DGBooks Wireless

 

 

It was inevitable, was it not, that DGBooks Radio would soon be followed up by its 'classical' counterpart and here it is, above in the list of things. 

The actual radio stations that I'll never have would have a bit more to them but when I say I have everything I want that doesn't include two radio stations. These Spotify playlists will keep me going well enough. For one so long addicted to pointless list-making and being the gatekeeper of at least my own taste, compiling these programmes has been a pleasure it would be hard to rival.

DGBooks Wireless would properly include a revival of Face the Music, the priceless parlour game quiz even if it couldn't be recreated in all its original glory with Joseph Cooper, Robin Ray, Joyce Grenfell, Patrick Moore and Richard Baker. There's a few local Portsmouth faces who I reckon could make it work.

I'd have some spoken word, like a book review show and a poetry slot. While it would be great to feature new work by living poets, I'm not sure there's much of that worth having so it would be archive material mainly.

But, as it is, it's a Spotify playlist and although Spotify doesn't find everything you want, it isn't at all bad at 'classical' and, as with the pop version, once I start playing it I find it hard to switch off.

At first I wouldn't have any composer more than once to make it more 'radio' than '100 Best Tunes' in which the big names might grab all the attention. Anybody could click on all the Bach, Handel, Mozart and Beethoven and could hardly miss but that's not the point.

As yet, and probably for the duration, there is no Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner or Korngold. Other less deliberate omissions are Debussy, Szymanowski, possibly Grieg, Britten and several of those Renaissance masters.

With apologies to those with a preference for brass or woodwind, I am a cello, piano, violin and choral man and, increasingly in recent years, more 'chamber' or solo than symphonic. But it would be great if you'd like to try it - you can skip forward or put it on shuffle, I'm just not entirely sure if you can listen to it without setting up a Spotify account but that's for nothing and no big deal. Given the lengths I went to to find O, What Very Charming Weather, it's the least you might do.   

There's 10 hours of it now, mostly parts of larger works but sometimes the whole shebang but I'm sure it will be added to. It's not a hit parade. I hope it's more interesting than that.

Once the free market right wingers who can't stand the BBC manage to close down Radio 3 it might be down to me to save the day.   

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Having been so foolish, and elderly, to assume that The Beatles, with just under 30 million monthly listeners, would be top of Spotify's hit parade, I was taken aback to find they aren't in the Top 50 and the only pop artist on my playlist that makes it into that is no. 33 and is Beyonce.

So, which composers make it into their Top 10.

With 7.3 million listeners, Bach is no. 1. At least they got that right.

Then it's - 2. Beethoven, 3. Mozart, 4. Chopin, 5. Debussy, 6. Tchaikovsky, 7. Vivaldi, 8. Saint-Saens, 9. Schubert, 10. Brahms.

That's not a bad list but it's a good job we don't have expletives on this channel. We successfully negotiated the Boris Johnson years and Brexit without recourse to profanity. And so one calmly and dispassionately regrets, like Miss Otis, that Georg Freidrich is not Top 10. It's like one of those horse races one is confident about but the selection trails in dolefully after the shouting and excitement have abated.

But what can you do.