Radio 3 Unwind: turning classical music into calming mindfulness mush

Sian Williams is one of Unwind's presenters
Sian Williams is one of Unwind’s presenters - BBC Radio 3

There was a time when BBC Radio 3’s mission was to bring the widest variety of classical music to the widest possible public, with knowledgeable and enthusiastic presenters who knew how to wear their learning lightly.

Now it seems to have a new mission: turning classical music into a sort of aural therapy. The station has just launched a new 24/7 stream “showcasing a broad and eclectic range of calming classical music,” dubbed Unwind. The station controller Sam Jackson explains that the stream offers “a gateway into classical music” and adds “As our lives become ever more consumed by technology, deadlines and stress, the music on BBC Radio 3 Unwind offers the perfect antidote.”

I already have a very effective antidote to those things – it’s called BBC Radio 3. But anything that might bring new listeners to classical music has to be a good thing, so I roused myself before dawn to be ready for the launch at 6.00am. Bang on the hour, delicate silvery tinkling accompanied a voice saying “On BBC Sounds this is Radio 3’s Unwind” in the same deathly tone as that voice at Heathrow airport which tells you your flight has been delayed. Then came Ravel’s famous Pavane, played on two pianos which sounded as if they had been embalmed, presumably because of some tweaking by the engineers to make them sound more mushy.

This was the start of “Mindful Mix” a three-hour sequence of music with no presentation. After Ravel came Burt Bacharach’s Moon River in an arrangement for guitar, then a symphonic movement by African-American composer Florence Price – one of many pieces by black and women composers. In amongst the music were sounds of birdsong and tropical forests. The musical styles ranged from early Baroque to romantic, but what all the pieces had in common were brevity and soft edges. Clarinets and strings and pianos are clearly in at Unwind, oboes and percussion and brass definitely out.

Only one piece disturbed the sense of dreamy calm: Louise Farrenc’s 3rd Symphony, which actually became quite turbulent. In the context of the mindfulness mush all around this warm human passion sounded like a miscalculation, and I imagine it won’t be repeated. Anyone treating Unwind as a “gateway to classical music” will certainly hear some small masterpieces, but they will also hear a fair amount of chill-out pap. For me it soon palled, as did the oh-so-gentle presentation from Dr Sian Williams on Classical Unwind, which made Radio 3’s regular presenters sound like hardcore intellectuals. My hunch is the new stream will find a big audience; my fear is that if it does, the pressure on Radio 3 to go down the route of “chill-out classical” might become irresistible.

On BBC Sounds now