The trouble with my country is -

The UK. The trouble with my country is - too many champions. Obscure performers champion obscure composers, obscure record labels champion obscure performers playing obscure composers. Then national Radio champions obscure record labels, plus of course obscure composers and performers. And the Penguin guide champions all of the above, and anything British. Plus everybody champions ancient music. So when I turn on the radio I hear hours and hours of that awful bleached, bleating choral sound that only sanctimonious British church choirs seems able to make, interposed with obscure works from lightweight composers with obscure names.

The trouble with my country is that it never ceases to champion causes - even when nobody wants them to be championed. What's the trouble with your country?

So no trouble, really.

Maybe it started with the obscurist-collector-snob.

following letters to be typed in

The trouble with my country is that millions of people who love classical music are ignored by the mass media, as though we simply do not exist.

The trouble with my country is that the businesses which could be making a modest profit (and a modest profit is certainly better than absolutely none at all) utterly hate those of us who want to buy classical music recordings from them. Hate hate hate hate hate-ity hate hate. Hate.

Sounds like Andy had a bad night. > Well, day actually. I've been sitting in my kitchen lately listening to Radio 3. Day after day I switch on to some awful bleached choral music sung that plummy way only english choirs seem capable of. (I'm Welsh - we have proper choirs up the valleys). then just when I'm waiting for some solid music I can get into, some obscurist announcer proudly presents Medieval music championed by XXXXXX, followed by some little known guy who ended up in Australia, championed by XXXX. When they followed all this with an hour long interview with the owner of several obscure record labels and it was midday I finally gave up.

That's precisely where it didn't start. Andy's repertory problem starts with some Brits genuinely liking this or that homegrown music that hasn't really established itself in the repertory. As for the English tradition of choral singing, there's a direct relationship between it and the survival of so-called classical music in Britain, so dont' knock it. And since you have three major orchestras in London whereas the most any big American city can muster is one, and since you have the BBC broadcasting music all over the place, don't complain to us Americans. We have every reason to envy you.

-david gable

Over-reliance on imported cheese.

In my youth, before my voice broke and developed into a 'Hayward, shut up!' variety, I gained some experience of performance in a choir in the north of England. We were taught to enunciate words in a very particular manner and with 'rounded vowels'. The effect, unfortunately, was a sound that was 'mincing' one moment and 'plummy' the next and I think this is the sound Andy is complaining about. His comment about Welsh choirs (male voice, I presume, although he doesn't say so) is very apt. Their words are just as clear (even if some knowledge of the Welsh language is sometimes needed to follow them) and yet the sound is quite different and their singing conveys the meaning of those words in a way that often eludes English choirs.

The problem appears to be a very old one. Beecham to his choir while rehearsing Messiah in Leeds in the 1920s (Unto us a child is born): 'Come along ladies, a little more joy, please, and not quite so much astonishment!'. I know exactly what he meant.

Incidentally, London has five major orchestras (Philharmonia, LSO, LPO, RPO and BBCSO).

Not in my fridge. Wensleydale, Cheshire and some really sharp, locally made, Cheddar. Delicious.

Not much call for it.

What about the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden?