CLASSICAL
PODCASTS
by
David J Barker
In one sense, the IPod and
its imitators are no more than the next step along the personal
music trail following on from the cassette-based Walkman
and
CD-playing Discman generations. In another sense, the IPod
and broadband Internet have revolutionised the way that
broadcast
radio is treated.
In my experience here in Australia,
and I daresay the experience is the same in Europe and North
America, radio had been ephemeral until a few years ago.
Once
broadcast, it was gone as far as the general public was concerned.
If you weren’t near a radio, or if the radio wasn’t on, you
missed it.
Now we have streamed transmissions
which allow us to listen on our computer, when away from
a conventional radio, and an archive of programs which provide
a means of accessing
broadcasts missed at the time of transmission (known as audio-on-demand).
In this article, I wish to
provide some thoughts on a few selections from the latter. Each
of the programs discussed here are musical in nature but
dominated by the spoken word.
Key
DL – download; can be saved
to your computer as an mp3 file and played at another time,
or on a portable music device
PDC – podcast; an ongoing
series of programmes which can be subscribed to, and automatically
downloaded
STR – streamed; can be listened
to directly without saving as a file, either live or for sometime
after transmission
If you would like to know a litlte more about these different
forms of Internet "radio", click here.
ABC
Classic FM Australia
The Morning Interview with
Margaret Throsby (STR)
http://abc.net.au/classic/throsby/
Margaret Throsby is an institution
in Australian television and radio, having worked for
the ABC in radio and TV for 40 years. She was the first female to read
the news on Australian radio and TV (back in the late 1970s.
For the last ten years, she has presented the weekday morning
program on the national classical radio station, Classic FM,
featuring a one-hour interview with a special guest, some musicians,
most not. They share their story and their favourite music,
interviewed with perception and warmth. Obviously there
is an Australian slant, because the interviews are done
in the
Sydney studio.
Only the last ten shows are
available, and because of this, the musical choices remain included.
By way of example, guests from the last two weeks included:
· Richard
E Grant (English actor)
· Richard
Ford (American author)
· John
Olsen (Australian artist)
· Faith
Bandler (Australian indigenous activist)
· Ross
Edwards (Australian composer)
Keys to Music (STR)
http://www.abc.net.au/classic/keys/
Graham Abbott’s explorations
into music fall somewhere between the musical analysis in the
BBC’s Discovering Music and the more general commentary
of the late Karl Haas’s Adventures in Good Music. Some
programs (“Under The Microscope”) provide a detailed
analysis of an individual work with a live orchestra
and audience,
most
focus on a composer or topic using recorded excerpts
to provide the illustration.
Only the last four are available,
including the musical excerpts. By way of example, the
most recent four (May 2007) were:
· On the Fringe: Schütz for
Beginners
· Preludes and Fugues: Bach
and Shostakovich
· High Fives: Music in Quintuple
Metre
· Paul Wittgenstein and Music
for the Left Hand
BBC
Discovering Music (STR)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/discoveringmusic/audioarchive.shtml
This started as a studio program
with recorded musical excerpts from BBC orchestras (removing
copyright problems) and is now a “live” program with orchestra
and presenter, in front of an audience. An expert analyses
a piece of music in terms of its structure and intersperses
short sections of the music to illustrate the point. With a
live orchestra on hand, there is the ability to emphasise certain
parts of the music, or to change it to see why the composer
did what he did. There are more than 100 individual programs,
ranging from 45 to 90 minutes. I have a very limited musical
theory background, so some of the concepts went whistling over
my head, but overall, I gained a greater appreciation of the
work. I have, when possible, listened to a program before
going to hear the work performed.
ClassicFM
UK
Tony Robinson’s Friendly
Guide to Music (DL, PDC, STR)
http://www.classicfm.com/sectional.asp?id=10675
Self-described as “no tosh”,
the purist might see this as “no substance” as well, but that
would be missing the point. Clearly aimed at the listener whose
knowledge of the history classical music is limited, Tony Robinson’s
approach is irreverent and shallow, but in the end, informative
as well: I learnt a number of things about certain composers!
Covering the entire history of western music from Hildegard
to Arvo Pärt, the concentration is on the composers, with a
very brief outline of their background and the type of music
that they wrote. Musical analysis is essentially zero, but
that too is hardly the point of the exercise.
The online versions have no
musical excerpts, which I presume have been removed for copyright
reasons. There are seventeen episodes, ranging from 13-20 minutes
long.
GuestList (DL, PDC, STR)
http://www.classicfm.com/sectional.asp?id=10137
25 minutes of highlights from
Anne-Marie Minhall’s Sunday night interview & review program
covering more than just music. This is a recent addition to
ClassicFM’s podcast section, and as such, it is not clear how
long each program will be available. Obviously, how much an
individual program appeals depends on whether the guests interest
you: the first one I listened to included Julian Lloyd Webber
talking about Elgar and the crime novelist Donna Leon talking
about her adopted city of Venice which suited me fine. Again
no music.
NPR
Classical
Music (STR)
http://www.npr.org/templates/topics/topic.php?topicId=1041
National Public Radio (NPR)
is an extraordinary treasure trove of news and current affairs
across the entire spectrum, serious and amusing. Its classical
music section features all relevant stories from NPR and its
feed stations. When I say all, I mean all: the most remarkable
thing about NPR is that its archive of streamed audio goes
back
for more than a decade, though the Classical Music section
itself only dates back to 2004, listing a "mere" 733 articles,
ranging
from brief news items lasting a few minutes to full performances.
You can listen to the Philadelphia
Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach performing all the Beethoven
symphonies, or at the other end of the spectrum, Juilliard
professor
Toby Appel’s hilarious and scurrilous characterisation of each
of the players in an orchestra. Recent items include coverage
of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edward
Elgar (with access to the great performances by du Pré and Baker among
others), and technology that produces a “new recording of a
performance that scientifically matches the earlier one”, with
full examples (the original of Glenn Gould’s 1955 Goldberg
aria, and its re-performance).
For a radio tragic such as
myself, being able to access these resources whilst sitting
at my desk, is a dream that five years ago would have been
unimaginable.
It is the ability to listen to what I want when I want, that
appeals so much. I have a large enough CD collection to entertain
myself with music for the rest of my life, but to be able to
listen to people, who are interesting and knowledgeable, talk
about this wonderful subject: what more could I ask!
And if our Musicweb readership
wishes to contribute some more suggestions via the Bulletin
Board, I will be very grateful (especially if someone can provide
me with a URL for Karl Haas on demand)!
David J Barker
