At 10am final Thursday, Ladies Composers got here on air and Hit the Dancefloor bit the mud. This new arrival amongst Scala Radio’s 20-strong household of digital area of interest stations is devoted totally to classical music composed by girls. Issues started, nevertheless, not with a fantastic fanfare (what an exquisite fee for a feminine composer that might have been) however with a little bit of technical jiggery-pokery that meant knocking out certainly one of Scala’s present stations – farewell Hit the Dancefloor, a peculiar combination of waltzes, ballets and galops (even a clog dance in its closing hour) – and changing it with the brand new Ladies Composers icon.
The changeover took a couple of minutes, and the primary piece to be performed – the opening motion of Fanny Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in E Flat Main – was sadly not accessible to this listener, whose pc saved displaying an error message. However the second piece – Hildegard von Bingen’s Spiritus Sanctus Vivificans – was extraordinarily uplifting, and the third, even higher: a motion of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor performed by Isata Kanneh-Mason and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
And but after this promising starting, the brand new station opted for a day of principally musical mush: the form of ghostly, ghastly temper music that might not be amiss on Scala’s mindfulness station. Anne Nikitin’s Discovered God didn't make me discover God; Julianna Barwick’s Therapeutic Is a Miracle was removed from miraculous; Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres’s Coma did precisely what it mentioned on the tin.
On the plus aspect, there was some charming piano: Oscar-winning movie composer Rachel Portman’s A Present made me wish to hear extra of her work; Marie Bigot’s Etude in A Minor was massively polished; Maria Szymanowska’s Six Menuets splendidly elegant. Like Clara Schumann, Bigot and Szymanowska have been virtuoso pianists within the first half of the nineteenth century who additionally composed. Taking part in was seen as respectable for girls; composition much less so. When contemporaries heard a chunk by “F Mendelssohn”, they invariably assumed her brother Felix quite than Fanny. A letter from her father has develop into notorious: “Maybe for Felix music will develop into a occupation, whereas for you it'll at all times stay however an decoration.”
Scala’s premium stations – focused at “music tremendous followers” who pay £3.99 a month to get ad-free entry – are a traditional instance of narrowcasting: there are stations for devotees of baroque or romantic music, there’s one which performs nothing however Mozart 24 hours a day, one which dishes up “feast” music, and a station that guarantees “classical bangers” which appears to play the Blue Danube quite a bit.
That is presenter-less radio, with numerous brief items (three or 4 minutes on common) damaged up by transient prerecorded statements: “Continuous music from girls composers” and “The one station that performs the very best works by feminine composers 24 hours a day.” It's basically a playlist, shuffled by pc with occasional human intervention.
There are a whole lot of similar-sounding movie scores and loads of unthreatening piano, harp and guitar items. Suppose Enya crossed with Philip Glass: rest, mindfulness, the rhythm of a well-ordered life. Not a lot vocal music – too intrusive? The station’s pc prefers narcoleptic sopranos buzzing wordlessly.
Scala units out to make classical music (what a knotty and unhelpful time period that's) “accessible”, so you'll not discover many longer or more difficult items on the brand new station. Don’t count on Judith Weir, Sofia Gubaidulina or Hannah Kendall. The items align with what programme supervisor Jenny Nelson calls Scala’s “acquainted sound world” – music that washes over you, provides pleasure, vaguely reminds you of one thing you noticed and loved on the telly.
Nelson sees Weir as “a Radio 3 composer”, and Clara Schumann, Anne Dudley and Portman as consultant Scala composers. “Radio 3 is a superb station,” she says, “and other people assume there’s a whole lot of crossover [with Scala] due to the time period classical, however the overlap isn’t that nice. One of many concepts we had once we began Scala was ‘What if Radio 2 did classical?’ It’s extra that mindset that determines our music and editorial coverage. There may be some crossover, however there’ll be items we play that Radio 3 wouldn’t contact with a bargepole, and vice versa.”
Composer Julie Cooper, whose ethereal Secret Paths crops up quite a bit on the brand new station, insists the formulaic programming is not going to undermine its contribution to correcting the imbalance between female and male composers. “It actually doesn’t matter from what style they're taking part in works,” she says. “Crucial factor is heightening consciousness and giving visibility to girls composers.”
Scala has allied with the charity Donne, which campaigns to “readdress the gender inequality inside the music trade”, to start out this new station. Donne’s founder, Gabriella Di Laccio, believes an all-women station – even one with so restricted a playlist – will exhibit what number of feminine composers, historic and fashionable, there are. However she additionally accepts there's a hazard of ghettoisation, and has some sympathy with those that reject the label “lady composer”. “We stay up for the day when there are simply composers,” she says, “however we're not there but and there may be nonetheless a necessity to spotlight girls composers.”
It's an attention-grabbing experiment, however certainly Scala must be braver. Subscribers have stumped up their £3.99 and aren’t your run-of-the-mill informal radio listeners – these are “music tremendous followers”, bear in mind? – so why not give them Weir, Gubaidulina and Kendall alongside Dudley and Portman? And programme some works that last more than 4 minutes – the complete of Clara Schumann’s piano concerto for example. Broaden that sound world. Perhaps begin a station dedicated to feminine serialists. Now that might be an journey.
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