BBC Radio 3 Feed

Reflecting on a strong performance from Radio 3

2016-05-19T09:00:00+00:00

Radio 3’s latest listening figures (RAJAR) reveal that the network has performed strongly during Controller Alan Davey’s first year in post, recording its highest audience total in three years, with the highest Breakfast figures since 2013, the highest morning figures on record (Essential Classics) and the second highest drivetime (In Tune) figures in the shows’ history.

In my first year it’s been an honour to lead the BBC Radio 3 family which includes BBC Radio 3, BBC Proms and the BBC performing groups, all of whom play an essential part in our purpose to connect audiences with remarkable music and culture.

I’m really proud of our constantly evolving offer which is unique, and lovingly curated by our brilliant team of experts and passionate producers.

We’ve enjoyed a strong year of special programming including Why Music? with the Wellcome Collection, a great Proms season, WOMAD, EFG London Jazz Festival, Northern Lights, New Year New Music and our International Women’s Day composers’ focus, as well as the programmes we do day in, day out, with live music on every night and more than 90 opera relays – more than any other broadcaster in the world.

We’ve also created a 'late night zone' of experimentation with a new Jazz programme (Jazz Now), a revamped Late Junction, and developed the idea of 'slow radio' with full-length dramas, operas, symphonies and special pieces of music like Max Richter’s 8-hour through-the-night lullaby, Sleep, or 'The Well Tuned Piano' – a 5-hour piano meditation on the colour magenta by La Monte Young, broadcast through the night... or the first full broadcast in surround sound of Stockhausen’s Hymnen.

The record figure for our morning show, Essential Classics – the highest in 10 years – shows the tweaks we’ve made there are really paying off. These include introducing contemporary music and fixed features such as 'Music in Time'.

I’m also proud of Breakfast’s highest reach in three years: we’ve intentionally set out to let the music breathe, cutting back on news bulletins and allowing longer pieces of music. And our drivetime show, In Tune, with its unique live music and culture news, has delivered its second highest audience figure on record.

As we move into our 70th anniversary year, I’m delighted that Radio 3 – broadcast and streamed as always in beautiful uncompressed sound – continues to play such a special role in the daily lives of our listeners. That is down to the people who work here – knowledgeable, enthusiastic individuals who make great programmes with consummate skill and pride in what they do.

Northern Lights, Northern Words

2015-12-04T13:03:15+00:00

Radio 3 Controller Alan Davey looks ahead to three weeks of in-depth programming in the Northern Lights season, and explains how the Icelandic sagas have come to dominate so much of Northern thinking and culture.

This weekend Radio 3 begins its celebrations of the culture of Northern countries, places which spend the winter months in darkness (compensated by long summer nights). This is triggered by the anniversary of the birth of Sibelius, Finland's best known composer, and a composer who is played a lot on Radio 3 and by the BBC Performing Groups.

But instead of just concentrating on Sibelius, we decided to look at artistic responses to 'the North' in many different ways, and to examine what 'the North' means in human imagination. As a triangulation point to this line of thought we are broadcasting on Sunday at 11.30pm a 'contrapuntal documentary' made by pianist Glenn Gould for CBC in 1967, called 'The Idea of North'.

Glenn Gould

My own fascination with the extreme North began when at university and I discovered the great Sagas of Iceland. Iceland is a nation with a great literary heritage which literally is based in the soil. From around the 10th century are the great Poetic Eddas: mythological poems that tell of the Gods - Oðin, Loki and so on - the mythology of which was brought together by a priest in 12th century Iceland called Snorri Sturlusson. Then there are the Scaldic poems - complex and compact works that use mythological images to convey emotion and thought - the medieval poet Egil Skallagrimsson uses this style in his great poem Sonnatorrek on the death of his son.

But the Sagas are different. Laconic in style, they tell of people who lived in real places, and who quarrelled and feuded and killed one another for reasons that might be personal, legal or to do with relationships - always rooted in real places in Iceland you can visit today. The greatest of these sagas is Njals Saga - the story of a good man who tries to maintain his moral centre in a world where others kill and feud, which ends with he and his wife being burned alive in their farmhouse. But read the text and there is no emotion, only understatement, with the story told clearly and unflinchingly. My favourite is Laxdæla Saga, a story which revolves around strong women and fighting men - the two main characters, Kjartan, every inch the blonde warrior who is killed due to some complicated machinations around the magnificent Guðrun, who, when as a matriarch looking back on her life comments to her son 'Þeim var ek verst, er ek unna mest' - 'I was worst to the one I loved the most'. That's it in terms of summing up the emotions - a whole world of pain and life of regret is summarised in that one sentence.

A page from the Icelandic sagas

As a student I ended up editing a saga called Gautreks Saga, a later work that combines the supposed history in Sweden of a community who are so poor that the eldest commit suicide every time a guest arrives - reflecting ancient traditions of hospitality, with a story of a man who gets on by being generous and giving gifts.

And these brilliant stories are told in one of the most beautiful languages in the word, Icelandic. The old language is still recognisably the language people speak in Iceland today. It is a Scandinavian language with an earthy, animated burr to it. If you want to hear it, listen to Icelandic musician Ásgeir's album Ðyrð í Dauðaþögn (literally 'Glory in the silence of death'). An English language version was made with the words translated by John Grant called in the Silence. You can hear the beauty of the language, and in the words, written by his 70-year-old father, you sense a link back to the great Icelandic Viking literary tradition, as in the song Hlòða Nótt (with a hard to translate first line of the last chorus)

Sum var gott en annað fylgi með
Reisir sverð og skjöld

(Some was good and wrapped with the other [ie bad]
Raise your sword and shield).

This is one aspect of the culture of the North. In 'Northern Lights' we'll be exploring the culture of many Northern countries, from Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq's music for the 1922 documentary Nanook of the North next Friday, to Sibelius's great Finnish epic, Kullervo - hope you'll join us on Radio 3 to explore Northern Culture of all kinds, through December.

Expanding the audience for classical music is a matter to take seriously

2015-04-20T13:26:35+00:00

Photo: Mark Allan/BBC

You may have read reports on comments I made this week about levels of classical music literacy now compared to the era of the Third Programme. The reports were given headlines that didn't really reflect what I actually said. Therefore I’d like to expand on my comments here and put them back in the context in which they were delivered.

I was asked about the challenges facing me as Controller of Radio 3 and how those might differ from those facing my predecessors, especially those involved in the Third Programme.

One material change I identified was the extent to which audiences arrive with a knowledge about classical music. That this means that we need sometimes to provide context to pieces ‒ but being absolutely clear we do not dumb down or simplify the content. We need to give people the means to approach complex music for what it is. That's clearly part of our job as a network ‒ we want everyone to be able to experience the great things engagement with great musical and other works of art can bring.

I am quite clear that I am an example of this: I stumbled across classical music in my twenties when I was fortunate enough to live in Birmingham and could hear the CBSO every week ‒ and came to learn a great deal from Radio 3, building on my already existing love of music of all kinds. That's why I take this issue of how we help people discover classical music so seriously.

Audiences have many choices nowadays, so in presenting complex music we need to do so not only in brilliant sound, not only by giving the excitement of live concerts every day, but with clear and informed presentation and online resources that help deepen people's knowledge. That's the modern version of the Third Programme. Our audience members are intellectually curious and exacting in their standards, and are characterised by wanting to dig deep and not be short-changed in what they are offered.

Classical music and its place in our culture is something I feel passionately about. We must be honest in identifying the challenges it faces and debate the issues with vigour. But, if this is to happen, we need all sides of the argument to be reported and debated fairly and thoroughly. Expanding the audience for classical music is a matter to take seriously, as we do across the BBC, with projects like Ten Pieces ‒ bringing classical music to school age children, the work of the Performing Groups, the Proms, and above all BBC Radio 3, which remains the best place to discover classical and other serious music, as well as culture and ideas.

If you want to hear what I actually said, here is the link to Radio 4's Feedback.

Alan Davey - First Week at Radio 3

2015-01-16T22:24:32+00:00

End of week one. Pinch myself. I now have the magic pass that gets me into the studios. And I can find them, even the lovely one on the 8th floor where In Tune weaves its magic. I’ve even got cards that say I’m Controller, so it must be true.

I’ve found inside Radio 3 a new reason to believe – to believe in the power of music, the power of culture and ideas, and the powerful role the BBC and Radio 3 does and will play in the cultural life of the country. The reason – the intellectual curiosity and generosity of the people working here and their skill in making remarkable things happen. Their knowledge of music and culture, and their dedicated pursuit of doing things in the best way possible.

It is a privilege to be working here, and my excitement at what we are doing, and my ambition about what we will do remains huge.

BBC Director-General Tony Hall announces The Year of Song and Dance 2015

During my first week we launched BBC Four’s Year of Song and Dance, and Radio 3 will be linking up with some programmes around BBC Young Dancer; a whole Classical Voices Season will herald the return of the Cardiff Singer of the World competition. And I ended the week at the Barbican with the BBC Symphony Orchestra performing Nielsen’s 3rd Symphony. Sakari Oramo is proving to be one of the great Nielsen interpreters – if you missed it, you can find it on the BBC iPlayer... I am also looking forward later on to listening to Radio 3’s Celtic Connections from Glasgow.

So bring on week two… With the prospect of hearing on Radio 3 the previously unbroadcast Simon Rattle Beethoven cycle with the CBSO – I was at the live concerts many years ago in a previous life – can’t wait to hear them again after all those years.