Just how lyrical is Lyric?

The little sister of the RTÉ stable, classical music station Lyric FM has been broadcasting for just over a decade. But does it provide enough for its listeners? Arminta Wallacetunes in for a fortnight to see what's on offer

WHAT WITH all the hoo-ha surrounding Ryan Tubridy becoming the new Gerry Ryan and John Murray becoming the new Ryan Tubridy on RTÉ 2FM and Radio 1 respectively, the new autumn schedule on Lyric FM slipped under the media radar. By comparison with its sister stations, of course, Lyric operates in a quiet airwave suburb. But is that suburb a communications cul de sac? Or has Lyric FM evolved and changed since it began broadcasting just over a decade ago?

“Evolved, definitely. Changed, no,” says Lyric’s station head Aodán Ó Dubhghaill. “I wouldn’t say it has changed since we began planning the station in 1999. The presenters have changed, and presentation styles have changed – but we’re basically doing what we set out to do, which is to provide a good wide brief of music to an audience that a lot of people would have thought was very small and very niche.”

There’s more to the station, Ó Dubhghaill points out, than many people realise. Lyric has a record label which brings Irish composers and performers to an international audience; it has an outreach programme that regularly visits 35 schools across Ireland; it has a composer-in-residence, Elaine Agnew; and as well as organising live events, it’s a sponsor of such high-profile musical happenings as the Festival of World Cultures.

When people switch on their radios, of course, they don't hear any of that. What they'll hear from October onwards is Marty Whelan's new breakfast show Marty in the Morning, followed by Paul Herriott's In Tempoat 10am, with a new Lunchtime Classicsshow presented by Liz Nolan leading through the John Kelly Ensembleto Niall Carroll's Drivetimeat 4 pm.

The latter is Lyric’s most popular show, bringing in more than 50,000 listeners every day. “We’re very pleased with the latest listenership figures, which say that 296,000 people tune in to Lyric on a weekly basis,” says Ó Dubhghaill. “Other stations have seen slippage in their listenership. Ours has been constant; over the 10 years, we’ve never really had a huge drop.”

Lyric's audience has something else going for it, as the Sunday Business Post's radio critic, Jonathan O'Brien, points out: "It's not a big listenership but it's a very, very affluent one," he says. "It's around 72 per cent ABC1." This ought to translate straight into advertising revenue but – as yet – hasn't. What it does create, however, is prestige.

“When Lyric started up, there were a lot of stories in the media about how it wasn’t making money. But I think RTÉ has copped on to the fact that the benefits of a station like Lyric far outweigh the fact that it’s not a money-generating machine. Having an unashamedly middlebrow, or highbrow, station in the stable looks good on the prospectus.”

What, though, of the programmes?

Confession time. Apart from the odd foray into Paul Herriott's In Tempoand the John Kelly Ensemble, this reporter has not been a regular listener to Lyric of late. Podcasts are partly to blame – the iPod fills up so fast with episodes of This American Life, The Philosopher's Zone, Guardian Science Weeklyand whatever else, that it's hard to keep up. And if I switch on the radio and hear Bach's Air on the G String, or something from Carmen, or absolutely anything by Johann Strauss, I'll switch it right off again.

So, as an experiment, over the past fortnight I’ve made a point of tuning to Lyric at times when I’d never normally think of doing so. At 9.30 on a Saturday morning, for instance.

The first thing I hear are the unmistakeably perky tones of George Hamilton. Eeek: has Lyric started doing footie commentaries, or have I got the wrong wavelength? As it turns out, the Hamilton Scoreshas been a fixture on Lyric for years – and boy, does George Hamilton know his music. His playlists are mostly of the four-four-two variety, using older recordings and well-known names, but the music is put together with wit and creativity and the odd moment of Messi-like genius. Crucially, he puts me into such ferocious good humour that when he plays Bach's Air on the G String, I'm able to stick with it – and am rewarded with, say, a glorious movement from a piano trio by Arensky.

There were more pleasant surprises to come. Rachel Blech’s Magic Carpet (Saturday, 2pm) will definitely be on my headphones from now on – in one episode she plays the Algerian Übersinger Khaled, the fantastic guitarist Avishai Cohen and Jackie Oates singing a Sugarcubes song.

Same goes for the Lyric Feature(Saturday, 7pm), documentaries which cover everything from Irish choirs through the Traveller singing tradition to Leonard Cohen.

I’ll still be reaching for the off switch every now and again. I’ll never be a lunchtime or drivetime listener. I don’t get the concept of background music – either listen properly, or turn it off, for goodness’ sake – and if I want a Radox bath, I’ll take a real one (with water, not music), thanks very much.

"They do have some very middle-of-the-road programmes, " agrees O'Brien. "The Marty Whelanshow is very white-bread, straight down the middle, Tony-Bennett-meets-Beethoven kind of stuff.

“His kind of style, if it’s done wrongly, it would set your teeth on edge – and I know people who can’t stand him. But I actually kind of like it.”

Most of the Lyric presenters are, O’Brien adds, pretty impressive in terms of diction. He singles out Liz Nolan, who’ll shortly take over the lunchtime slot, for special praise. “In terms of sounding good on air – enunciating her words and all that – she’s probably the best broadcaster in the country.”

OVERALL, I’D HAVE TO SAY I’m impressed by the variety of music on offer from Lyric.

And variety, says Ó Dubhghaill, is the name of Lyric’s game. “There’s a full opera every Saturday night and a full concert every weekday evening, which might come from anywhere in Europe. We broadcast live from the National Concert Hall every Friday night during the National Symphony Orchestra season. But there are also regular slots for world music, jazz, traditional, music from movies and musicals, contemporary classical, and electronic and experimental.”

The latter is Bernard Clarke's Novaon Sunday nights, described by Jonathan O'Brien as "uncompromising avant-garde weird German stuff" and which (typically) this reporter loves to bits. I'm not the only one, though. Up to 20,000 listeners tune in on a regular basis, and if you want to know what's really going on in music right now, rather than 200 years ago, Novais a great place to start.

The balance between broad appeal and niche programming is a tricky one for any radio station, but even trickier for a station such as Lyric, which is classically based. “People who love jazz may not like traditional music,” says Ó Dubhghaill. “So it’s difficult to tie them all together – but it’s really all down to the style of presentation.”

In fairness to Lyric, the plummy, patronising, I-know-far-more-than-you-about-Von-Karajan style of classical music presentation has all but disappeared from its schedules.

Which is not to say it’s perfect.

“It could be a bit more adventurous, and the weekend schedule needs a good kick up the ass,” says O’Brien. “It also seems to suffer more than other stations from minor glitches like patching through to presenters who aren’t there, or leaving a 15-second gap between the fanfare and the news coming on, or whatever. But most of the time, it’s a very good station. I would say that even on a bad day, it’s better than the vast majority of the competition.”

Tune in, tune out

Five pieces I just heard on lyric and loved:

Nicholas Hodges China Gates(on the John Kelly Ensemble); Schumann Op 113, piece for viola and piano (on the Hamilton Scores);

Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag played on the xylophone (on the Hamilton Scores);

Dvorak's Bible Songsung by Susanne Bernhard (on Gloria);

Rollers/Sparkers' Mounted Bishops Pursuing a Herd of Deacons(on Nova).

Five pieces I’d just love to never hear on radio again

Pachelbel's Canon;

Rimsky-Korsakov's The Flight of the Bumble-Bee;

Ravel's Bolero;

Puccini's Che Gelida Manina;

Mozart's Rondo alla Turca.

In yesterday’s article on the Dublin Review a celebration tonight for the magazine’s 40th issue was mentioned. This event has been cancelled