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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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Sunday Feature: To Listen Well

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Music: Classical

05/06/2011

To Listen Well

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, To Listen Well

Hilary Finch considers the craft, purpose and future of newspaper music critics.

Hilary Finch considers the craft, purpose and future of newspaper music critics. With Hugh Canning, Anna Picard, Paul Morley and Tom Service, as well as soprano Elizabeth Watts.

ETA Hoffmann summarised the business of music criticism very neatly by saying it existed 'to lead people to listen well'. Hilary Finch, who has been a classical music critic on The Times for thirty years, considers the craft, purpose and future of her own profession at a time when the 'death of the critic' has been proclaimed. 

The Times was the first newspaper to appoint a regular music critic, but with a combination of changes in the arts, in newspapers and in social media, she considers whether it might be the last.

Hilary talks with fellow critics Hugh Canning, Anna Picard and Paul Morley, the Radio 3 presenter and twitterer Tom Service, and people from other corners of the music industry - the soprano Elizabeth Watts, the chief executive of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and media relations expert Ginny Macbeth.

Producer: Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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