I was one of those who were concerned about the ‘dumbing down’ of Radio 3. (My personal pet hate being the long life stories of listeners that are phoned in during the morning drivetime slot. I’m just not interested in them!) However I perked up on finding out that 2017 began with a week of programming themed around the Second Viennese School. It’s all disappearing off the iPlayer now, but I did manage to catch a lot of it either live or retrospectively.
There was no attempt to shy away from the more hardcore material, and indeed some of the more familiar and less daring pieces such as Im Sommerwind and the Seven Early Songs were notable by their absence. I particularly enjoyed the episodes of The Essay, in which five people talked about their relationship to this repertoire; more than one of the accounts of how they discovered it resonated with my own experience.
There were chances to hear 9 of Berg’s 14 works, although it was an unfortunate piece of scheduling broadcasting his Violin Concerto directly after Wozzeck, when you wouldn’t really be able to take it in. The theme of the week even got into the Choral Evensong slot, in the form of Friede auf Erden. But I’d have been more thorough: a Webern cantata for introit (I’ve sung introits longer than anything Webern ever wrote), serial canticles (there are some by Alan Ridout and by Elisabeth Lutyens) and that as yet unwritten Anglican chant based on the tone-row from Lulu.