Friendly fire | 21 February 2019

With the upsurge of listeners to Classic FM (now boasted to be 5.6 million listeners each week) and the imminent launch of a new commercial station, Scala Radio, dedicated to classical music and fronted by the former Radio 2 DJ Simon Mayo (who has said about his new home: ‘Some of it will be familiar, some new and exciting but all timeless, beautiful and all absolutely relevant to today’), Radio 3 badly needs to regain our attention. Last weekend’s focus on Berlioz, ‘The Ultimate Romantic’, could have been such an opportunity, but either because of funding cuts or a confusion about its purpose (to find new audiences, to teach or just to entertain) there was little buzz about the weekend.

Wisely, no doubt, a decision was made not to turn over the schedules entirely to the works of the French composer, who died 150 years ago. Non-stop Berlioz for 48 hours might have been hard on the ears and emotions (unlike those magical Bach ten days in 2005, or the Mozart and Beethoven immersions that followed).