It’s me again. I tuned in this morning and once again I have cause to thank you: I am so happy that finally there’s a radio station giving air time to such commercially unsuccessful artists as James Blunt and the Barenaked Ladies. My tax dollars should definitely go to making sure they get heard, and not to something as culturally peripheral as, say, the CBC Radio Orchestra. It’s a relief, also, especially in the morning, not to get those jarring contrasts we used to get when switching from commercial top-40-oriented radio stations to Radio 2. All those violins and harpsichords that would just come out of nowhere, interrupting the flow of banal lyrics!

Sincerely,

RM

PS James Blunt? Seriously?!

PPS Nothing against the Ladies, really.

Thanks! Now that all the music you play during the times I used to listen to you (morning drives to work and school, afternoons home from work and school) is pretty much ****, and because I have only a cassette deck in my car, I’ve had to go back into my stash of old tapes, most of which are recordings from old broadcasts of ‘Saturday Afternoon at the Opera.’ Recently I’ve been playing a 1990 performance of Semiramide with Lella Cuberli, Marilyn Horne, and Samuel Ramey in the big parts. As a lifelong Joan Sutherland fan, I tend to find most other performers disappointing in roles like Semiramide, and Cuberli certainly has nothing like Sutherland’s ability to throw off miraculous flights of coloratura. But she’s an energetic singer with a rich enough tone to stand up to Horne’s big voice. Horne (though not, as the NYT reviewer points out, in her prime by this time) is still spectacular, and of course Ramey booms out his part with his usual resonance and vigor. You never played much opera except on Saturday afternoons anyway, so now that you don’t play much else that I want to listen to, there will be some compensation in dusting off these old goodies. Still, if you want to restore your old shows (and let Tom Allen get back to his old form), that would be great.

Sincerely,

A Former Listener in Nova Scotia

P.S. Some of us are working between 10 and 3. People who aren’t retired like classical music too, actually. And kids, who are in school during those hours (and not, sadly, learning much about classical music there).

P.P.S. If anyone wants to hear a bit of Semiramide, I found a great clip at YouTube of Sutherland and Horne singing the Act III duet.

I miss my radio station! I have been a loyal CBC listener for over 30 years. Since the launch of the new CBC, I have turned on Radio 2 almost every day, out of habit and out of optimism that I’ll like what I hear. No luck so far! I know that there’s still classical music programming, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. I find this particularly disappointing: I don’t know about the rest of the CBC-2 audience, but I’m at work, and my kids are in school, between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. We used to always tune in to CBC-2 on our way in to and home from school, and I can’t count the number of times we heard something we all enjoyed or learned from or took an interest in. No more. CBC-2 used to be the default setting on all of our radios. No more. The thing is, sure, there might sometimes be some good music or some interesting commentary on CBC under the new regime, but I’m not going to stay tuned in on the off-chance that something I like will come on. That seems to me the fundamental problem with this new music-mix idea: trying to offer a little something for everyone (what a Canadian idea that is!) means you don’t offer much in particular for anyone. Sadly, in Halifax we don’t have other classical music radio stations to turn to, so it will be my own playlists from now on.

This post is a bit off my usual topics, but I love CBC Radio 2 and will be very sorry if the proposed radical programming changes go ahead, so I’m posting this press release prepared by the “Save Classical Music at the CBC‘ group on Facebook. If there are any other CBC listeners out there who will be mournful without Tom Allen’s “Music and Company” on weekday mornings (Cage Match!) or Rick Phillips’ “Sound Advice” on the weekends (to name just two excellent shows that will be axed), you may want to join the Facebook group or attend (or organize) the rally in your home town. CBC executives may want to keep in mind that trying to be all things to all people may well lead to a radio station that means nothing in particular to anybody. (post edited for brevity now that the date has come and gone).

On Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 12:00pm Eastern Time, the 12,500 strong members of a hastily arranged Facebook group entitled “Save Classical Music at the CBC” will be holding a NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION called “RAISE A RUCKUS FOR RADIO TWO!” in over a dozen cities across Canada.

In response to recently announced programming changes at CBC Radio Two and the planned axing of the famed CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra, classical music fans, musicians and Radio Two listeners are planning to take to the streets in front of their local CBC installations in every province simultaneously. Demonstrations are to be held at CBC facilities in Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Toronto, London, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, Charlottetown and St. John’s; with possible demonstrations to be held in Regina, Kingston, ON, and Saint John, NB as well.