Classical music on TV
Posted by enrico | Under Music Sunday Aug 7, 2005In the last 24 hours, I have caught two awesome classical music programs with no advance warning whatsoever. Yesterday was Horowitz concert in Vienna in 1988? (the same tour he did his famous return to Moscow) and today was the finalists in the Santander Piano Competition in Spain, with complete airings of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (by two finalists) and the Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto. The Horowitz concert had minimal–less than 3 minute–commercial breaks between major groupings, and the latter had no commercial breaks whatsoever in 2 hours. That’s amazing. Even A&E’s Breakfast with the fArts has gotten so bad as not program classical music programming at all for 6+ months at a time, and has even had the temerity to cut to a commercial mid-movement!
TiVo is not working properly (which is post in and of itself) and I had no VHS tapes to record anything, so I just simply watched and enjoyed. I’ve been in the country a week, and already I’ve seen more true artisitic programming (even apart from these) than I did in the US in the last year. I look forward to new gems I might find, if only I had a channel guide (and it was accurate…)