Like many people, I got a digital radio for Christmas. It won’t really increase the number of classical music channels I can receive, but it will allow me to hear what there is with better quality sound anywhere in the house.
I realise how privileged television is over radio when I have to explain yet again to someone that the ‘Carols from King’s’ broadcast on TV on Christmas Eve is not the Nine Lessons and Carols service, although it may contain some of the same music. It is a recording made earlier in December; I was once invited to be in the ‘congregation’ at the recording session though I didn’t take part in the end. Sometimes the previous year’s TV recording is repeated. The presence of televison cameras and lighting equipment at the Christmas Eve Nine Lessons service would ruin the atmosphere for people in the chapel, and so it is never televised.