What is going on at the BBC?
It was with complete dismay and shock that we discovered last week that the BBC had decided to disband the BBC Singers, and to inflict savage cuts on the BBC orchestras, supposedly for financial reasons.
The Singers’ origins can be traced back to 1924, two years after the foundation of the BBC itself. The British Broadcasting Company had been formed as a private company in 1922, with John Reith as its general manager, to handle the advent of the wireless, the invention of Marconi, and which had made its first British broadcast from Chelmsford in 1920, featuring the voice of Australian soprano, Nellie Melba. The Post Office issued a single licence to the embryonic BBC, in order to avoid the chaos which had broken out in the USA, with its multiple broadcasters, but even that proved impossible to contain, especially after the General Strike of 1926, and it was decided, on the recommendation of the Crawford Committee (1925-27), that the British Broadcasting Company be replaced by a non-commercial, Crown-chartered organisation to be known as the British Broadcasting Corporation. On 1st January 1927, the BBC came into being with John Reith as its Director General, with the directive from the stern Calvinist, Reith, to “inform, educate and entertain.”
In 1924, the original company engaged Stanford Robinson as Chorus Master of the ‘Wireless Chorus,’ a fully professional choir, and in 1927 the BBC created an Octet from the chorus itself called ‘The Wireless Singers’ for smaller works. Elgar, Stravinsky and Schoenberg were among the early conductors of these two groups, and in 1934, the group was renamed the BBC Singers, and divided into two octets.
This was the shape of things for nearly a hundred years, with the BBC Singers at the forefront of top quality professional ensemble singing, commissioning and performing works by composers such as Holst, Britten, Tippett, Berkeley, Maxwell Davies, Musgrave and Tavener. Its importance in British musical history cannot be over-emphasised, and it became world famous as a well-knit homogenous group, instantly recognisable, employing a core of fine ensemble singers, many of whom went on to forge fine solo careers, including Sir Peter Pears, Dame Sarah Connolly and Brindley Sherratt. Great conductors worked with the Singers including Karajan, Klemperer, Walter, Furtwängler, Beecham and Boulez. There have only been eight chief conductors since 1924, enabling a sense of continuity to prevail, even as styles of singing and interpretation changed.
All this history has been swept away by crass and insensitive management in 2023, in a crazy desire for change and diversity. The BBC Singers are to be axed and replaced with “more agile ensembles to attract musicians from across the country.” Disbanding a beacon of excellence and top quality in a vain attempt to introduce a variety of hiring possibilities will inevitably result in lower standards of musicianship and singing, quite apart from the loss of professional work for many struggling performers. Supposedly a cost saving exercise, it will almost certainly end up costing more to hire freelancers, and the quality will drop. If it is true that, as has been reported, several of the people instrumental in this crass decision have never heard the BBC Singers, and certainly have no idea of the history and prestige of the ensemble, this speaks volumes for the feebleness of their decision.
When you add in the outrageous decision by BBC Radio Scotland to axe Jamie MacDougall’s excellent Sunday night programme, ‘Classics Unwrapped’, for literally tiny savings, the impression that the present BBC management has lost the plot becomes apparent. It is a tragedy not just for the people involved in singing and producing, but also for the public at large, deprived of top quality music making and discussion. The distinguished conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner has just said that the BBC Singers decision demonstrates that the Corporation “does not give a flying fig about British classical music”, a statement with which it is hard to disagree.
It is such a shame, as many of us are true supporters of the BBC in the face of relentless commercialisation and attacks from Conservative MPs and the press, but these current decisions, along with the furore about Gary Lineker’s comments, the sacking of older presenters on Radio 2, and the BBC chairman’s financial support for Boris Johnson, are all symptomatic of a general malaise at the heart of the BBC. Alienating your true supporters is not the best way forward in the current climate, but I fear that is what is happening.
Can I encourage our readers to tune in to Jamie’s final ‘Classics Unwrapped’’ programme on Sunday evening (26th March) on Radio Scotland, when, among other excellent items, he will be interviewing EMR favourite and Scotland’s representative at the 2023 Cardiff Singer of the World competition, Beth Taylor? As well as the interview, Beth will be singing a couple of songs, and we’ll be able to hear just how good this young mezzo-soprano is. Our CD, ‘Songs of Edinburgh’, featuring the music of Tom Cunningham and the words of Alexander McCall Smith, is still widely available from Amazon and Birnam CD, and you can hear a simply magnificent Scottish superstar in the making, along with contributions from a grizzled old pro like myself, and stylish piano accompaniment from Michał Gajzler.
Those of us who have the future of classical music in our hands must protest against these crazy decisions by the out of touch BBC management, and I would ask all our readers to add their names to the various petitions currently circulating, demanding the continuing presence of the full time BBC Singers, as a matter of urgency!
Cover photo: Sofi Jeannin, Chief Conductor
