by Christos Zabounis

Today, this column wants to pay tribute not to the television series of Christoforos Papakaliatis, but to a radio program with the same name. According to a recent count, 62,000 listeners listened to the Third Program last year. In order to understand the size, the listeners of SKAI amount to 230,000 and of the First Program of E.R.T. at 29,000. Pas mal, our French friends would say, although in our country Classical Music lovers should not, according to rough calculations, exceed 1%-2% of the population. But what happens when we tune into the frequency of 90.9 on F.M., to limit myself to the residents of the Athens’ city centre? We listen to a series of broadcasts that indeed enrich our knowledge, since it was difficult for us to choose to listen to e.g. the composer Gyorgy Kurtag, but, at the same time, we are able to listen to talk shows, interesting for the most part, but without solfege. The existential musical void of his listeners, who at the time of “Monday Theater” look for Hendel on You Tube, came to be filled by a new program, clearly musical, “Maestro”. I discovered it by chance, on the television of a hotel in Agathonisi, during a Diaplo of the Aegean Team, and since then I have been tuned in, through the television receiver at home, when I am not in a car. Kudos to the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Radio and Television, which adopted the idea of ​​Tasos Roussopoulos, current director of the 3rd Program, and we are now able to enjoy an uninterrupted flow of “serious” music, even when we are offline.