A radio day
Feb. 1st, 2009 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylI rather enjoyed today's mammoth Mendelssohn marathon on R3, with its mix of rarities — such as the early D-minor violin concerto — alongside some of the more usual warhorses.
I also very much enjoyed Iain Burnside's exploration of the music associated with births, marriages and deaths. A particular highlight was his conversation with Giles Fraser, who admitted that he preferred funerals to weddings, because he felt that his presence at a funeral offered comfort to the family, whilst weddings involved pandering to massive egos and fitting in with the obsessively precise demands of some bridezilla or other.
Fraser was also particularly delightful when asked by Burnside whether he didn't get pissed off — it's Radio 3, where the audience is assumed to be sufficiently grown up not to be offended by a presenter using strong language to talk to a man of the cloth — by people who turned up for weddings having not set foot in the church the rest of the year round. The vicar replied that he considered the CofE to be a church not primarily for the regular attendees but for all those who only attended every once in a while. And as if all that wasn't wonderful enough, Fraser picked as his choice of wedding music the finale from Vierne's first symphony. Very cool.
I also very much enjoyed Iain Burnside's exploration of the music associated with births, marriages and deaths. A particular highlight was his conversation with Giles Fraser, who admitted that he preferred funerals to weddings, because he felt that his presence at a funeral offered comfort to the family, whilst weddings involved pandering to massive egos and fitting in with the obsessively precise demands of some bridezilla or other.
Fraser was also particularly delightful when asked by Burnside whether he didn't get pissed off — it's Radio 3, where the audience is assumed to be sufficiently grown up not to be offended by a presenter using strong language to talk to a man of the cloth — by people who turned up for weddings having not set foot in the church the rest of the year round. The vicar replied that he considered the CofE to be a church not primarily for the regular attendees but for all those who only attended every once in a while. And as if all that wasn't wonderful enough, Fraser picked as his choice of wedding music the finale from Vierne's first symphony. Very cool.
