# Classical radio goofs



## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

One day many years ago an announcer on an Albany NY station was playing the Rimsky-Korsakov Russian Easter Festival Overture. It was the days when they still played vinyl. I still remember it was Barenboim conducting. The slow intro sounded fast, but I was only half listening. Then the allegro section started and the orchestra took off like a Ferrari on amphetamines! Barenboim must have been on drugs!! But no, after a second I realized that the announcer had put the LP on 45 rpm instead of 33 and 1/3. And by that time she was somewhere out of the studio! So we got to hear the piece played like that for 2 or 3 minutes until she got back, and made a panting apology. I think it's the funniest thing I ever heard on classical radio. Anyone else have any good ones? I have others, but they are not nearly so good.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Years ago, Newsday , the Long Island newspaper , printed this on the daily list of classical recordings scheduled to be played on WQXR : Beethoven : EROTICA SYMPHONY . !!!!!!
Beethoven is one sexy composer !!!! ROFLOL !!!!





:lol:


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Not a goof, but an April fools joke. I turned on WQRS which back in the day was a Detroit all classical station. What was playing? Janis Joplin! Ha! I listened like there was something seriously wrong, but appreciating that maybe some stuffed shirts were getting a dose of hard core blues-rock. Or course at the end of the song, the announcer said, "April Fools," and went on with the classical program.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Florestan said:


> Not a goof, but an April fools joke. I turned on WQRS which back in the day was a Detroit all classical station. What was playing? Janis Joplin! Ha! I listened like there was something seriously wrong, but appreciating that maybe some stuffed shirts were getting a dose of hard core blues-rock. Or course at the end of the song, the announcer said, "April Fools," and went on with the classical program.


Nice one. However, it might have been even funnier if they'd played something closer to home i.e Kick Out the Jams by MC5 or T.V. Eye by the Stooges!


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

On the radio recently I heard the announcer unsure what to call someone who plays the flute, first saying flautist and then realising that it could also be flutist. Eventually they found out that on that radio station _flutist_ was standard (I don't like the word myself, but who am I to argue?).


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

MoonlightSonata said:


> On the radio recently I heard the announcer unsure what to call someone who plays the flute, first saying flautist and then realising that it could also be flutist. Eventually they found out that on that radio station _flutist_ was standard (I don't like the word myself, but who am I to argue?).


It it were me I would likely have become flustered and called him a "flute player."


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Perhaps not quite 'goofs' but two delicious moments on BBC Radio 3 in the early 1980's, when it was still a rather highbrow station whose presenters had cut-glass Metropolitan accents.

One evening, following a beautiful piece of Baroque music, deadpan, "And that, of course, was '*****'...Samuel Scheidt, that is...!" 


On Saturdays, even the erudite Radio 3 announcers had to read out the football scores. One venue in the Scottish Premier league was a grim construction of iron girders, timber and corrugated iron sheeting in downtown Dundee, never a pretty place (it used to be used as a stand in for Moscow in films). This was called 'Tannadice', to be pronounced in a dour Dundonian voice as 'Tanna-dice' (like the object you roll in Monopoly).

Radio 3's man had his mind on a different plane: In an exquisite voice he intoned "Dundee United 2, Heart of Midlothian 0 - and of course that game was played at 'Taena-di-che'. Since then I've often thought of this unlovely hulk perched somewhere on the Italian Amalfi coast, forever hosting lovely Verdi operas...



* NB to avoid gratuitous offence to any Dundonian TC members, I know that Tannadice park has been rebuilt as a modern football stadium. I'm sure it's lovely now. But it wisnae then, ken fit I mean?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

On Boston public radio a piece of music was announced as having been composed by "Gene Sibbeleeoo."

You figure it out.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Jim Svejda, host of the radio program _The Record Shelf_, and author of _The Insider's GUIDE to CLASSICAL RECORDINGS: a Highly Opinionated, Irreverent, and Selective Guide to What's Good and What's Not_, reveals in the Sixth Revised and Expanded Edition (1999) the following story, which I always find amusing. It is the opening paragraph of Svejda's review of Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2, Op. 30, "Romantic" (p.322):


One of the most embarrassing of the numerous embarrassing moments I have suffered during my radio career occurred at a small station in upstate New York, shortly after I introduced this moltenly beautiful symphony as being a work by "the late Howard Hanson." Midway through the first movement, the "late" Dr. Hanson phoned the station and proceeded to point out, in the most unimaginably charming way, that my information was not entirely accurate.

I will point out that Hanson died in 1981, so none of you out there who currently hosts a radio show and introduces a Hanson work as "by the late Dr. Hanson" need worry about getting a correcting phone call. Alas...


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

SONNET CLV said:


> Jim Svejda, host of the radio program _The Record Shelf_, and author of _The Insider's GUIDE to CLASSICAL RECORDINGS: a Highly Opinionated, Irreverent, and Selective Guide to What's Good and What's Not_, reveals in the Sixth Revised and Expanded Edition (1999) the following story, which I always find amusing. It is the opening paragraph of Svejda's review of Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2, Op. 30, "Romantic" (p.322):
> 
> 
> One of the most embarrassing of the numerous embarrassing moments I have suffered during my radio career occurred at a small station in upstate New York, shortly after I introduced this moltenly beautiful symphony as being a work by "the late Howard Hanson." Midway through the first movement, the "late" Dr. Hanson phoned the station and proceeded to point out, in the most unimaginably charming way, that my information was not entirely accurate.
> ...


I have his show on right now. KUSC.ORG


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Another famous Howard Hanson story is from Michael Steinberg.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Early in my time as a music critic, I once referred to his Romantic Symphony as "Sibelian slush." Some five or six years later I met Hanson for the first time at an international music critics' symposium at Eastman. Hanson, who spoke at the opening session, had something individual and appropriate to say to each of the dozen and a half participants. When he came to me, he told the "Sibelian slush" story. Then, after a beautifully timed silence, he added: "Of course Mr. Steinberg was quite wrong. [Applause]. It is my _Nordic _Symphony that is 'Sibelian slush.' "


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Perhaps not quite 'goofs' but two delicious moments on BBC Radio 3 in the early 1980's, when it was still a rather highbrow station with presenters with cut-glass Metropolitan accents.
> 
> One evening, following a beautiful piece of Baroque music, deadpan, "And that, of course, was '*****'...Samuel Scheidt, that is...!"
> 
> ...


I wonder if Dens Park (home of Dundee F.C. and within spitting distance of Tannadice) could have been Gallicised as 'Donz Parc'?


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## Radames (Feb 27, 2013)

Florestan said:


> Not a goof, but an April fools joke. I turned on WQRS which back in the day was a Detroit all classical station. What was playing? Janis Joplin! Ha! I listened like there was something seriously wrong, but appreciating that maybe some stuffed shirts were getting a dose of hard core blues-rock. Or course at the end of the song, the announcer said, "April Fools," and went on with the classical program.


The Governor of VT did an April Fools joke too - I believe it was broadcast on public radio. VT has a mythical monster in it's Lake Champlain - some fuzzy pics exist. One day in about 1994 or so he went on the radio and announced that the dead body of "Champ" had washed up on shore and asked people to bring ice to help preserve the body. Hilarious!!


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

I was a classical announcer for some five years, and alarmingly, don't remember doing anything particularly embarrassing despite being a fairly good natured fool in real life. However, I was once the all-night engineering/news reader for a Muzak station in Albuqueque. The wire services would feed features and other stuff that wasn't breaking news across the teletypes at any time when there was nothing better to send -- often in the middle of he night. One such was the daily "Almanac" ("Today is [date]. The [nth] day of [year]. Sunrise will be ____, sunset at ____. The moon is in the first quarter. On this day in history [x happened]. Famous people born on this day are . . . etc.") They often came over many days in advance, and you tore them off and hung them on a hook in the newsroom for future use. One Saturday night it happened to be the night of time change (Daylight Savings to Standard) so at every hourly newscast I made a point of emphasizing the time. At six o'clock a.m. I pulled the Alamanac off the hook and read it, and then put the Muzak tape back on. Ten minutes later a very bewildered man called and asked if the time change also affected the date? I had accidently read the following Sunday's Almanac. leaving the poor man wondering whatever happened to a week of his life.


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