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...

Travelling round Northern France, I found myself listening to France Musique. Frank Bridge. Arnold Bax. And the incomparable performance of In a Summer Garden by Barbirolli . Presented in a way that suggested the presenter knew what he was saying.... Cf Petroc Trelawny That comment was added by a reader to a recent post . By coincidence it was awaiting moderation when I returned from driving from Cahors in the Limousin region of south-west France to the Channel port of Caen, during which drive I too found France Musique's output unusually satisfying. When I cleared the UK border control at Portsmouth and turned onto the M27 I tuned in to Martin Handley on BBC Radio 3 . In the past Martin Handley was one of the station's more erudite presenters, but I quickly switched back to the SDHC memory card in my car's audio system . Because Handley's presentation style has descended - or more probably has been forced to descend - into ' Jack and Jill radio' which treats ...

Quite rightly plans to build a 470-space car park on the river bank opposite Snape quay with connecting footbridge have been met with widespread concern . But there is more than a car park to worry about. The holding company at Snape is the private limited Snape Maltings Ltd (formerly Aldeburgh Music), which has annual revenue of £6.1 million , and former BBC Radio 3 and Proms controller Roger Wright is its chief executive. This company owns 100% of Snape Maltings Trading which is the company responsible for the retail activities on the Snape site, specifically the artisanal retail complex which generates much of the demand for car parking. Snape Maltings Trading's board includes retail big hitters Clive Schlee who is CEO of fast food chain Pret a Manger , and Stuart Rose who was chief executive and chairman of retail giant Marks and Spencers . Stuart Rose has also been a director of retail chains Argos and Woolworths. He is a Conservative peer who sits in the House of L...

Aldeburgh is a windswept fishing town on the east coast of the British Isles. "A bleak litte place; not beautiful," the novelist E.M. Forster called it. He went on: "It huddles around a flint-towered church and sprawls down to the North sea - and what a wallop the sea makes as it pounds at the shingle! Near by is a quay, at the side of an estuary, and here the scenery becomes melancholy and flat; expanses of mud, saltish commons, the marsh-birds crying." That is the opening of the chapter "Grimes! Grimes" in The Rest Is Noise , a chapter which is not only among Alex Ross' finest writing, but is also among the finest evocations of Aldeburgh and Snape by any writer. Now the Snape Maltings management company, whose chief executive is Roger Wright former controller of Radio 3 and director of the BBC Proms, wants to build 470-space flood-lit car park on the river bank seen in the header photo* across the river from Snape quay, with a footbridge crossing t...

A recent thread On An Overgrown Path that culminated in a reader's assertion that it's OK to program something that isn't perfect , received widespread support. This strand was an extension of my argument that audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music . In turn this reflected the response of "I've always felt that it is and will be strong enthusiasm that will change the world" by the much-missed Jonathan Harvey to my early advocacy of his music. But despite this, I am proposing today rather contrarily that excessive enthusiasm as well as excessive neglect can harm a composer's music. In his 1961 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America the historian Daniel J. Boorstin coined the term 'pseudo-event' for events that are staged specifically to attract media coverage. He asserted that pseudo-events are in reality 'synthetic news', and that manipulation to maximise media exposure reduces the spontaneity and intrinsi...

The charm offensive by BBC Radio 3's new controller Alan Davey has started with the full support of the mighty BBC PR machine . But there are still important unanswered questions about the departure of his predecessor Roger Wright, who is seen above. Something was not right about Roger Wright's move from the BBC to Aldeburgh Music. The BBC press release gave no reasons for his departure; however by omission it gave the clear impression that the Radio 3 controller had found a better job and would be following the standard procedure of working his notice and departing. But much that I admire Aldeburgh Music it does not make sense: Roger Wright is an ambitious guy and his dual BBC role of controller Radio 3 and director Proms was far more powerful and prestigious than ceo Aldeburgh Music; in fact at the BBC he probably had the most important job in classical music. It was also difficult to understand the financials: Aldeburgh is one of the better funded classical institutions,...

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...

Some of us received news of Roger Wright 's appointment as chief executive of Aldeburgh Music with trepidation . The PR photo released announcing his arrival in Aldebugh has done little to change that. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

William Alwyn's First Symphony is coupled with Ralph Vaughan William's Job: A Masque for Dancing in the BBC Prom being given by Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra tomorrow (Aug 13). Genuine thanks go to outgoing Prom director Roger Wright for putting together a programme that shows how classical music's big opportunity is neglected music . William Alwyn was the Suffolk composer who wasn't Britten, and suffered as a result . With Roger Wright moving to Snape hopefully this will be redressed, and perhaps we can look forward to a cycle of all five of Alwyn's magnificent symphonies spread across future Aldeburgh Festivals. Additional thanks go to Roger Wright for starting tomorrow's concert an hour early, thereby allowing me to catch the late train back to East Anglia. If any readers are at this Prom do say hello. It will be easy to spot me: I will be one of those in the audience not applauding between movements . My ticket for the Alwyn/RVW Prom w...

Éliane Radigue's electronic paeans to Tibetan Buddhism, Trilogie de la Mort and Jetsun Mila featured heavily in my iPod playlist for a recent road trip from Kalka to Leh in the north of India. As my photos show, the road climbs from Kalka on the edge of the Ganges plain over the western end of the Himalayas to reach the alpine desert of Ladakh - 'Little Tibet' - seen in the final photo. En route the road crosses some of the highest passes in the world: three are over 15,000 feet with the highest, the Taglang La pass reaching 17,480 feet. The 500 mile drive took three long days on the road plus one rest day to acclimatise. For the final 300 miles between Manali and Leh the average altitude of the road is 11,000 feet, and it is only passable between May and October. Due to the altitude there is no permanent habitation for 200 miles from Jispa until the road enters Ladakh; the only services are temporary dhaba - road side eateries - such as the one seen in photo 10. This ...

Dumbed down classical music has joined Top Gear on the list of British cultural exports. State broadcaster Radio France , which includes classical station France Musique among its seven national networks, has appointed Mathieu Gallet as its new president, and he has not been slow to import dumbing down from across the Channel. In a press interview M. Gallet has declared: “It’s not acceptable in Paris, for example, that the audience for France Musique is 1.2% compared with 3.5% for [commercial owned] Radio Classique," and promised he would “make a larger place for music and less for musicology". This despite the error of such thinking having been dramatically demonstrated by his broadcasting colleagues in Britain. Giving new audiences classical music without showing them how to listen doesn't make sense. Which explains why listening figures for classical radio - state and commercial stations combined - in the UK has plunged by 10.7% over twelve months . BBC Radio 3 ...

Latest UK radio audience figures released today graphically illustrate that there are no winners in suburbanized classical music . RAJAR audience data for the first quarter of 2014 show BBC Radio 3 continuing to lose audience, with listeners down 3.5% on the same quarter the previous year*. Classic FM's audience decline was sharper: down 5.0%. It is beyond dispute that BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM are fighting for the same audience . When the data for co-suburbanizers BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM is combined, the picture becomes even worse. Over twelve months the combined audience for the two stations has shrunk by more than a third of a million, while the total hours spent listening to classical radio has crashed by almost 11%. By contrast the overall picture for radio listening in the UK is one of rude health, with the total radio audience increasing by more than three quarters of a million in the same period that classical listeners shrunk by a third of a million. This empirica...

My thesis that the premier league composers are not played often enough is supported by the 2014 BBC Proms season. Understandably, if regretably , there is a bias towards Richard Strauss. But, beyond the anniversary effect, there are eight performances of Mahler's music - seven symphonies and a chamber work - and not a single note of Haydn . Moreover, Haydn was also totally absent from the 2013 season, while, by contrast, Mahler's Second Symphony was performed in 2011 and 2013. It is unfair to blame outgoing Proms director Roger Wright for either the Mahler glut or the Haydn drought, and it is is unlikely the balance will change in the seasons created by his successor. (Incidentally, my money is on Tony "breaking down walls" Hall appointing Classic FM boss Stephen Miron to an expanded arts role in the BBC including Radio 3 and the Proms). But back to feast or famine concert programming; the love affair with big name orchestras is partly to blame - will there e...