In previous posts I dealt with the BBC’s airing of the complete works of Beethoven and Bach. This time it was the turn of Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky, done jointly. I rather dipped in and out of this, though I tried to make sure I heard favourite pieces that aren’t often broadcast. Often I used ‘Listen Again’ for this, as it was difficult to home in on a particular piece. For Beethoven and Bach, the timings of all pieces were given to the minute in the Radio Times and online, but not this time – so you had to estimate the running time of other, often unfamiliar, pieces to be able to hear the one you wanted. In the process I heard a fair amount of lesser-known works and decided that on the whole I prefer obscure Stravinsky to obscure Tchaikovsky.
One reason for not listening systematically this time was that the airwaves could be taken over by a long and uninteresting work. The less successful works of Bach and Beethoven are much shorter than, say, The Maid of Orleans. I have to admit here that I also prefer my Tchaikovsky ballet scores as highlights; the full versions contain passages that you wouldn’t notice if they accompanied dancing, but which don’t stand up so well in concert. There are few major works by either composer that I won’t happily listen to, the exception being some of the neo-classical Stravinsky, which irritates me for reasons I don’t really understand.
I was left at the end wondering whether the whole exercise was really a way of distracting listeners from the drastic changes to the Radio 3 schedules which followed. I got more Russian music at the end of the week.