Most of the time I have my radio in the car tuned to Classic FM. This, for those who don't live in the UK, is a station that plays classical music. The problem with it is that, for the most part, it plays classical music from a fairly restricted playlist of popular and undemanding classical music. There are certain pieces that you seem to hear every time that you tune in. A few weeks ago I got fed up of hearing William Walton's Crown Imperial* every day and retuned to BBC Radio three. Once again, for those who don't get BBC radio stations, this specialises in Classical music, though taking a rather more highbrow tone about it.
I was listening this morning as I drove into town. It was the CD review program and two people were playing pieces of piano music from CD and discussing them. I was struck by the difference between Radio 3 and Classic FM. When I listen to Classical FM the links are often fairly trivial and the discussion of the music superficial but when I listen to Radio 3 the links are mostly gibberish.
Let me be fair. They are mostly gibberish to me, how they sound to people who actually know something about classical music I couldn't say. I just like to listen to it; I don't actually have any expertise in the area.
But listening to the links was a bizarre experience where all the words made sense but the actual sentences seemed meaningless.
What, for example, was meant when one recording was described by "I felt I was listening to her fingers rather than to Schubert"?
Did they perhaps expect her to play the piece with her nose?
Another piece was described as sounding "hesitant and disjointed" though I had detected nothing other than a pleasant, if unfamiliar, piece of piano music. In a longer interval it was "explained" that musicians should not feel bound by the dots on the page, that they should be more modernistically interpretive. Aren't the dots on the page the things that tell them what to play? What is "modernistically interpretive" anyway? Is it like the old Morcambe and Wise joke about "playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order"?
I suppose this is what happens when you eavesdrop on experts talking to each oter, regardless of the field. Or possibly it is genuine gibberish and they only think it makes sense.
Still, gibberish aside, at least the music is drawn from a much deeper well and in twoweeks of listening I haven't heard Crown Imperial once.
I was listening this morning as I drove into town. It was the CD review program and two people were playing pieces of piano music from CD and discussing them. I was struck by the difference between Radio 3 and Classic FM. When I listen to Classical FM the links are often fairly trivial and the discussion of the music superficial but when I listen to Radio 3 the links are mostly gibberish.
Let me be fair. They are mostly gibberish to me, how they sound to people who actually know something about classical music I couldn't say. I just like to listen to it; I don't actually have any expertise in the area.
But listening to the links was a bizarre experience where all the words made sense but the actual sentences seemed meaningless.
What, for example, was meant when one recording was described by "I felt I was listening to her fingers rather than to Schubert"?
Did they perhaps expect her to play the piece with her nose?
Another piece was described as sounding "hesitant and disjointed" though I had detected nothing other than a pleasant, if unfamiliar, piece of piano music. In a longer interval it was "explained" that musicians should not feel bound by the dots on the page, that they should be more modernistically interpretive. Aren't the dots on the page the things that tell them what to play? What is "modernistically interpretive" anyway? Is it like the old Morcambe and Wise joke about "playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order"?
I suppose this is what happens when you eavesdrop on experts talking to each oter, regardless of the field. Or possibly it is genuine gibberish and they only think it makes sense.
Still, gibberish aside, at least the music is drawn from a much deeper well and in twoweeks of listening I haven't heard Crown Imperial once.
*Crown Imperial for some reason always sounds like the Thunderbirds theme tune to me anyway.
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