Through the fifties and sixties the highspot on a Sunday was a half-hour
broadcast by Antony Hopkins Talking about Music. This was the composer
and conductor Antony Hopkins not the well-known actor, but they both had
in common a calm mellifluous speaking voice. Each Sunday a work that was
going to be broadcast later that week was discussed in detail without becoming
too technical and without once talking down to the audience. The talks were
accompanied on the piano or by recordings. Two that particularly stick in
my mind were Britten's War Requiem in 1962 (a two-parter) and Bartok's
Sonata for two pianos and percussion. The description ran along the
lines of ...'imagine you are walking down a country lane on a very dark
night gently feeling your way, when suddenly a bramble hits you full in the
face'. Play the opening of the first movement to hear how apt that description
is.
The programme ran for years (AH estimated over 1000 broadcasts) but
it seems the BBC never had faith in them and only ever issued contracts for
three month periods. There was never any real attempt to market the programmes,
certainly not by the BBC, although I seem to recall one LP that was
issued and Hopkins wrote several 'Talking About ...' books. I have
never understood this and Talking about Music is fondly remembered
by all musical acquaintances of similar age to myself and would stand repeating
even now.
The programmes have been sorely missed - but in recent weeks the BBC
has been broadcasting a 45-minute Discovering Music series at
4pm on a Sunday afternoon. These are very reminiscent of Talking about
Music although several presenters are used. The main difference is that
the examination of the structure of the music is more technical than
I remember from Talking about Music but with the overwhelming advantage
of having an orchestra or group of players present so that passages can be
played by isolated sections of the orchestra. There have been some
brilliant examples where sections have been gradually built up that I have
found particularly enlightening - particularly in the Brahms and Mozart piano
concerto. The speakers have been carefully chosen and again manage that
difficult task of explaining without talking down. We have had Antony
Payne discussing Elgar's Symphony No 2 (not No 3), Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante
and the Berlioz Romeo and Juliet, Chris de Souza on Rachmaninov's Symphonic
Dances and Mozart's Concerto No 21, and Gerard McBurney on Brahms 4th symphony
and the Ravel Quartet.
BBC Music Magazine for April have reproduced the text of McBurney's Ravel
programme on pages 118-119 but as it is nowhere mentioned on the accompanying
CD booklet you might be forgiven for not realising that there is also a CD-ROM
version with the audio examples used in the programme. This delighted me
as I missed that particular broadcast. I only learned about this through
playing a tape of the Mozart 21 programme in my car! The full text is provided
in a scrolling script with cue click points for the sound samples (see green
arrow head in screen shot below).
I made a point of purchasing the magazine to secure this - but once again
I wonder if the BBC really understand the market that exists for this type
of material. They seem to be more interested in pushing the free internet
access the BBC now provides through free beeb.net.
To do justice to BBC Music Magazine I ought to discuss the content of the
rest of the disc which is devoted to Berlioz with Les nuits
d'été sung by Katarina Karnéus, Overtures to Le
Corsaire, Le Carnaval Romain and Le Roi Lear, finishing
with the Hungarian March from La Damnation de Faust all played by
the BBC Philharmonic orchestra conducted by Vassily Sinaisky. Also provided
is a biographical background on Berlioz, a discussion of each
work with clickable excerpts and finally the full text for Les nuits
d'été.
This is highly instructive and remarkable value for £3.99. It remains
to be hoped that the BBC will eventually release the whole series of
Discovering Music either as audio CD or as CD ROM. At a similar
price it could not fail.
Reviewer
Len Mullenger
BBC Radio
3 and BBC Music
Magazine 
