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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #60 on: 07:46:51, 12-05-2008 » |
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Which respected, world-class musician did they pick to announce the winner of this prestigious award? Er, the BBC's own Director of Television, Jana Bennett!!!!
Because they don't view it as music. It's just a huge pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey competition for them. I hear her brother Gordon's doing the honours next year. |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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A
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« Reply #61 on: 08:12:21, 12-05-2008 » |
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Which respected, world-class musician did they pick to announce the winner of this prestigious award? Er, the BBC's own Director of Television, Jana Bennett!!!!
I hear her brother Gordon's doing the honours next year. Nice one Reiner ! |
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Well, there you are.
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #62 on: 08:14:07, 12-05-2008 » |
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"I hear her brother Gordon's doing the honours next year." I think he did it this year.  |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #64 on: 12:39:48, 12-05-2008 » |
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Brilliant Tommy! You've very eloquently summed up the majority of our opinions I would say. P.S. Nice pic!  |
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #65 on: 12:44:57, 12-05-2008 » |
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I've posted the link to this fine assessment over at TOP, where the originator of the thread describes the blog as 'a bullseye'.
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #66 on: 13:32:38, 12-05-2008 » |
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Tommy, thank you so much for that perfect summing up. You've said it all.
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #67 on: 13:37:26, 12-05-2008 » |
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Absolutely right, Tommy. Now let's hope that some people at the BBC have the humility to learn from this dreadful mess.
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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HtoHe
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« Reply #68 on: 13:43:11, 12-05-2008 » |
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I'm in general agreement with Tommy, too; though I fear he might have done Classic FM a disservice. CFM isn't my cup of tea and I must confess I haven't listened to it in years but it's not as bad as some of these programmes, is it?
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #69 on: 13:58:15, 12-05-2008 » |
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I'm in general agreement with Tommy, too; though I fear he might have done Classic FM a disservice. CFM isn't my cup of tea and I must confess I haven't listened to it in years but it's not as bad as some of these programmes, is it?
Exactly so. Just to play devil's advocate for a moment , let's imagine a scenario in which we had, say, the Classic FM Young Musician of the Year, in association with (and shown by) Sky Arts, sponsored by, say, Naxos. Could it really have been any worse than what the BBC has served up over the past week? It certainly wouldn't have been anything like as complacent. What nobody at the BBC seems to have realised is how far they have alienated precisely the sort of people who back the concept of public service broadcasting - the sort of people they'll need when the licence fee is under threat. |
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #70 on: 14:21:33, 12-05-2008 » |
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Yet another reason I don't miss TV- but the winner sounded very spirited if a bit rough round the edges. Am I right in saying there's a r3 recording tonight?
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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John W
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« Reply #71 on: 19:51:36, 12-05-2008 » |
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What nobody at the BBC seems to have realised is how far they have alienated precisely the sort of people who back the concept of public service broadcasting - the sort of people they'll need when the licence fee is under threat.
pw, what makes you think anyone at the BBC dreads the licence fee coming under threat? Clearly they have (already) started the path towards commercialisation of the BBC network. When I was a kid watching telly the BBC sit-coms always covered up the Kellogs on the cornflakes box. Today on the BBC it's the Carling Cup, the Coca-Cola Championship, the Barclays this and the Norwich Union that. Their response to our criticism of YMOTY will be that it needs a generous sponsor like Sony or DG. John W |
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #72 on: 19:54:10, 12-05-2008 » |
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Does anyone remember the days when terrestrial television showed foreign-language films, and quite regularly? I recall being able to watch whole seasons of Bunuel and Fassbinder when I was in my teens, many films from the French New Wave, Eastern Europe, South America, and everywhere else. Nowadays a dumbed-down BBC caters to a population massively dumbed-down by the culture of Thatcherism and its New Labour continuation, and anything that doesn't deliver passive, instantaneous self-gratification to stinking, complacent couch potatoes, is right out. What nobody at the BBC seems to have realised is how far they have alienated precisely the sort of people who back the concept of public service broadcasting - the sort of people they'll need when the licence fee is under threat. Exactly - in trying to compete with commercial television on its own terms, the BBC only succeeds in erasing the whole reason for its existence in the first place. The very same is true of contemporary 'classical' music that tries to ape its own commercial counterpart (in the form of popular music) through cross-over, and the like. |
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« Last Edit: 19:59:38, 12-05-2008 by Ian Pace »
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #73 on: 20:20:41, 12-05-2008 » |
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pw, what makes you think anyone at the BBC dreads the licence fee coming under threat? Clearly they have (already) started the path towards commercialisation of the BBC network.
I don't think they care about quality any more, and as you say there is increasing commercialisation - merchandising and so on. But ultimately they know that there is only so much advertising revenue to go around, and a commercially-funded BBC would be a husk of what it is now - with correspondingly fewer jobs for the chaps. The BBC is already having to fight off an orchestrated campaign by the Murdoch organisation in particular. Does anyone remember the days when terrestrial television showed foreign-language films, and quite regularly? I recall being able to watch whole seasons of Bunuel and Fassbinder when I was in my teens, many films from the French New Wave, Eastern Europe, South America, and everywhere else.
Oh yes. BBC4 got off to a reasonable start with world cinema, but that has all gone by the wayside. Unless you are fortunate enough (like me) to live in a town with a first-class arthouse cinema, there's now nothing. |
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #74 on: 20:30:46, 12-05-2008 » |
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Does anyone remember the days when terrestrial television showed foreign-language films, and quite regularly? I recall being able to watch whole seasons of Bunuel and Fassbinder when I was in my teens, many films from the French New Wave, Eastern Europe, South America, and everywhere else.
This is indeed entirely true, I even remember thinking that BELLE DE JOUR was extraordinarily racey for BBC2  We ought to remember that at the time there was no recourse to video-clubs or dvd-rental stores for those who wanted to see foreign movies - you either saw them at the NFT, the Prince Charles or the Electric, or on tv (more frequently in rather heavily cut versions - the full versions were usually only in cinema clubs). If you lived outside a main city, your chances dwindled rapidly. Maybe there really is little or no market for art-house movies on tv now? At my end of Europe we have a (terrestrial) channel that screens art-house movies nightly (at 23:00) and gets solid viewing figures from them - both new and experimental films, and "repertoire" classics from Pasolini, Jarman or Kurosawa. After the usual 24-hour period of excitement that everyone around me - including the tv channels - is speaking a language I recognise from years ago, my trips to Britain are usually marked by a depressing slow puncture around one day after arrival... of the dire mental vacuity that has engulfed the nation? As Ian mentions, I'm sure it didn't used to be like that? I find myself seeking out live arts and new films almost every night when in London... as though fearful that I'll slip into an irrecoverable state of narcolepsy if left in front of a British tv for any period How I long for a decent edition of ARENA, or even - lord help us - the South Bloody Bank Show I feel like I don't have an England to go back to, even if I ever wanted to... it's been dug-up and paved-over. BTW, and off-topic - if you have a chance to see LE SCAPHANDRE ET LE PAPILLON, released recently, I strongly recommend it
trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQntp4an4vk |
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« Last Edit: 20:38:22, 12-05-2008 by Reiner Torheit »
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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