Then comes a compilation of live performance and concert recordings, Composer of the Week (could this be the longest-running format in British radio?) and the drive-time In Tune. The traditional live evening concert is still there, providing employment for the BBC’s five full-time orchestras.
What’s new is the emphasis on chill-out, ambient and therapeutic music represented by Night Tracks and Radio3’s digital spin-off BBC Radio Three Unwind. Spoken word, as represented by the illustrated talk strand The Essay, has lost its highbrow connotations and become quirky and personal. Finally comes a jazz series, Round Midnight, which for the first time in the long history of jazz on Radio 3 has a black presenter, Soweto Kinch.
Conclusion
So, do these five snapshots really show evidence of dumbing down? Of course they do. In those early years of the Third Programme, every concert and earnest discussion had the fire of conviction. You tuned in knowing you would be challenged by something new and daring, or stretched by strenuous debate, or uplifted by a timeless classic. And overall the schedule had an eccentricity and refusal to stick to formulas which was inspiring in itself.
But equally, of course, it couldn’t last. You can’t be exalted or eccentric 24 hours a day, and the constant increase in the station’s scope has brought compensations. On a purely quantitative measure, Radio 3 has probably never been so rich as it is now. It ranges across every conceivable genre of music, from medieval motets to romantic opera, world music to jazz and ambient; even pop slips into the eclectic late-night strands. And within classical music, the station’s heartland, the core repertoire is expanding by making room for forgotten and marginalised composers, even if, sadly, drama has now entirely disappeared from the station.
Admirable as the change has been, what I miss is that sense of belief. The determination to offer a welcome to every genre of music, even chill-out, has gone hand in hand with the ebbing away of a sense that the station has a core mission. And the overenthusiastic presentation doesn’t help. If everything is utterly wonderful, then nothing is.
Radio 3 can’t turn the clock back. But it would be wonderful if for a few hours a week at least, the old vaunting ambition of the Third Programme to reach high – to be the most intelligent and daring network – could be revived.