Listening to Haydn's Symphony......

Here in South Central Ontario, we have a radio station that plays Classical Music. I have heard Haydn's symphony, Bach's Symphony, Tchaikovsky's "Romeo & Juliet"(the three minute version) and among many other fine examples, one of Franck's many Symphonies! The trouble is Haydn wrote 104 Symphonies; which Bach...which Symphony?; "Romeo & Juliet" runs for about 20 minutes and Franck only wrote ONE Symphony!!! Do the announcers actually know about what they are talking about or should we expect them to say that Elvis was one of the Beatles? The other day when I turned on the radio, I half expected them to be playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons. You know the one...big, loud and lush(no period performances here). You'll never guess.....the Spring concerto! What else is new?!

They don't seem to ever play works in their entirety....NEVER! This is why Mahler's Symphony no.2 is 5 minutes long(the fourth movement). In actuality the symphony runs for more than 80 minutes! And when it is not another J Strauss waltz, it's a Sousa March or Gregorian Chant(acording to them....happy music). If it is longer then 10 minutes, it's too long to broadcast. This is Classical Music to an awful lot of folks out there. Imagine the shock when purchasing Beethoven's Ninth and finding it is really more than an hour long, not 3 minutes!

This is the state of Classical Music today and probably all the other arts are also being sold for their "Greatest Hits" quality. Perhaps very soon we'll hear Lady Gaga singing Schubert Lieder, Britney Spears as Carmen(she already lives the part) or Andre Rieu and his Orchestra doing a "Straussian(Johann)" rendition of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde".

Uneducated(this includes the PNR[Pretentious Nouveau Riche]) classical audiences are not to blame. However when I hear the PNR talking about the Messiah's recording of Handel's Messiah, I want to SCREAM!! On CBC last Sunday, an announcer was saying that, on hearing Shostakovitch's cantata "The Song of the Forests", the composer was ahead of his time!? In what....dog years? The piece may be nice to hear, but it is pure Stalinist propaganda! Where do the announcers get their info.....from old KGB agents or radio broadcasts from Uranus?

Twentieth Century composers?.....no way...."that hurts my ears".