BRAVO RNZ CONCERT

I was pleased to read Bill Ralston on the RNZ Concert fiasco ( Life, February 22). He mentions 173,000 listeners. I would suggest this is a starting point, as many people who treasure this station will fly under the radar.

The timeless music is part of their home. To me, living alone, the music and announcers’ comments are like

a companion. How dare the faceless bean counters interfere with this taonga. I hope they got their comeuppance over their lack of understanding. Len Newman (Westport)

What strikes me about the

RNZ Concert uproar is why it became an uproar in the first place ( Editorial, February 22). Many love it, many are indifferent, but some really resent it. Why is that?

As for me, I’m stuck between rock and a hard place, loving as I do the classics and all that jazz. In my late teens, the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album was the soundtrack of my life, and I still love it.

My father’s love of the big bands of his era has been passed on. As time went by, Pink Floyd and Dire Straits worked for me, and still do. Back in the 1970s, I was dragged along to see Visconti’s Death in Venice.

Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No 5 changed everything. My Desert Island Discs would include that and the duet from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers.

A Mozart nocturne definitely, and a bit of Oscar Peterson.

The common man in me always loved the television theme from Inspector Morse. To me, it’s as stirring as anything by Elgar.

If that makes me a low-brow pleb to some, so be it. My point is RNZ Concert is the only station I know of that shuns the narrow tyranny of “demographics” and feeds my soul. Dean Donoghue {Papamoa Beach]

Gillian Claridge ( Talkback, February 22) mentioned the Simón Bolivar youth orchestra, a film of which should be required watching by those paid (I’m sure handsomely) to make stupid decisions such as the proposal for RNZ Concert.

She also mentioned a Yo-Yo Ma concert in Christchurch watched by an enthusiastic cross-generational audience, proving that serious musicians are not the elitists they may once have been thought to be.

As a child, I saw Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann when they were brought to the East End of London to stimulate interest in the classics. It was all quite serious until the pair showed us how it shouldn’t be done. A magnificent leap by Fonteyn ended in a tangle of arms and legs and left us in fits. Not bad for a bunch of dead-end kids.

Instead of downgrading Concert, why not let the old lady loosen her corsets and allow the young in? Carole Hadler (Rolleston)