7July
Regular correspondent Quirks writes regarding Myleene Klass and crossover classical music.
Amongst my electronic acquaintances are a substantial number of classical musicians, primarily singers, They generally make reference to this type of music as 'crossover'. I don't tend to like such music, invariably the intentions are all too obvious and the singers usually tick stereotypical boxes.
Such things are possible - witness the remarkable work of Anne Dudley. However, it requires a lot of talent, perhaps an exceptional amount.
Go on, name one female crossover singer who's not a soprano.
This style of music seems to be best considered as classical music trying to ape popular music.
True. It could be argued - as Norman Lebrecht does - that this is a perversion of the classical idiom. Or it could be argued that this is a valid approach in and of itself, and that a blurring of the boundaries between pop and classical is A Good Thing, for they are artifices of snobbery.
I heard that an Italian translation of a certain Rolf Lovland composition
That's You raise me up
, Daniel O'Donnell fans everywhere.
is one of the ten songs on the rushed-out CD from Paul 'Better This Than The Little Kid' Potts. How many ways of ruining a perfectly good song can exist?
He's going to capitalise on his very limited ability while it lasts, and what better way than to record a song that the audience will already know and hate. See, for instance, Philip Hensher in the Indytab of 19 June.
Regular correspondent Mat GB had the misfortune to hear Mr. Lebrecht talking with Miss Klass. Now, we have no particular liking for Mr. Lebrecht - he's an adequate moderator for a radio discussion programme. Nor do we have a particular liking for Miss Klass, the stain of Popstars
there. We do not dismiss either of them out of hand; we will give a hearing to her collection of tunes, we will give a hearing to his collection of ideas, theses, and prejudices.
Mr. GB summarises Mr. Lebrecht's argument as, No one that buys these things goes on to attend real opera, ballet or concerts. If that is an accurate quote - and the shamefully ephemeral Toady
programme provides neither transcript nor audio archive so that we might verify - then we shall not even deign to give a verbal response to Mr. Lebrecht. We shall merely move our glasses approximately one centimetre down our nose, fix our eyes on Mr. Lebrecht, and glare.
Overgrown Path explains the problem with Radio 3 at the moment. Giving in to commercial pressures and relinquishing the high ground has resulted in no audience gains against Classic FM.
We completely disagree with the conclusion, though. The only way to end the agony is to complete the work of making the network a lavishly funded clone of Classic FM. Actually, the only way to end the agony is to stop competing with GWR's Easy Classics.
Chop off the head of Radio 3, and reach inside for the vestigial remnants of The Third Programme. Work out a sequence of live concerts and plays and intellectual talks, and dot them around the schedule. Broaden horizons. Include pieces on musical theatre, on light classics, on jazz, on science, technology, philosophy. If there's intellectual rigour, it's eligible to go on 3.
Yes, this will tread on the toes of Radio 4. So it should; the strict demarcation between Talk and Music was introduced in 1970, and instantly reduced Radios 2, 3, and 4 from broadcast to narrowcast services. It's a form of broadcast snobbery, as artificial as the divide between pop and classical. None of the BBC's stations have the variety one can hear on Australia's Radio National, on RTÉ's Radio 1, even on the World Service before it became a continual news programme.
And yes, this will mean a little less classical music on Radio 3; we anticipate that the gradient from the easy to the more taxing material becomes slightly more pronounced, and maybe a little more obvious. In exchange comes a richer experience for the committed listener, a greater chance of a serendipitous discovery, and the knowledge that the classical music the station broadcasts will be of a consistently high quality.
There is a place for GWR Easy Classics, as a nursery slope for the classical music output of Radio 3. The BBC is right to offer entry points to a service that appears to be an inaccessible monolith, but it is wrong to make that entry point every minute of the week.
If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing properly, not the half-hearted efforts that pass muster under the control of Roger Wright.
Which brings us to Camilla Cavendish's pile of piffle about BBC3viewers and The Fourth Programme. We've never quite seen the point of BBC3, which is precisely how it should be. It's not for people who can follow the works on the Fourth, it's for people who prefer their culture to come in a can with some yeast. Indeed, The Fourth Programme is precisely what Radio 3 should be aspiring to be - intelligent, witty, a grab-bag of programmes worth making a date for. Remarkably, it's only the Universal Daily Registertab that can print this sort of anti-BBC bullshit. Could this have anything to do with the business interests of its owner?
