Last Friday – the thirteenth – was a really rotten day, what with the Blogger outage & the return of the rain.
So home, knotted up, wet & miserable in unaccustomed gloom.
But Radio 3 has had a makeover.
Every so often, in recent years, I have thought of writing a post asking the question of why Radio 3 should always sound so lugubrious.
Didn’t matter what work they were playing, even pressing the buttons or turning the knob blindfold the station was instantly recognisable, & never to be lingered over except for certain specific speech programmes.
Now we have a live concert every weekday evening. Why this should make such a difference I am unable to say. It may be something highly technical – I remember once hearing a discussion about how Radio 3 was the only BBC station not to use a certain kind of compression (I think it was) which led to some complaints about inaudibility.
Whatever it was, lugubrious was the only word to describe it.
It was not always this way. I used to listen a lot in my younger days. I particularly remember my introduction to Mahler.
If even Stravinsky was considered a bit too modern & difficult back then, Mahler was just unplayable, or at least unplayed. Too gloomy, Germanic, or something. So when I was doing the ironing one Friday just after lunch & they announced that Mahler was next I almost went across the room to turn my transistor radio to another station, until I thought at least to give it a go, it might be Good For Me to learn.
I suppose I must have finished the ironing, carried away with the experience of hearing that music for the first time.
Friday evening brought the most joyous performance of Bach’s B minor mass by Philippe Herreweghe with his choir and orchestra. The music soared & filled the space of St John’s, Smith Square in a way that the music for the Royal Wedding could not fill Westminster Abbey, even listening on the same old bedside radio.
For the second half the lights were just switched off, & we lay back listening in the dark while all the tension drained away.
Link
Bach's B minor Mass from the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music
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