So what do we make of the BBC’s new trance channel?
NewsYesterday morning, before daybreak, the BBC launched Radio 3 Unwind, a 24/7 stream of calming classical music. It aims ‘to enhance wellbeing and help listeners escape the pressures of daily life’.
The morning show, presented by psychologist Dr Sian Williams, offers ‘soothing and nourishing melodies from Clara Schumann, JS Bach and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’ and explores ‘how embracing the seasons can be beneficial for our health.’
The musical information is elementary, slightly patronising. Some Radio 3 diehards are spluttering over social media. Clearly they have not listened long enough to unwind.
Judge for yourselves here.
I’m a long term R3 listener and regularly stand up to defend its new styles in these pages. However this one is a step too far. Classic fm does this stuff interminably and I always disparage it. Horses for courses and all that but R3 is capable of far better. Leave it to the ‘other side’ and keep playing a good variety as before. Who needs to unwind at that time of day anyway? And that drippy, slow voice delivery! Horrible! It’s wake up time not bedtime.
An unwise experiment that will with luck be quickly dropped.
Why disparage it? Accept that some people enjoy it. Yo0u don’t have to listen to it if you don’t have to. I don’t listen to Andre Rieu but I don’t disparage him because he is a fine musician bringing enjoyment to a whole lot of people.
You’d have to check the archives JTS but you’ll find I stand up for A Rieu as well! I draw the line at Einaudi though. No excuses for that.
My problem with Relaxing Classics at All Hours of the Bloody Day or whatever Classic fm calls it now is that it is played interminably; all evening now. As Barry says below it’s the marketing of classical music as if it’s for the purpose of relaxation only that I have a problem with. Radio 3 can and mostly does provide a wonderful cornucopia of all types of music. I hope it continues to prosper without needing to lower its standards this far.
It’s in addition to Radio3, not replacing it. Anything that encourages new listeners to come into the world of classical music is good news.
That was the argument for the likes of Russell Watson, Bocelli, Jenkins etc. It simply doesn’t work like that – it just results in people wanting more of the same (rubbish)!
Marketing classical music as something to relax to will turn out to be a massive own goal, in my opinion. It’s been going on for some time. A future audience is needed but, in the absence of exposure to a wide variety of styles, there’s already a tendency for young people to regard the genre as slow, long and boring, enjoyed almost exclusively by nerds and people over 70. Certainly not by “normal” people.
I don’t see a huge appetite for relaxing pop or rock music. Why would they be attracted to the same character in classical?
The lifts are alive..to the sound of muzak.
I was under the impression that easy listening-MOR stations did pretty well.
They do, but I think they’re just a substitute for the MOR output of the 60s and 70s – Radio 2 (as was), Bert Kaempfert, James Last etc.
The young were listening to The Beatles, Stones, Kinks etc (as far as I can remember!).
I would have thought that Classic FM had the market in this and should be allowed to continue with it. The BBC should s[pend its money elsewhere.
American classical music stations like Washington DC’s (WETA) run spots throughout the day claiming they provide a way “to get away from it all,” to “escape from the noise of daily life,” and “relax and unwind from stress of life.”
No Dissonance Allowed!
I always relax at home after work with Pli selon Pli of Boulez. There is no music which calms so deeply, and it’s full of those dissonances, but maybe that are different ones.
Sally
I’d like to “relax and unwind from the stress” of being in the music business!
I need a psychologist to dictate my musical choice just as much as I need a musician to dictate my psychological requirements.
Classical music is a psychological art form, which has an effect upon our interior life. But that does not mean it is only a means to calm down from the noise of the world.
The encouragement, even in live concert events, to “sit back, relax and enjoy…” has always struck me as exactly wrong (and encouraging too many to sit back, relax, and take a nap). The admonition ought to be to “sit up, lean in and engage” with the music.
Hear, hear. Relatedly, I’m always annoyed by those interviewers who ask their interviewee, “And what books are by your bedside”–as though books were nothing but a sleep aid. I should like to be interviewed by one of these people, and then I would put on a Lady Bracknell voice and say, “None! Reading books is far too important to be treated as a substitute for a sleeping pill.”
NOT A RADIO STATION.
Orchestral musicians are PAID Equitable Remuneration when their music is broadcast on the radio this is blatant theft of their work.BBC you should be ashamed.
I haven’t checked out 3U yet. I used to find the R3 overnight ‘chill’ sessions with twee mononym DJs quite annoying enough.
Similarly, TV showing interminable travel shows hosted by comedians. Cheap programming, endless crap often taxpayer subsidised.
3u might be fairly cheap to set up, as are so many digital channels. After all, Radio 1 has half a dozen extra channels, mostly rubbish.
Oh yes!! And when I think the composers who created the world’s most incredible music were, themselves, the very antithesis of the anodyne drawl which invites listeners to ‘relax’. Can you imagine Beethoven succumbing to a similar seduction!!!!!??
Spor on, Ms Sonata Form. But remember poor Ludwig was deaf, so wouldn’t have been subjected to the languid tones of After Dark.
Obviously awful, treating the listeners like idiots and helping the increasing stupidity, and unculturing of the public.
Another whiff of the Classic FM stench of this whole ordeal – the featured composers being “Clara Schumann, JS Bach and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor”, two affirmative action mediocrities placed front and centre.
This is really no more than a re-packaging of existing playlists, like the “mindful mix”. I sometimes use those as sonic wallpaper while working – but the presenters doing bad impressions of hypnotists drives me crazy.
They’re not impressions, they’re the real thing!!! You failed to mention the deadly earnestness of their missions.
“Clara Schumann, JS Bach and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor”
Bach flanked by the obligatory DEI quota inclusions. Almost as bad as the sadly popular notion that classical music is “relaxing.”
Yes, about as ‘relaxing’ as a Dostoevsky novel!!
Bring back Hans Keller.
Exactly!
He will be fairly well decomposed by now.
Exactly as predicted and shown years ago in the silent disco lab on W1A!!
That show was so prophetic of all that has come to bear with the hapless auntie!
People thought that W1A was satire. It contained things, and characters, that were painfully close to real life, if not identical. (A recent email about the updated BBC music group logos contained a reference to “our BBC-ness”, I kid you not.)
Again, the basement dwellers clutching their dusty records can indulge in the only acceptable recordings to them from the comfort of their own basement and simply not listen to this new stream.
The rest of us are okay with maintaining an open mind and simply listening. Not everyone is knowledgeable when it comes to classical music, and the opinions of its (questionable) lovers on forums like this go to show that they don’t want to share it with anyone other than in the way they worship it themselves.
Of course, it’s a public medium and as such it has to appeal to a broader range than perhaps we would all like. That’s where a private collection comes in handy, or a streaming service.
Nonsense: what a prejudiced and silly way to paint objectors. I neither live in a basement, and my recordings are cobweb-swept regularly, ta very much. My CDs are frequently updated, the collection eclectic, and I go to live concerts weekly and welcome new music (only today, I heard at CBSO a wonderful piece, new to me, by Valerie Coleman (do you know her?). I have an open mind – I just don’t like being patronised and spoken to as though I am grandpa, just ready for my evening snooze and horlicks: there, there, old fella – you just sup it quietly and listen to the moronic monosyllables oozing from the Nice Radio 3 Presenter Person. Off we go up the Wooden Hill to Boringshire…. Leave Your Brain Behind and Goo With The Flue… (You need to imagine the anodyne-velvety-murmured-Cadbury’s-flake-oozings of some R3 person here…) I sometimes listen and record and play back down the phone to friends with added heavy breathing for effect. It’s guaranteed to send one rushing for the senna pods.
Thank goodness for Donald Macleod and Ian Skelly, inter alia. Trouble is – they speak RP. Must be for the chop soon? At least they haven’t yet been relegated to the ghastly Friday Night is Muzak Night. Pass the sick bag, Alice…
Verbose proof of my point.
Tuned in out of curiosity. Some people might enjoy it and if that’s the case, I am glad they are happy. But it’s just a slightly more upmarket Classic FM that plays music which is so lightweight it doesn’t engage the brain. I could tell you more about most works than the presenters do and I have a better recording collection to boot, so I will give it a miss thanks.
I only ever used to listen to our national FM network, right up to the point it went “classic” 25 years ago and morphed into the things being described here. I don’t have an FM tuner now but whenever I put the radio on in the car it has that predictable dead zone of silence where you’re wondering what the work is (why is it that tuning to the station always occurs at such moments; describe in 20 words or less!). These days it’s just easier to stay on 60s or 70s pop music shows on the local FM network, together with weather, traffic reports and local ‘goss’.
I am so bored by Radio 3’s eternally grinning, funless, dumbed-down world. (“The BEST in classical music” – what an absurd and meaningless title.) Aged 11, I engaged for the first time with Radio 3 – a world which lifted my eyes to the hills, did not patronise me, and didn’t encourage me to think that I needed “unwinding” or “relaxing” – and I thought it was a dazzling world where I discovered more and more exciting music. I am now 65, and have pretty much given up on Radio 3 – I listen very selectively and turn off more often than not. Clearly you can only get a job as a presenter now if you have an anodyne Northern accent (“See? I’m ordinary and approachable – we ain’t posh or elitist ‘ere mate…”) (Note that they don’t have strong Black Country accents – no no no – that would be too much even for the inverted snobs who run Radio 3). I am fed up with half the presenters – though the other half are excellent/estimable (we know who they are) – and definitely sick to death with those silly after-dark-After-Eight-Mint voices, talking to me as though I have just had my dog put down and/or got a migraine. Patronising pillocks. The only joy they give me is when me and my friends imitate them to each other down the telephone – very easy to send up: have a go; just think a heavy-breathing Fenella Fielding from Formby. Hysterical. I cannot believe they take themselves seriously. I am increasingly sticking to my (thankfully large) CD collection. Radio 3? I don’t need this new channel to send me to sleep – I just have to listen to the pointless meanderings of half the presenters. Yawn yawn. Uhnnnhhnnnn… I’m asleeeee……..
Absolutely hilarious!!!!!!!!!!
Brilliant! Thank you, Lloydie! Personally I miss the 1970s/80s announcers (not ‘presenters’) – Cormac Rigby, Tom Crowe, the wonderful Victor Hallam, Peter Barker, Robin Holmes, Malcolm Ruthven, Tony Scotland (still very much alive!), John Holmstrom, Jon Curle, Roy Williamson, etc., and that great survivor Donald Macleod, still presenting ‘This Week’s Composer’ as he always has done – an oasis of sanity amidst the presentational cacophony. Not to mention other genuine presenters such as Michael Oliver and regular givers of talks such as Stephen Dodgson and Antony Hopkins. This was what made Radio 3 special! For more, see https://andywalmsley.blogspot.com/2011/04/radio-3-announcers.html
Thanks Lloydie for not holding back. I concur with all those very familiar sentiments. “The Home of Classical Music” and all that poppycock. Was the nadir that “judge” on Young Musician who enthused about a soloist “vibing with the orchestra”? Translation, please …
Calming Classical is its own thing, and if there’s a listenership for it, why not serve it? It doesn’t diminish the quality or variety of anyone’s choices across a vast radio/streaming universe that probably reaches more people than at any time in history. I tried pulling up the Classical Unwind program on my BBC Sounds app just to hear what it’s like; it’s listed but not available to stream in the U.S.
My local Colorado public radio classical station plays “relaxing” repertoire from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., but the occasional jolt still gets through. Twice last month, they programmed the slow movement to Mahler’s Fourth Symphony — with its triple-forte apotheosis for trumpets, horns and timpani — around 2:30 a.m. and 3: 30 a.m. One of those eruptions awoke me out of a sound sleep.
The incessant adverts for Radio 3 Downwind are offensively irritating – hopefully, they’ll stop soon.
Of course, I had a listen to 3 downwind; it’s nowhere near as bad as the adverts say it is, but it’s also a long way from being listenable. I managed about five minutes.