Depressing, but predictable, to see the mainstream media scrambling aboard the Bohuslav Martinů bandwagon as soon as BBC Radio 3 announces a cycle of his superb symphonies . Equally depressing, but a sign of the times, to see the Independent publishing an appreciation of the composer's symphonies by a writer who confesses elsewhere to never having heard a single note of them. As Norman Lebrecht famously wrote in the Evening Standard back in 2006: ‘... until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’. Sadly the hard facts now show that Norman is no longer at the Evening Standard , and, as from next Monday, the Evening Standard will no longer be a paid for newspaper . But you can find pre-bandwagon appreciations of Martinů 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
Comments
"It is a sign of cultural defeat when you have to keep on assuring your audience that what they are listening to is wonderful."
Amen. In recent years, CBC Radio 2 (in Canada) increasingly exhibits the same tendency. They've pretty well lost my wife and I (and our daughter is probably more negative than we are).
Yet the Spectator's Charles Moore describes himself as "a musical ignoramus" and thinks "Radio 3 is becoming stupid".
The classical stations have lost knowledgable listeners like you and me. But they are not attracting new listeners, as is confirmed by RAJAR data here in the UK.
http://www.overgrownpath.com/2011/10/bbc-shows-world-how-not-to-do-classical.html
Yet still the dumbing out continues....