You can almost hear the whispering through the ether. A whole weekend devoted to Chopin? Whatever was Roger Wright, Radio Three’s controller, thinking of? The Polish-born composer was only 39 when he died of TB in 1849. And he only ever really wrote for the piano. Surely there’s not enough music to fill 24 hours, let alone 48. His Preludes, Etudes, Barcarolles and Mazurkas are performed by every aspiring concert pianist, and rehashed for any promotion that demands a slushy, sentimental underscore. Do we really need a Radio Three Chopin Experience?
But Wright’s on a mission. His station is evolving away from a more rigid kind of scheduling to a broader blend of musical genres with some stunningly effective speech radio. Former fans of the station have complained bitterly about the reduction in the number of live performances, while the deletion of some of the more avant-garde programmes such as Mixing It have led to suggestions that the station is trying to be more populist. But sometimes surprising meanings, new understandings can be found through absolute focus. Chopin and nothing else. It’s like Yves Klein using only one colour to explore the meaning of blue, or Alice Munro distilling her craft by writing only short stories. Such a narrow range creates quite different insights by virtue of its concentration. Chopin and nothing else might have turned off those with a confirmed dislike of his particular musical language, but those who stuck with it will have benefited from a weekend masterclass on how to listen to music from some of the best minds in the business.
One of the advantages of there not being quite enough music to fill the hours was that there were lots of documentary features with a Chopin flavour, putting the music in context and deepening our understanding of the work.
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