David Munrow News
British musician (1942-1976)
- recorder, bassoon
- classical music, early music revival
- United Kingdom
- conductor, concertmaster, film score composer, musicologist, musician
streaming
Last update
2024-04-25
Refresh
2023-12-28 16:01:00
There is no mass market for classical music
[…] provides a far more viable alternative strategy that will not result to in a fight to the death with Classic FM . Instead, what BBC Radio 3 is currently doing is betting the network's future on prising listeners away from Classic FM, and the cost of this bet is abandoning all integrity, authority, and audience outside the 'classical light' market.If any proof is needed of the power of the niche it is provided by David Munrow's BBC Pied Piper early music programme which ran for 655 prime time episodes over five years without resorting to chopping up Bach's Mass in B minor into easily digested daily morsels interspersed with commercials by another name, as has happened this week on BBC Radio Classic 3 FM.Header image comes from Daily Mail and second image from BBC Radio 3.
2023-07-23 08:07:00
No one thought there was a market for the Beatles
David Munrow is best known as an early music virtuoso but his genius knew no bounds. His producer at EMI Christopher Bishop mentored both Riccardo Muti and André Previn early in their careers, and therefore his view that had David Munrow not died tragically young he could have become a great conductor cannot be dismissed easily. That view was expressed by Christopher in the 2007 radio interview with me transcribed below - see footer photo taken at the time. There is a lot today's classical industry can learn from this interview: particularly Christopher's explanation that "I suppose we looked at [David Munrow] in a way that pop producers do. They don't ask 'is there a market for this?'; they say 'that's good, so we'll do it', and then the market is made. I don't suppose anyone thought there was a market for the Beatles when they first started; they just thought this is […]
2023-03-01 09:26:00
Breaking news - BBC Radio 3 does something right
[…] we have yet another richly talented composer condemned to box ticking obscurity, so kudos to Radio 3 for bringing his music to a wide audience. For readers who want to venture even further from today's social media-driven classical mundanity, I recommend browsing the Belgian Etcetra label's website.Going even further back in history pianist Jacob Bogaart's 8 CD labour of love 'The Art of Dutch Keyboard Music' featured here in 2017, while animateur par excellence David Munrow's 'The Art of the Netherlands' is also essential listening.(Dutch readers please note: I will be in your fine country again in May avoiding the UK coronation brouhaha.)Airing Otto Ketting's Fourth Symphony is a very small step in the right direction for BBC Radio 3. But the broadcaster still has a very long way to go to win me back as a regular listener. I suggest the next step should be an awayday for all […]
2022-01-02 09:37:00
[…] subtle sounds have become singular events. The space around you seems larger than you had realized". Other composers of what can loosely be termed non-linear music include Valentin Silvestrov, Arvo Pärt, Toru Takemitsu, Henryk Górecki, Thomas Adès, John Tavener, and György Ligeti. Non-narrative music also extends forward to the more radical output of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, and their peers, and back to the not-so-new Baroque era and beyond - remember early music champion David Munrow's immense popularity with young audiences. Yet, despite classical's hunger for a new audience, concert programming remains lamentably unadventurous. The result is the futile strategy of throwing more and more Mahler and Shostakovich flavoured with a little virtue signalling at the new target audience in the hope that some of it will stick. We have forgotten how popular Pierre Boulez's 1970's New York Rug Concerts and London Roundhouse concerts […]
or
- timeline: Composers (Europe). Conductors (Europe). Performers (Europe).
- Indexes (by alphabetical order): M...