WDAV

It seems unnaturally quiet at the WDAV headquarters on Main Street today. After eight days of our spring membership campaign, with its hustle and bustle, the stillness today is a little unnerving – and a little welcome, too, I have to admit.

Gone are the volunteers huddling over the telephones, or in the kitchen over generously donated snacks, meals and drinks. Gone, too, is the hubbub of the “back shop,” the staffers who are primarily responsible for processing the paperwork associated with the pledges that increase exponentially as the campaign progresses.

Over as well are the hurried consultations as announcers and station management confer on how things are going, what needs to happen to stay on track, and most of all, how to say anew what apparently has to be said repeatedly over the course of the on air fundraiser.

Call me a Pollyanna, but I’m always humbled and grateful after these member drives, as well as bone tired. I refuse to be dejected by the fact that the majority of WDAV listeners don’t contribute to these campaigns. To me it’s inspiring that there are any who do make contributions, and that the money raised is enough to keep this station going strong.

And it’s hard to feel dejected when the payoff for me, personally, is that I get to come back to work, and bask in the glory of uninterrupted classical music. It sounds especially sweet to my ears when I can enjoy it all by myself in the studio again after a week of company, however welcome that company might have been. As a colleague once told me, there’s a reason why people like me enter a profession where we can sit alone in a studio with headphones on talking to an audience that can’t talk back.

The importance of this kind of work increases when I’m reminded that it is valued by so many people who invest in it: with their time as listeners, with their talent as volunteers, or with their fortune as contributors.

So all I can feel and say at a time like this is “Thanks.”

That, and “If you didn’t get a chance to contribute, it’s not too late to use the secure online contribution form, or to call 704-894-8990 during business hours …”

Posted by Frank Dominguez at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Our Women’s History Month special focus will be wrapping up soon. As usual with efforts of this kind, I’m left wondering if it really makes a difference. We’ve commemorated Women’s History Month before, as well as Black History Month and everything from the Summer Olympics to Mozart’s 250th Anniversary and Shostakovich’s 100th, with specials and programming “focuses.” That’s “radio speak” for scheduling – and making a special point of talking about – a certain type of music. We’ll be doing this again on March 21st to mark the anniversary of Bach’s birth. We used to use this type of tactic fairly regularly in the 90s. Then somewhere along the way, we stopped doing as many after we collectively thought: “Does this really make anyone tune in?” And also, “If this ‘special’ music is worth hearing, shouldn’t we be playing it regularly, anyway?”

That led us to expand the list of selections that were part of our rotation (that’s more insider talk for those pieces that are heard regularly as a matter of programming policy). We made an effort to include more music by 20th century and contemporary composers, by women and African-Americans, and more selections in “niche” categories (in other words, particular genres) such as opera, choral music and organ music. We tried to add these elements while still preserving our grounding in the standard repertory and music that is, generally speaking, appealing to a broad range of listeners.

The net result was far more variety in our programming, and I like to think more musical integrity. Listeners didn’t have to wait until February to hear the likes of William Grant Still, Samuel Coleridge Taylor or Scott Joplin, or for March to roll around to hear music by Amy Beach, Germaine Tallieferre and Ethyl Smyth.

In spite of that a listener complained some time back that we didn’t play enough music by women composers, which led to our reviving the Women’s History Month focus.
And even though we play a broader variety of music than we did 10 or 15 years ago, I still hear from time to time from listeners who want more choral music, more opera, more 20th century, more (fill in the blank). Often these listeners are completely unaware of entire programs we carry devoted to their particular passion, such as Sacred Classics, Viva Voce, and orchestra series such as The New York Philharmonic This Week, which routinely program modern and contemporary works along with the “war horses.” (Regrettably, it sometimes seems the only listeners aware of those shows are those who complain that they don’t like that kind of music on “their” radio station.)

I suspect people are going to listen to the radio, not when their favorite kind of music is on, but when it’s convenient for them to listen to the radio.

I remember one listener who decried our choice not to carry The Metropolitan Opera broadcast season live, and wasn’t mollified when I told him he could hear NPR World of Opera Saturday nights at 7. “I like to listen to the opera while I’m washing my car, and I don’t do that at night.” I couldn’t argue with him there.

And I don’t think he would have been persuaded by the fact that a majority of listeners (judging from our Arbitron audience surveys) would prefer to hear instrumental classical music while they pursue their Saturday routines. That’s the nature of broadcasting, I guess.

So I’m left wondering: are special focuses such as ours for Women’s History Month really meaningful on a classical radio station? Or any type of program that focuses narrowly on a specific type of music? I’d like to think that, even if only a handful of listeners discover an enjoyable composer or selection, it’s been worth it. But I’d also be interested to know what you think, either here at the blog or privately at wdavprogramming@davidson.edu.

Frank Dominguez is WDAV's Program Director.

Posted by Frank Dominguez at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The composer in this case is the 18th century Czech composer Josef Mysliveček, known as Il divino boémo (“The Divine Bohemian”) because of the sublime beauty of his music. His admirers included no less a figure than Mozart himself, whose own name, Amadeus, means “beloved of God” (which might have qualified him to know a thing or two about the divine).

Composers such as Mysliviček, Wagenseil, Vanhal and Cannabich are hardly household names, nor are their Baroque counterparts such as Veracini, Tartini, Fasch and Quantz. Occasionally when WDAV plays their music, someone will say to us, “Why?” The argument is generally along the lines that, since these composers have been judged by history to be “minor” figures, we shouldn’t waste air time with their music.

But as this article in The Times points out, hearing the music of someone like Mysliveček can enhance our appreciation of Mozart. We hear not only how Mozart may have emulated him or been influenced by him, but also how he rose above that influence and the conventions of his time to create something timeless and enduring. And the same can be said for hearing music by the contemporaries of Bach and Brahms, Stravinsky and Shostakovich.

The challenge for us as a radio station is to strike the right balance between these lesser-known composers and the acknowledged masters who have contributed significantly to what is regarded (somewhat officiously, I fear) as the “Western Canon” of music. And also to ensure that the overall experience of listening to the station is still appealing and entertaining while maintaining that balance.

I was encouraged by the comments of a recent (and admittedly unscientific) Listener Feedback Group that met at the station. They enthusiastically endorsed the idea of discovering “new old stuff” on WDAV, and urged us to continue to mix in these less well-known works with the standards (some might say “warhorses”) of the repertory.

It would be great to hear your thoughts, too, either at this blog if you want to “go public,” or by email; so feel free to let us know what you think.

Posted by Frank Dominguez at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The classical music world has been abuzz in recent weeks with a controversy that would appear to be more in keeping with corrupt corporate CEOs than with earnest classical artists and producers.

Well, perhaps it’s an overstatement to say the classical music “world” has been concerned with this scandal. I doubt that few classical music professionals, let alone average music lovers, had ever even heard of the late pianist Joyce Hatto outside of her native England. Until recently, that is.

That’s when it came to light that her rare and critically acclaimed recordings may have been faked by her husband. Details are available from a story at NPR’s web site. But suffice it to say that the performances CD reviewers in the English press had been gushing over appear to have been made by other artists, and simply copied onto CDs labeled with Hatto as the performer.

It’s tempting to poke fun at the gullibility of music critics and fans in this case, but the artists who have allegedly been plagiarized (if that term can be applied to musical performances) are artists who are actually well known, such as Vladimir Ashkenázy and Yefim Bronfman. They have long been earning rave reviews all on their own, without the poignant back story of Hatto, who struggled with cancer in her later years, even as her husband released these acclaimed recordings through his own company.

Still, the whole thing is a little reminiscent of the tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes, in which no one has the courage to tell the ruler that he’s actually naked, except for a little boy who doesn’t know any better. The contemporary twist on the tale provided by this case is that the “little boy” was reportedly the CD player on a personal computer. When a Joyce Hatto CD was loaded, the recording information displayed by the player was for another artist and recording altogether, arousing the suspicions of the listener and setting off the investigation.

For the record, WDAV does not have any Joyce Hatto recordings, and I personally had never heard of her before this story surfaced. I’d love to be able to claim that our acute critical discernment accounts for that, but the truth is, we just never received her CDs. WDAV gets most of its material from commercial distributors with whom we have established relationships. Increasingly over the past decade, small labels or the artists themselves also submit many of the recordings we get for consideration. If Joyce Hatto’s husband had known of us, chances are we’d have her CDs in our library and on our air, too.

Frank Dominguez is WDAV's Program Director

Posted by Frank Dominguez at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)