It is off the air during the Proms and was absent for half of the 1950s, which explains why the milestone has not been reached until now.
Although it has expanded to four hours, and to em-brace the whole of recorded classical music, breadth has not been achieved at the expense of depth. Building a Library, its most celebrated segment, is just as it was when introduced in 1957, with critics painstakingly analysing all the available recordings of one particular work to show how much (and why) they vary.
Yesterday, Penelope Thwaites trawled through 32 versions of Beethoven’s Waldstein Son-ata; the week before, Anthony Burton played extracts from 22 versions of the 18-year-old Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto. He selected as his personal favourite, impressed by its “freshness and clarity”, the version with Julie Andrews (not the actress) on Classic FM. This is believed to be the first time a disc on Classic FM, which is a label as well as a station, has been commended by Radio 3 in this way.
The anniversary show will include this and other regular spots, Hot off the Press, The Listening Booth and Recent Reissues. It will also reveal its listeners’ choice for Disc of the Century, for which votes can still be cast (the Barbirolli/du Pré Elgar Cello Concerto, Solti’s Ring and Britten’s own recording of his War Requiem are all likely to make the top 10), interview Vladimir Ashkenazy and debate the classical-record industry.
One omission remains. Roger Wright, Radio 3’s present controller, has been keen to boost world music (he launched Late Junction) and jazz, but much less keen to subject recordings in those areas to anything like the same withering criticism that is dished out to class- ical recordings every week. Why not? Why should a new version of, say, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fan-tastique be dissected in minute detail, while a recording of Madagascan fishing chants is blandly welcomed as cultural diversity? Building a Library shows how it can be done; its approach deserves wider application.
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RADIO WAVES readers have been quick to point out that Xfm’s claim that Import/Export is “the first radio show ever to be broadcast from both sides of the Atlantic”, which I reported two weeks ago, is not true. Alun Banner from Cheddington recalls Robbie Vincent’s show on BBC Radio London in the 1970s, live at 11pm here and at 6pm in New York, “so we got to hear all the drivetime reports of bumper-to-bumper traffic on Brooklyn Bridge”. Ron Onions, who used to run LBC, mounted a similar venture on his station at about the same time. Hopefully, Xfm will now be amending its website.