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.
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