It’s hard to stay cross with Radio 3 for long. Just when I thought the network had stretched my loyalty too far by not only allowing Aled Jones to decamp to Classic FM but also saying goodbye to the great Catherine Bott, I had a comeback conversion. I’ll explain how that happened later. First, we should bewail the loss of Bott, who made The Early Music Show her own, with her enthusiasm, her practised authority, her ability to convey insights without being ponderous. She drew us in to share her passion for music and composers we’d never even heard of, let alone felt any desire to hear. Without her the programme will suffer (it’s been cut down from two shows a week to one), just as The Choir has sounded lost without Aled’s adventurous ears and conversational ease.
Bott, too, has been lured to Classic FM, where, according to the station’s website, she’s launching ‘one of the biggest non-fiction series in the history of British radio’, a boast that might be difficult to live up to. Everything You Wanted to Know About Classical Music began last week with an episode about period instruments (presumably as a follow-on from Bott’s career on Three). On Sunday she took us on a visit to La Scala, Milan — also perfect for Bott, who had a career as an opera singer before she came to radio, but not exactly where you would expect a series to start that is designed to make classical music less esoteric, more accessible.
Back, though, to Three and its ability to wheedle its way back into our affections. It was a routine car journey but with a simple switch of the radio button, that lifeline out of boredom, I found myself listening in to a conversation between Andrew McGregor and Richard Wigmore about some newly released recordings of Bach’s choral music.
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