Radio 3 in Concert

Tuesday 5th February 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Bach's Mass in B Minor.

John Butt conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Bach's Mass in B minor, recorded on 2nd February at the Barbican in London.

Thursday 7th February 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Mahler's Roots and Resonances.

Thomas Dausgaard and the BBCSSO explore the roots and resonances of Mahler: First Symphony with Bernstein, Bloch and a Klezmer Band. Live from the City Halls in Glasgow.

Thursday 14th February 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Prankster, Adventurer and Rogue.

Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra tell the full story of Peer Gynt, live from the Symphony Hall, Birmingham.

Live from Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus present music given as part of their ‘Baltic Way’ season conjuring the atmospheric world of the far northern realms. Tonight’s programme concludes with a comprehensive selection of music by Grieg written for Ibsen’s folklore inspired story of the Norwegian “prankster, adventurer and rogue” - Peer Gynt.

Presented by Tom Redmond.

Esa-Pekka Salonen: Dona Nobis Pacem
Rautavaara: Cantus Articus: Concerto for Birds and Orchestra
Sibelius: Rakastava (The Lover) unaccompanied choral version.
Sibelius: En Saga

INTERVAL
A selection of folk tunes from Hardanger arranged for piano by Geirr Tveitt
(Havard Gimse - piano)

Grieg: Peer Gynt (Incidental Music)
Act 1 Prelude: At the Wedding
Act 2 Prelude: The Abduction of the Bride
Ingrid’s Lament
In the Hall of the Mountain King
Act 3 The Death of Åse
Act 4 Morning
Arabian Dance
Anitra’s Dance
Solveig’s Song
Act 5 Prelude: Peer Gynt’s Homecoming
Whitsun Hymn
Solveig’s Cradle Song

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
CBSO Chorus
CBSO Youth Chorus
Klara Ek (soprano)
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (conductor)

Friday 15th February 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

L'enfance du Christ.

Live from Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff, under conductor Andrew Davis, the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales perform Berlioz's L'enfance du Christ, Op 25.

Wednesday 20th February 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Lars Vogt Completes his Brahms Concerto Cycle.

Royal Northern Sinfonia plays Brahms: Piano concerto No 2, as well as Brahms's homage to one of his heroes, the Handel Variations. Presented by Mark Forrest.

Thursday 21st February 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Carolin Widmann and the BBC SSO.

The BBCSSO perform Bruckner: 7th Symphony, Stravinsky: Violin Concerto - with Carolin Widmann - and Bach: Symphony in E flat, live from Glasgow. Conducted by Ilan Volkov.

Monday 4th March 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Haydn's Final Masterpiece.

Ian Skelly presents a concert from London's Royal Festival Hall in which Vladimir Jurowski conducts the London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra in Haydn's The Seasons.

Joseph Haydn was born in an era when nature touched every part of life, and he died in an age of revolution. It’s all there in his final masterpiece The Seasons: an irresistibly tuneful panorama of 18th-century life and love in all its bustling, earthy exuberance.

With its winter storms and whistling ploughmen, hymns of praise and booze-fuelled revels, this sequel to The Creation was inspired by Haydn’s time in London, and written specially to appeal to British audiences.

In this concert, recorded at the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank, soloists Sophie Bevan, Mark Padmore and Andrew Foster-Williams are joined by the London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra and conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.

Performed in English

Introduced by Ian Skelly

Haydn - The Seasons
Sophie Bevan, soprano
Mark Padmore, tenor
Andrew Foster-Williams, bass-baritone
London Philharmonic Choir
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski, conductor

Thursday 7th March 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Maria, dolce Maria.

Rachel Podger and her ensemble Brecon Baroque perform works by female composers from the 17th century - Caccini, Leonarda and de la Guerre - as well as Bach and Handel.

Monday 11th March 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Bernard Haitink 90th Birthday Concert.

The LSO celebrates the 90th birthday of conductor Bernard Haitink, who leads a performance of Mozart: Piano Concerto No 22 with Till Fellner and Bruckner: Fourth Symphony.

Wednesday 20th March 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

"Music for the Soul" : Vaughan Williams and Tippett.

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra with a concert entitled 'Music for the Soul", featuring works by Vaughan Williams and Tippett. Live from The Lighthouse, Poole.

Tallis: How shall I sing that majesty (Third mode melody)

Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

8.15: Interval

Tippett: A Child of Our Time

Lauren Fagan, soprano
Christine Rice. Mezzo soprano
Samuel Sakker, tenor
Simon Shibambu, bass
Bournemouth Symphony Chorus
David Hill , conductor

The oratorio A Child of Our Time was Tippett’s artistic and emotional response to the events that led to the ‘Kristallnacht’ pogrom of November 1938. Tippett used as his formal and historical models the Bach Passions and Handel’s Messiah which share with this contemporary morality the subject of the death of an individual set against the universal background of human suffering. His use of the spiritual as a contemporary equivalent for the Lutheran chorale of the Bach settings draws the listener more closely into the drama through the spirituals’ unique verbal and musical metaphor.

The Tallis melody that is the basis for Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia is one of nine he contributed to the Psalter of 1567 for the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury. It is heard in its complete form three times and serves as the source for a wonderful miasma of variants and developments in this rich orchestral composition written for a large string orchestra divided into three parts. Although it is not specifically religious music, it seems to speak to the spirit.

Tuesday 26th March 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Notes from the New World.

Tom Redmond presents from the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, featuring music by Stravinsky, Dvorák and Martinu.

Stravinsky: Orpheus
Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B minor

Music Interval

Martinů: Symphony No 4

BBC Philharmonic
Andrei Ionită (cello)
John Storgards (conductor)

Having fled across the Atlantic to escape in Nazi Europe, Martinů marked the defeat of his persecutors in 1945 with his Fourth Symphony. In this joyous and powerful work we hear military sounds but also snatches of Czech folk song. The following year, in Los Angeles, Stravinsky finished his ballet 'Orpheus' which received its premiere in New York in 1948. Choreographed by Balanchine the music is translucent, lyrical and restrained; the dreadful moment when Orpheus turns back to see Eurydice is powerfully marked - by silence. Andrei Ionită joins the orchestra for another work which marks the loss of a loved-one. Fifty years before Stravinsky and Martinů made America their home a home-sick Dvorak was teaching in New York. His Cello Concerto is infused with a powerful longing for his homeland, and for his sister-in-law Josefina; she had a particular fondness for one of his songs which appears in the slow movement. When she died a few years later, he revised the piece in homage to her.

Friday 29th March 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Cathedral of Sound.

From the Sage Gateshead, violinist Thomas Zehetmair and the Royal Northern Sinfonia, under conductor Thomas Zehetmair, perform works by Mozart and Bruckner.

Bruckner's expansive and, in his own words, cheeky, Sixth Symphony live from Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival, performed by Royal Northern Sinfonia under Thomas Zehetmair.

Programme:

Mozart Violin Concerto No.3
Bruckner Symphony No.6

Royal Northern Sinfonia
Thomas Zehetmair (conductor/violin)

Thursday 4th April 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Songs of the Earth.

Donald Runnicles and the BBCSSO perform Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, as well as works by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, live from Glasgow.

Tuesday 9th April 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Legends of the North.

London Philharmonic Orchestra performs Arnold Bax's Tintagel. High above the Atlantic breakers, the clifftop castle of Tintagel is the stuff of legend, and when Arnold Bax saw it he let his imagination soar. Tonight’s concert begins with some of the most passionately romantic music ever written by a British composer and ends with Jean Sibelius gazing at a flight of swans in the sunset: the inspiration for his Fifth Symphony, and one of the simplest – but greatest – melodies ever written for orchestra. Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä is simply unequalled in Sibelius – and the young Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki has something marvellously fresh to say about Grieg’s much-loved Concerto, too.

Recorded at the Royal Festival Hall, presented by Georgia Mann.

Bax Tintagel
Grieg Piano Concerto

Interval

Sibelius Suite, Belshazzar’s Feast
Sibelius Symphony No. 5

Osmo Vänskä conductor
Jan Lisiecki piano
London Philharmonic Orchestra

Wednesday 17th April 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

The Rose Lake.

Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Tippett's evocation of a Senegalese lake, and Lisa Batiashvili joins for Szymanowski's Violin Concerto No 1.

Live from the Barbican, Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Tippett's evocation of a Senegalese lake. Lisa Batiashvili joins for Szymanowski's Violin Concerto No. 1.

Presented by Martin Handley

Michael Tippett: The Rose Lake
Karol Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 1

8pm
Interval

Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande
Suite (UK premiere), arr. Altinoglu

Lisa Batiashvili (violin)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis (conductor)

‘A song without words for orchestra’, Tippett’s final work was inspired by a lake in Senegal, flushed pink by the midday sun. The result is an ecstatic hymn to nature teeming with rhythmic energy and thick slashes of melody. Tippett specialist Sir Andrew Davis, conducts The Rose Lake alongside two other richly coloured works – the Suite from Debussy’s shadowy fairytale opera Pelléas et Mélisande, which receives its UK premiere here, and, with Lisa Batiashvili as soloist, Szymanowski’s sumptuous Violin Concerto - inspired by a poem by the Polish poet Tadeusz Miciński with the words "And now we stand by the lake in crimson blossom, in flowing tears of joy, with rapture and fear...."

Friday 19th April 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Verdi Requiem.

Stephen Cleobury conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra and soloists in Verdi's dramatic Requiem, live from King's College, Cambridge, as part of the Easter at King's Festival.

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Steven Isserlis Plays Schumann and Fauré.

Steven Isserlis and friends play Schumann and Fauré, live from Wigmore Hall, London.

Schumann: Fantasiestücke Op. 73
Fauré: Piano Quintet No. 1 in D minor Op. 89
8.15: Interval
Fauré: Romance Op. 69
Elégie Op. 24
Schumann: Piano Quartet in E flat Op. 47

Steven Isserlis, cello
Veronika Eberle, violin
Arisa Fujita, violin
Amihai Grosz, viola
Connie Shih, piano

Steven Isserlis and friends play the first of Fauré’s two piano quintets, unveiled in 1906, and Schumann’s single piano quartet, an exuberant work emanating from his year devoted to chamber music (1842).

Wednesday 24th April 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

National Youth Orchestra - Totally Teenage Orchestral Brilliance.

The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain at the Royal Festival Hall in music from America, Cuba and Mexico. Presented by Natasha Riordan.

The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain at the Royal Festival Hall in music from America, Cuba and Mexico.
There is nothing quite like an NYO concert. The power and passion of the world's greatest orchestra of teenagers is unleashed in a programme which unashamedly crosses borders from Cuba and Mexico to New York.
Silvestre Revueltas’s Sensemayá is based on an Afro-Cuban poem depicting the sacrifice of a snake. Feel the tension build as ritualistic percussion pounds out the poem’s chant ‘Mayombé-bombé-mayombé!’ and frenzied brass wail in thrilling anticipation of an epic battle between man and beast.
Chavez’s Sinfonia India is bursting with the spirit of Mexico, a lively whirlwind of pure, unadulterated fun.
The lights of 1920s Broadway twinkle in Gershwin’s Piano Concerto and the NYO finish their concert with ‘the great American Symphony’ Aaron Copland’s show-stopping Symphony No 3.
Presented by Natasha Riordan

Revueltas: Sensemayá
Chávez: Symphony No.2 (Sinfonía India)
Gershwin: Piano Concerto

Interval

Copland: Symphony No.3

Xiayin Wang (piano)
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
Carlos Miguel Prieto (conductor)

Friday 26th April 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Nicola Benedetti Plays Elgar's Violin Concerto.

Live from London's Barbican Hall, Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Dvorak: Symphony No 7. Nicola Benedetti joins for Elgar: Violin Concerto.

Tuesday 7th May 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

An Elgarian Centenary.

Tonight's concert celebrates 100 years since the first performances of the three major chamber works by Sir Edward Elgar from a club he founded, Malvern Concert Club. One of these, the Piano Quintet in A minor, he dedicated to the Brodsky Quartet and it is their modern counter-parts who perform tonight. Elizabeth Alker presents.

Programme:
Elgar: String Quartet in E minor, Op 83
Elgar: Violin Sonata in E minor, Op 82
Elgar: Piano Quintet in A minor, Op 84

Brodsky Quartet
Martin Roscoe (piano)

Wednesday 8th May 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

The Talented Boulanger Sisters.

James Gaffigan conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in music by Lili Boulanger and Nadia Boulanger, recorded at the Barbican Hall in London.

Tuesday 14th May 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Life Imitates Art.

Thomas Sondergard conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Mahler: Symphony NO 6, and Mozart: Piano Concerto No 23 performed by Argentinean pianist Ingrid Fliter.

Wednesday 15th May 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Elgar's Dream.

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Chorus perform Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius, live from the Lighthouse in Poole.

Thursday 16th May 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Israel in Egypt.

Handel's Israel in Egypt, performed by the Academy of Ancient Music and the BBC Singers, under the baton of Gergely Madaras.

Thursday 23rd May 2019 (starting this evening)
Time: 19:30 to 22:00 (2 hours and 30 minutes long)

Resurrection.

Anne Schwanewilms and Alice Coote join the Hallé to perform Mahler: Symphony No 2, live from Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. Presented by Tom Redmond.