Radio 3's American Road Trip: Los Angeles

Radio 3's American Road Trip: Los Angeles

If I struggled to associate Dallas with orchestral music, Los Angeles will naturally follow suit. Or so I thought. Georgia Mann presents Day 4 of BBC Radio 3's American Roadtrip - the final leg from LA. The show opens and it immediately clicks with me: Hollywood. The movies. Film scores! Yes - the focus of this programme will, inevitably, be music that has featured in or been composed specifically for film. But this is Radio 3, so it will hold a different character to Classic FM at the Movies with Jonathan Ross (which does have its own merits, if one looks hard enough).

We're off to a good start with Gershwin's gentle piano and some sort of piece from Strauss (think it was Richard).

There is music from the film Sunset Boulevard, which I have on DVD in the loft - must dig that out again. I remember the film well, and Georgia Mann says it was a very 'meta' offering from Hollywood - and I know exactly what she means, because I am down with the kids. Who could forget Gloria Swanson's camp dame, in her semi-schizophrenic effort to stay youthful and relevant? True of so many of our internal monologues - certainly is of mine. If all goes to plan, my brother Adam and I will be cruising Sunset Boulevard proper in just over two months time, and I do hope we take the time to savour our own precious moment in the sun.

We move across to Hollywood Bowl, which is a famous venue. I've certainly heard of it, but what does it look like? I head to Google Images. It's like a modern open-air amphitheater, I realise. 

It is lovely to hear Charlie Chaplin's Smile played; this is a tune I know well due to the Eric Clapton connection (he's known to sing it once in a while).

There are themes to To Kill A Mockingbird, and The Dam Busters, both of which are great. And then it gets darker with Bernard Herrmann's prelude to Psycho. The Psycho franchise is an old favourite of mine, and *possibly* we will catch the Bates Motel set if we have time to do the Universal Studios tour on our trip. And there's another offering from Herrmann a bit later, with The Man Who Knew Too Much - I recognise those unnerving waves instantly. This one has become a new favourite since hearing it at The Last Night of the Proms, last summer.

BBC Radio 3's great American adventure ends here, in the very same place ours will in May. What will we make of LA when we get there, after driving all the way from Chicago? At the moment I haven't a clue, but I will keep in my mind the following sentiment from this programme: for those without means, paradise becomes hell.

Image by Lindsay_Jayne from Pixabay

Radio 3's American Roadtrip: Dallas

Radio 3's American Roadtrip: Dallas

It's Day Three of BBC Radio 3's American Roadtrip. Petroc Trelawny comes to us courtesy of WRR 101.1 - Dallas's classical music radio station. I come to you from my modest home in Runcorn, Cheshire. Let me start by addressing the immediate elephant in the room: associating a classical music radio station with Dallas - or anywhere in Texas - is a tricky concept. The words Dallas and Texas are more likely to conjure images of Stetson Hats, Steak Houses, and Strapping Horses? 

We have talk of the Dallas Bach Society, which is a brilliant thing - but it's hard to shake the image I have of Big Hoss, of Bonanza fame, atop his mule in a grainy-coloured television picture.

As I write [Sunday 8th March 2026], it is just eight weeks until I am back stateside myself, when my brother and I begin our epic Route 66 adventure. The planning stage for this is thus subjected to a gentle heat now. And I like it! I am in my backroom on the laptop: I've got a laundry spin on in the kitchen, and I'm toggling my ESTA application on my phone whilst trying to concentrate on the programme.

Much of the show is, therefore, background noise until something pricks my ears. There is a hearty squeeze box tune played, and it sounds like something more from rural France than Texas.

Something then strikes: 'Scott Joplin was born in Texas,' Petroc informs us! And this is very good news, because a stop along our planned Route 66 itinerary is going to be his house museum in St Louis, Missouri. Very much looking forward to that, and, if it comes to pass, will fit in nicely with these blogs I have been doing. So it is that Radio 3 (via WRR 101.1) treat us to The Entertainer.

There is an offering from the Dallas Opera, which was founded in 1957. Again, tricky to take it seriously with unconscious cowboy biases running riot in my head.

But we later get a song by Don Edwards called I'd Like to be in Texas when they Roundup in the Spring. And this sits more neatly in my head, though I acknowledge that it shouldn't really do.

Discussion wise, we move slightly west of Dallas to focus on Fort Worth: a town I have heard of but know nothing about. Seems to be one of those 'sibling rivalry' towns (think Liverpool-Manchester). 'A bromance with issues,' as PT puts it.

Some Debussy - lovely gentle piano. 

A medley of Texan tunes by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra - there's something Chitty Chitty Bang Bang about it.

I hear the ring of the theme tune to Dallas, the classic TV caper. Obligatory. While I have never watched the programme myself, I remember The Young Ones doing a skit of it, and it again reinforces that grainy TV picture from the seventies.

A slice of Susan Graham and Renee Fleming doing a very famous piece - not sure what it's called until I look it up:

"Dôme épais le jasmin", often referred to as the "Flower Duet", is a duet for soprano and mezzo-soprano in the first act of the tragic opera Lakmé, premiered in Paris in 1883 and composed by Léo Delibes.

Later there's something VERY me - a short excerpt from a blues / folk sort of tune - Deep Elm Blues (pronounced Deep Ellum Blues) By the Shelton brothers? - I could do a lot worse than add this to our playlist for Route 66.

We get a more hardcore blues by Blind Willie Johnson - Nobody's Fault But Mine. This is very much my type of music!

Naturally, there is talk of John F. Kennedy's assassination which occurred in Dallas. Something I did not know was that one of his favourite pieces of music was Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, which, at the time, was played in an empty hall in Washington D.C. It is a beautiful piece, and looking it up now I can see it has been utilised in many other occasions of public grief and memorial.

Percy Grainger's Shepherd's Hay has a distinct English-Country-Garden feel to its character. And Dvořák's New World Symphony (the bit that sounds like Star Wars) concludes the programme. 

Stock image: Hoss.