‘Radio 3 is like going into a magic garden’
As the station announces its 2020 line-up, controller Alan Davey tells Charlotte Runcie that’s it’s finally shaking off its stuffy image
Is classical music having a hipsterish moment? According to Alan Davey, the controller of BBC Radio 3, there are club nights in Peckham where classical is the height of cool. “It’s the Bach that gets that audience – who are hipsterish, who are wearing checked shirts and drinking beer – it gets them quiet. It’s the thing that really hits them,” says Davey. “There’s something happening.”
Well, I suppose if you were, as Davey is, in charge of Radio 3 and all classical music on the BBC, you might say that too. Davey’s official job title is controller of BBC Radio 3, BBC Proms and the BBC Orchestras and Choirs. It’s a big brief, and he’s determined to get more listeners through his doors at a time when classical music’s audience is growing, and to support more young musicians who make music worth hearing.
We are speaking at a buoyant time for Radio 3. Davey is launching his extensive new programmes for the autumn and 2020 (see box, right). He’s also spearheading new schemes to support baroque ensembles and to promote experimental jazz.
And according to the most recent Rajar ratings, Radio 3 is doing rather nicely. The network’s audience has risen to just over two million listeners, up from 1.91 million in 2018. To what does Davey, a man from a civil service background, and previously at the Arts Council before he got the job at Radio 3 in 2014, attribute its success?
“People are finally coming through the door of Radio 3 and seeing what it’s really like,” he says, “and
not thinking of it as it might have been 50 years ago… when you felt that all the announcers were wearing dinner jackets and everything was very, very carefully scripted to within an inch of its life.
“And I think we’re developing… a tone that is informal but informed. I think people are coming in and finding we’re not as forbidding as they thought we were. And, actually, there’s a heck of a lot here. It’s like going into a magic garden, and you might come to one place, and then there’s another thing, and then there’s another thing. And then you have a new passion.” This idea of Radio 3 as a magic garden is a theme that Davey returns to often.
His heart must have sunk a little, though, when Scala Radio launched this year, a challenger to the classical music territory previously occupied only by Radio 3 and
‘We’ll have a regular vinyl track – to me, analogue sound is so much better than digital sound’
‘For me, there’s never been a rivalry with Classic FM. We’ve got complete freedom, we can do things in depth’
Classic FM. He sees it as a sign that more people are listening to classical music. “If Scala gets people turned on to classical music, that’s a great thing.” Does Davey listen to Scala?
“I listen to all kinds of things. I listen to radio stations from around the world.”
OK, but there is a rivalry there, surely. “I think we’re all doing different things. Scala is probably after the kind of lighter classical listener, and there’s more crossover music in the mix. And, for me there’s never been a rivalry with Classic FM. We have no playlists, we’ve got complete freedom, we can do things in depth.
“Look, classical music has a lot of baggage,” he concedes. “And some people have a lot of baggage with classical music… but by making things available that are good, and that offer a really valuable experience and set of insights to people, which is what we’re trying to do on Radio 3, it’s a way in, and a way around lingering notions of elitism.”
The son of an electrician, Davey was brought up in Stockton-on-tees, and went to a comprehensive school. “Well, it was a grammar school for a year, then it became a comprehensive… We did music when it was a grammar school, and then stopped when it was a comprehensive.”
Before the music stopped, Davey managed to get his grade five music theory. “So thank goodness for that, actually. We were taught Bach in great detail in that one year, and that has lived with me.”
He talks passionately about bringing more people into the fold of classical music, the way that he was brought in. He cites the “joy” of discovering and playing forgotten black and female composers, and how proud he is that the young composer Daniel Kidane will be at the Last Night of the Proms. Kidane will be premiering a piece called Woke, which is about “the need for all to be woke, to be more aware of issues concerning social and racial justice in today’s society”.
There’s much buzz in radio at the moment around attracting digital listeners, and the focus on pushing the troubled BBC Sounds app. Davey has dutifully announced forthcoming “podcastable” programmes, and the M1 Symphony will debut on BBC Sounds.
But there’s also a slightly pointed focus on the joy of analogue. A new late-night programme, Night Tracks, will play unusual music appropriate for contemplation in the darkness. And, crucially: “We’ll have a regular vinyl track. A real record being played. Which is… sorry, I could go on for ages about this, but, to me, analogue sound is so much better than digital sound… I hope they’ll let me drop the needle for the first one.”
It’s not just music on Radio 3, of course. Free Thinking, the arts discussion strand, made headlines earlier this year when Matthew Sweet, its presenter, thoroughly dismantled the thesis of his guest, Naomi Wolf.
“Yes, at Radio 3 we read the footnotes,” says Davey of the incident. “We don’t have a crowded agenda on each programme, so we allow the time for that to happen.”
It’s very different from some live discussion programmes on Radio 4, certainly, where presenters often seem to be running out of time and rushing on to the next thing. I point out that Radio 4 officially describes itself on its Twitter profile as “the home of intelligent speech”. That’s got to rankle, hasn’t it? Where does that leave Radio 3?