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German/European Classical Stations

soulboy22soulboy22 Posts: 484
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in Radio and Podcasts #1
Hi all

Can anybody recommend any more good European Classical stations. So far I know of:
HR2
BR-Klassik
DR P2
NDR Kultur
SWR2
WDR3
Ylen Klassinen

Comments

  • albertdalbertd Posts: 14,355
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    #2
    Not European, but I quite like KING-FM in Seattle.
  • PhilipSPhilipS Posts: 825
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    #3
    You've got a pretty good list there - my favorite, and that of a lot of people, is BR Klassik - but there are a lot of others - I think almost every country in Europe has at least one station. Some key ones I think are worth trying:

    (Dutch) Radio 4
    (French) France Musiques
    (Hungarian) Bartok Radio

    There are also a number of stations that play continuous classical music with minimal announcements - my favorite is Radio Swiss Classic,

    And although it's not limited to classical music, I rather like the Irish station Lyric
    FM.
  • CharlieCharlie Posts: 1,777
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    #4
    D-dur

    http://www.rozhlas.cz/d-dur/english/

    http://radio.cesnet.cz/

    Concertzender

    http://www.concertzender.nl/en/
  • spannersspanners Posts: 973
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    #5
    soulboy22 wrote: »
    Hi all

    Can anybody recommend any more good European Classical stations. So far I know of:
    HR2
    BR-Klassik
    DR P2
    NDR Kultur
    SWR2
    WDR3
    Ylen Klassinen


    MDR Klassik
    Classical 102 Berlin
    Bayern 4 Klassik
    S.R. 2 Kultur Radio (Saarbrucken, Germany)
  • mw963mw963 Posts: 3,079
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    #6
    Particularly fond of MDR Klassik, with whom incidentally I'm having an ongoing battle to remove the last of the dynamics compression from DSat. A good range of lesser known composers get a look in, and there are few announcements which for me is welcome.

    Most of the German stations make Radio 3 look like a kindergarten - sadly.
  • soulboy22soulboy22 Posts: 484
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    #7
    PhilipS wrote: »
    You've got a pretty good list there - my favorite, and that of a lot of people, is BR Klassik - but there are a lot of others - I think almost every country in Europe has at least one station. Some key ones I think are worth trying:

    (Dutch) Radio 4
    (French) France Musiques
    (Hungarian) Bartok Radio

    There are also a number of stations that play continuous classical music with minimal announcements - my favorite is Radio Swiss Classic,

    And although it's not limited to classical music, I rather like the Irish station Lyric
    FM.

    Thanks for your suggestions - added the Dutch and Hungarian stations - already had the French, missed it off my list!
  • soulboy22soulboy22 Posts: 484
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    #8
    spanners wrote: »
    MDR Klassik
    Classical 102 Berlin
    Bayern 4 Klassik
    S.R. 2 Kultur Radio (Saarbrucken, Germany)

    Thanks - added SR2
  • soulboy22soulboy22 Posts: 484
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    #9
    martinwatkins wrote: »
    Particularly fond of MDR Klassik, with whom incidentally I'm having an ongoing battle to remove the last of the dynamics compression from DSat. A good range of lesser known composers get a look in, and there are few announcements which for me is welcome.

    Most of the German stations make Radio 3 look like a kindergarten - sadly.

    I have added MDR Klassik, thanks for the suggestion. Your point about Radio 3 is a point I hear a lot. I'm late 20's so don't remember it from years ago (and my classical education is poor hence this undertaking) but from the bits I can remember and indeed looking at old schedules, it does seem to have dumbed down.
  • soulboy22soulboy22 Posts: 484
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    #10
    Charlie wrote: »
    D-dur

    http://www.rozhlas.cz/d-dur/english/

    http://radio.cesnet.cz/

    Concertzender

    http://www.concertzender.nl/en/

    Thanks, Concertzender looks really interesting. Going to have a look at the Early Music section later. also added d-dur and CRo Vitava. Do you know if that is the national FM station?
  • mw963mw963 Posts: 3,079
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    #11
    On the subject of the "old" Radio 3, in my case I had been brought up in a home where "pop" music and "strumming" (as my father called anything involving a guitar!!) were disapproved of, but for me at least the old Radio 3 gave access to such a WIDE range of composers - and the great thing was (this is going to sound terribly old fashioned) practically every piece of music was billed in the Radio Times. I know I wasn't the only (sad?) person who went through the Radio Times every week with a felt tip pen, marking anything on Radio 3 that I thought I ought to listen to which would broaden my musical knowledge.

    My time-shift recording system of the era consisted of a wind-up delay clock (designed for a storage heater originally I guess, it had hefty contacts) which during the winding up made a click for every quarter of an hour (there was also a scale of course). So most mornings I would work out how long it was until the thing I wanted to record, set up the tuner on Radio 3 and the cassette recorder on REC, wind up the clock thus killing the power, and come back to a surprisingly accurately timed recording.

    Radio 3 has long abandoned many of the "second division" composers that I love, if one is happy with "lollipops mainly on CD" all day then Radio 3 is great, but in my time there was masses of specially recorded music - often by younger musicians commissioned by Radio 3 - performances which had much more of an "edge" than stuff off disc. In fact records were really only played from 07.00 to 9.30 (Morning Concert and This Week's Composer) and then most material was live or recordings from BBC studios. There was next to no chat of any sort, just useful RELEVANT background information on the music played.

    My enjoyment of MDR Klassik is that I'm rediscovering many of the composers I originally discovered thanks to Radio 3, but who have been discarded by that station in favour of a more populist and allegedly popular play-list. There is a playlist on the MDR Klassik website.

    And I detest the Radio 3 oh-so-matey presentation, Katey Dereham being my bete-noire. She was great on Radio 5 Live years ago but is totally unsuited to Radio 3 with her jolly-hockey-sticks delivery, but many of the others also need to get over themselves a bit and calm down, sometimes it really is like CBeebies....

    Sorry, I've gone off on one haven't I? But I still resent Radio 3 being taken away from people like me who enjoyed the format it had before 1992, at which point it was deliberately in my view vandalised by the awful Kenyon.

    Anyway soulboy it's great that you're looking further afield - there is life outside Radio 3!
  • soulboy22soulboy22 Posts: 484
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    #12
    martinwatkins wrote: »
    On the subject of the "old" Radio 3, in my case I had been brought up in a home where "pop" music and "strumming" (as my father called anything involving a guitar!!) were disapproved of, but for me at least the old Radio 3 gave access to such a WIDE range of composers - and the great thing was (this is going to sound terribly old fashioned) practically every piece of music was billed in the Radio Times. I know I wasn't the only (sad?) person who went through the Radio Times every week with a felt tip pen, marking anything on Radio 3 that I thought I ought to listen to which would broaden my musical knowledge.

    My time-shift recording system of the era consisted of a wind-up delay clock (designed for a storage heater originally I guess, it had hefty contacts) which during the winding up made a click for every quarter of an hour (there was also a scale of course). So most mornings I would work out how long it was until the thing I wanted to record, set up the tuner on Radio 3 and the cassette recorder on REC, wind up the clock thus killing the power, and come back to a surprisingly accurately timed recording.

    Radio 3 has long abandoned many of the "second division" composers that I love, if one is happy with "lollipops mainly on CD" all day then Radio 3 is great, but in my time there was masses of specially recorded music - often by younger musicians commissioned by Radio 3 - performances which had much more of an "edge" than stuff off disc. In fact records were really only played from 07.00 to 9.30 (Morning Concert and This Week's Composer) and then most material was live or recordings from BBC studios. There was next to no chat of any sort, just useful RELEVANT background information on the music played.

    My enjoyment of MDR Klassik is that I'm rediscovering many of the composers I originally discovered thanks to Radio 3, but who have been discarded by that station in favour of a more populist and allegedly popular play-list. There is a playlist on the MDR Klassik website.

    And I detest the Radio 3 oh-so-matey presentation, Katey Dereham being my bete-noire. She was great on Radio 5 Live years ago but is totally unsuited to Radio 3 with her jolly-hockey-sticks delivery, but many of the others also need to get over themselves a bit and calm down, sometimes it really is like CBeebies....

    Sorry, I've gone off on one haven't I? But I still resent Radio 3 being taken away from people like me who enjoyed the format it had before 1992, at which point it was deliberately in my view vandalised by the awful Kenyon.

    Anyway soulboy it's great that you're looking further afield - there is life outside Radio 3!

    Thanks for a such an informative post. I will most certainly use the MDR website as a way to broaden my knowledge. With regard to your comments about presentation I agree, I would love to be able to listen to more of the old Radio 3. That kind of presentation has become the norm in most parts of the media now. (I am sounding really old for my age now!)

    Are you aware of http://www.for3.org/index.php

    you may find it of interest
  • mw963mw963 Posts: 3,079
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    #13
    Yes, so-called Friends of Radio 3 website is a brave attempt to turn back the tide of quality degradation. I say so-called because Sworn-Enemies-Of-The-Modern-Radio-3 might be a better title!!!! Sadly the previous controller of R3 took little notice of the website even when its criticism was constructive. Sadly I think it (Radio 3) is a lost cause now.

    I've still got a lot of cassettes of Radio 3 from the late 70s early 80s and a project I never get round to is to put them all into mp3 format. One day, one day....

    There's rarely anything really "challenging" on MDR Klassik but at the same time it ranges far and wide into musical byways that personally are my favourites, with a lot of lesser-known Scandanavian music. Even Billy Mayerl gets an occasional outing, along with some more classical British composers from the last 200 years, which is really nice to hear. Whoever chose their playlists certainly has more than a superficial knowledge....
  • BrightonelectriBrightonelectri Posts: 181
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    #14
    martinwatkins wrote: »
    Yes, so-called Friends of Radio 3 website is a brave attempt to turn back the tide of quality degradation. I say so-called because Sworn-Enemies-Of-The-Modern-Radio-3 might be a better title!!!! Sadly the previous controller of R3 took little notice of the website even when its criticism was constructive. Sadly I think it (Radio 3) is a lost cause now.

    I've still got a lot of cassettes of Radio 3 from the late 70s early 80s and a project I never get round to is to put them all into mp3 format. One day, one day....

    There's rarely anything really "challenging" on MDR Klassik but at the same time it ranges far and wide into musical byways that personally are my favourites, with a lot of lesser-known Scandanavian music. Even Billy Mayerl gets an occasional outing, along with some more classical British composers from the last 200 years, which is really nice to hear. Whoever chose their playlists certainly has more than a superficial knowledge....

    The magazine Private Eye sometimes satirizes the BBC Radio3 schedules, listing
    absurdly named composers and ficticious symphony orchestras! Radio3 DOES broadcast "the first broadcast performance of a new work" which will probably never happen on the dread Classic FM!
  • mw963mw963 Posts: 3,079
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    #15
    That's absolutely true Brightonelectric, and I concede that Radio 3 does still do this. But it's a pity that this has survived perhaps at the expense of other things that Radio 3 did well (such as organising/financing recording sessions on a large scale to give employment to musicians and allow us to hear versions of music NOT from CD).

    There used - many year ago - to be a programme called Music in Our Time which went out late of an evening. The material was always recorded - normally at Maida Vale. On one occasion there was an error in the record-keeping of the tape, and it hadn't adequately been prepared for transmission; generally a tape would start with 30 secs of tone followed by 10 secs of silence before the proper programme started, but in this case the tone was missing. Being late in the evening Continuity assumed they'd better play it, and 20 minutes of incomprehensible noises followed, although this was not out of the ordinary as many of these commissioned pieces sounded bizarre, indeed often dreadful. As it came to its conclusion the T.O. in Con noted that there was no red trailer tape at the end of the recording either.

    After the piece was finished a furious telephone complaint from the composer was put through to Radio 3 Con by the switchboard, and in colourful language he denounced the BBC for having made such a mess of his work. It turnd out the tape had been played in its entirety backwards and he - the composer - was the only one who ever noticed or said anything.

    I'd be the first to admit that MDR Klassik is in essence a juke box, but unlike Classic FM there isn't the drivel between tracks and it digs a lot deeper than Classic FM generally does.
  • soulboy22soulboy22 Posts: 484
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    #16
    martinwatkins wrote: »
    That's absolutely true Brightonelectric, and I concede that Radio 3 does still do this. But it's a pity that this has survived perhaps at the expense of other things that Radio 3 did well (such as organising/financing recording sessions on a large scale to give employment to musicians and allow us to hear versions of music NOT from CD).

    There used - many year ago - to be a programme called Music in Our Time which went out late of an evening. The material was always recorded - normally at Maida Vale. On one occasion there was an error in the record-keeping of the tape, and it hadn't adequately been prepared for transmission; generally a tape would start with 30 secs of tone followed by 10 secs of silence before the proper programme started, but in this case the tone was missing. Being late in the evening Continuity assumed they'd better play it, and 20 minutes of incomprehensible noises followed, although this was not out of the ordinary as many of these commissioned pieces sounded bizarre, indeed often dreadful. As it came to its conclusion Con noted that there was no red trailer tape at the end of the recording either.

    After the piece was finished a furious telephone complaint from the composer was put through to Radio 3 Con by the switchboard, and in colourful language he denounced the BBC for having made such a mess of his work. It turnd out the tape had been played in its entirety backwards and he - the composer - was the only one who ever noticed or said anything.

    I'd be the first to admit that MDR Klassik is in essence a juke box, but unlike Classic FM there isn't the drivel between tracks and it digs a lot deeper than Classic FM generally does.

    I have been looking at the old radio 3 schedules genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ and even in 1980 they had talks on things like architecture, and i mean instructive talks, you simply don't get that any more.

    Anyway in case you are interested here are two stations I already listened to but were not in my list:

    http://www.wfmt.com/ (a very good station from Chicago)

    http://www.ancientfm.com/ (non stop medieval Renaissance music)
  • CharlieCharlie Posts: 1,777
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    #17
    Forgot about Audiophile, I find the classical stream a good listen.

    http://stream.psychomed.gr/index.html
  • rubricrubric Posts: 28
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    #18
    I've only listened for a few hours of it, but Adagio from Spain's quite listenable - nothing too challenging or lengthy but seems a reasonably wide orchestral sellection. Seems to be presenter chat-free!
  • spannersspanners Posts: 973
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    #19
    martinwatkins wrote: »
    I've still got a lot of cassettes of Radio 3 from the late 70s early 80s and a project I never get round to is to put them all into mp3 format. One day, one day....

    You'll remember these announcers then Martin?

    Real professionals.

    http://andywalmsley.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/radio-3-announcers.html
  • mw963mw963 Posts: 3,079
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    #20
    Absolutely - I was privileged to count Cormac Rigby as a friend, an utterly sincere, charming and fascinating man, and I knew many of the others fairly well. A bunch of absolute characters, both on and off mic.

    I'm afraid they make the current team mostly look like a crew of amateurs.

    Happier days:

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53353648/Radio%203%20Announcers%201981-1.jpg
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