenging pieces -- the personal motivations will vary. We hope that Radeo can play a role in aiding the individual find and listen to radio that is meaningful to him/her. We also believe that a part of the historical success of conventional radio is that it gives shape and definition to "communities" of listeners -- that the radio listening experience, while an individual experience, ...