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Autumn scheduling plans on BBC Radio 3

2019-03-14T13:45:00+00:00

Today we’ve put out to tender a number of programmes for Radio 3 beginning in the Autumn. The eagle-eyed among you will see that these imply some changes to the overall shape of the schedule.

Some of the changes are brought on by opportunity and creative renewal - and some as a result of us having to play our part in finding the £800m of savings the BBC needs to make by 2021/22. In making changes we have tried to enhance the distinctive nature of the network, and to make sure we continue to offer a rich mix of music and culture to existing and future audiences. It’s what makes the network the great thing it is.

In every tweak I’ve made to the schedule since I’ve been controller, I have sought to provide clarity to the breadth of the genres and to celebrate the unique combination of things we do, making sure the brilliant parts of BBC Radio 3 work together to make sense of the whole. BBC Radio 3 is proud to connect audiences with the human achievements of music and culture of the past, the present, and the future. It remains the most distinctive cultural music radio station anywhere in the world.

From Monday to Wednesday in our After Dark zone we will establish a new classical music programme designed for late night listening. In addition to the new After Dark classical programme, Unclassified presented by Elizabeth Alker, will become a permanent strand Thursday evenings from 11.30pm-12.30am. The show explores a range of music that can be called neo classical and ambient but which remain rather hard to classify, as the name suggests. We’ve had a really positive response since we aired the initial short series and I’m delighted the programme will now have a more permanent home.

On Fridays, Late Junction, a programme that explores the experimental boundaries of music, will move to a single two hour programme in a key slot on Friday evening, to kick start BBC Radio 3’s weekend for listeners. It will run from 11pm-1am. Jazz will continue to be well represented through Jazz Record Requests, J to Z, and on BBC Sounds which will bring together the best of Jazz performances and programmes from across the BBC. We will be resting Jazz Now and Geoffrey Smith’s Jazz. Music Planet will move from its Friday evening slot in turn, to Saturday nights from midnight-1am. We will also be making use of our unique partnership with The European Broadcasting Union to expand the Sunday night In Concert programme by 30 minutes, bringing listeners more of the very best of European music-making.

These plans are designed to ensure we remain distinctive. BBC Radio 3 must always be a place to be stimulated by everything from core classical to ambient and neo-classical, world to jazz, sound art to electronica, not forgetting Slow Radio, as well as a breadth of arts content from dramas to topical arts, documentaries and poetry, a place to escape the frenzy of the everyday.

Come and dive into the world of Radio 3.

Summer of Sonic Love: Introducing Radio 3 Concert Sound

2017-07-14T09:00:00+00:00

This year, 90 years after the BBC started broadcasting the Proms - we will be making BBC Radio 3 available in a new way for the duration of the Proms. You can now stream Radio 3 in glorious ‘lossless sound’ – hearing the sound in almost as good a quality as it left our studios – in what we are calling ’Radio 3 Concert Sound’.

A lot of Radio 3’s output is specially recorded, and those recordings are carefully planned and executed by expert engineers. The people know their music, and produce world class recordings that sound beautiful – with carefully constructed bloom, balance and detail that serves the sound and reflects the room it was recorded in. Often (in certain London venues especially…) they even improve on it.

We keep this sound as pure as it can be until it leaves the studio – then we have to compress it. When we put it out at the moment – through FM, DAB and Online HD sound – there is an inevitable loss of quality as the sound is compressed to suit the means of transmission. Our highest quality HD sound is received online at 320kbps – still a fraction of the true bandwidth of the recording and with some loss that the brain has to make up for – a loss that’s hard to hear but is nonetheless there.

If we offer this sound to the audience in lossless it will be over 1000kbps and we will be conveying it to the audience as the recording left us – in Radio 3 Concert Sound. The transmissions from the Proms will be best of all, as we have a very high quality fibre connection from the Royal Albert Hall, and will not be subject to the vagaries of ISDN.

Why does this matter? Hearing an orchestra in recorded sound – no matter how good that sound is – is always not quite so good as hearing an orchestra live. Textures can often seem more limited, some instruments can’t be heard as well, you get no sense of the room in which it was recorded - in short something’s missing. Then if you further compress that you get even further away from what a real orchestra sounds like – at every stage something drops off. So if we can make the sound we put out as lossless as possible, as near to what we captured as we can, it might get us nearer to that live experience, with all its subtlety and texture. We would be getting nearer to giving the listener something that really is the best seat in the house. As we present specially recorded music every evening and weekday afternoons that matters to us and who we are.

Earlier in the year we did a ‘soft’ test of lossless. At home I listened through a Mac Mini, a Musical Fidelity V DAC, an old Rotel Amplifier and ancient B&W DM 110i speakers (the Rotel and B&W’s producing an analogue bloom to LPs when played through them). Listening to great performances on Radio 3 In Concert, and also more delicate sounds such as the Early Music Show, Lunchtime chamber concerts and live Jazz, with a greater richness than our regular online streams. There were some downsides, but on the whole it showed off some pretty excellent recordings to good effect. It was good to listen to for lengthy periods of time too, as your brain is not working as hard to fill in the gaps that lossy transmission or streaming involves.

So, I hope you can give it a try and let us know what you think. If people like it we can consider if we might do more of it – though we’re making no promises at this stage. It matters to us on Radio 3 as we have already put the work in to record great performances in a great way – so if the audience can hear it that way, so much the better.

So give Radio 3 Concert Sound a try. Give yourself to the geeky summer of sonic love that is Radio 3 and the Proms.

Alan Davey is Controller BBC Radio 3

Find out more and try out BBC Concert Sound on BBC Taster

Radio 3's May Bank Holiday Walk

2017-05-28T10:00:24+00:00

Radio 3 and before it the Third Programme are two networks with a long tradition of taking their time.

The Third Programme, predecessor of Radio 3, was famous for having ‘no fixed points’. Listings in the Radio Times were at best approximate. If a concert took longer than anticipated due to an optimistically packed programme or a conductor with a penchant for lingering over the bloom of each note then so be it. Frequently chaos ensued as things got later and later.

On modern day Radio 3 we like to give things the time they take. So, we’ll do long concerts and operas even if they upset the schedule, and we give dramas the time that they take so that there is no need for shortening. Our talented and patient scheduling maestro, David Ireland, builds in time for all eventualities.

We set a world record for the live premiere of Max Richter’s 'Sleep', the longest single piece of live music ever broadcast – starting at midnight and ending at 8am, with the audience live and at home encouraged to sleep while the music wove its magic. We broadcast La Monte Young’s 'Well Tuned Piano', a five hour piano meditation on the colour magenta, from ‘round midnight one Saturday, for the adventurous listener with time to douse themselves in magenta light and let the music flow. Or Morton Feldman’s six-hour second string quartet, which we broadcast live from Tate Modern last year, again, starting at midnight. Or Colin Morgan reciting – brilliantly – the whole of Louis MacNeice’s long poem on desolation on the brink of war, ‘Autumn Journal’, proving that listeners can give their attention to long-form poetry that has a non-narrative structure.

Respecting the time it takes to do something is an important part of the Radio 3 aesthetic. We can do fast – see Tom Service’s half hour expositions of musical concepts in The Listening Service. But we also like to give the audience the chance to experience works of art that offer an adventure in time as well as content. We recently curated a 12 hour, no talking, ‘River of Music’ that depended for its effect on the intelligent curation of the musical choices and their cumulative effect throughout the day. Classical music is inherently long form, and so to reflect it well on air we need to give things space and time.

At the recent Free Thinking Festival in Gateshead we explored the theme of the speed of life, and whether we were upsetting the rhythms of human existence by taking life at the wrong speed and exploring alternatives to the current fast speed of life.

Building on this theme, early on the May bank holiday we’ll be broadcasting a four hour walk from the village of Cwmdu in the Brecon Beacons to the Hay Festival, undertaken by writer Horatio Clare.

We’ll hear the external sounds of nature and some of his inner thoughts and reflections, including music and poetry, to provide a multi-dimension soundscape of the walk, with both outer and inner landscapes.

It's a walk through the medium of sound art and is an experience all of its own. Hopefully it might inspire those who are lucky enough to be able to go on walks to do so with a new sense of possibility in the sound world around them and an awareness of their own inner thoughts.

First-hand experience and ‘slow radio’ aren't mutually exclusive. Slow or fast, I guess this is an example of us just taking our time – the right time – to do what we need to do to give audiences great experiences, and to allow them to encounter adventures in sound that gives them time to think.

It’s what we do.

Alan Davey is Controller, BBC Radio 3

The Sound Walk to Hay-on-Wye is on Monday 29 May from 2pm, on BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3 and Edinburgh International Festival celebrate 70 year partnership

2017-03-15T11:00:03+00:00

Announced today, the programme for the 2017 Edinburgh International Festival promises three weeks of the finest performances from the worlds of opera, music, theatre and dance.

Committed to virtuosity and originality, the Edinburgh International Festival was the inspired idea of Rudolf Bing, then the General Manager of Glyndebourne Opera, Henry Harvey Wood, the Head of the British Council in Scotland, and leaders from the City of Edinburgh. It was established in 1947 as a world class cultural event to bring together audiences and artists from around the world and, 70 years later, it continues to serve as a beacon for the very best in the arts.

As the official broadcaster of the International Festival, through live and recorded concerts available on radio and online BBC Radio 3 will bring the best of the Edinburgh International Festival to audiences at home and across the world in 2017, introducing the artists and their programmes to those unable to be at the concerts in person.

Radio 3’s predecessor the Third Programme broadcast from Edinburgh at the very first International Festival in 1947 and with both cultural institutions in their 70th year, Radio 3 will once again make the International Festival’s music offering available to everyone through a major series of broadcasts in 2017.

Lindsay Pell, Senior Producer for Music at BBC Scotland, tells us more about Radio 3’s long-standing relationship as the official broadcast partner of one of the world’s greatest arts festivals, and talks through what’s in store for radio listeners in the Festival’s 70th anniversary year:

When did the BBC first start broadcasting from the Edinburgh International Festival?

I have in my hand the original leaflet for the inaugural 1947 Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama as it was named them. It is a modest eight-page paper leaflet and a far cry from some of the very glossy publications that have existed in later decades but there are some impressive names.

The 1947 Edinburgh International Festival of Music & Drama souvenir programme

The BBC was involved right from the outset and I’ve found a recording from that first Festival year of A recital of Scottish Lowland Songs (Burns etc) given by the soprano Marie Thomson and tenor John Tainsh with Ian Whyte on the piano. The BBC Scottish Orchestra (sic) also makes an appearance with Ian Whyte as conductor and Cyril Smith on the pianoforte playing the first performance of the conductor’s own concerto. Clearly it was a good year for Ian Whyte.

Bruno Walter and Kathleen Ferrier performing at the first festival in 1947

What have been some of the standout BBC broadcast moments since the International Festival began in 1947?

This is a question I have asked various people including former Artistic Directors of the Festival and we are lucky to have had some truly historic moments from over the past 70 years captured forever thanks to Radio 3 and our predecessor The Third Programme. Today I discovered a recording of the famous tenor Fritz Wunderlich singing Schumann’s Dichterliebe at the 1966 Festival, literally days before he tragically died in an accident. I was also particularly excited to find a number of great composers had attended the Festival to perform their own works. There are recordings of Francis Poulenc and Pierre Bernac (who premiered so many of his songs at the Festival) performing the song cycle Le Travail du Peintre and the great Hungarian composer Ernő Dohnányi performing a solo piano recital of his own works. Benjamin Britten of course made several appearances as have other great luminaries including Pierre Boulez. Some of the greatest artists of the last 70 years have been captured on tape at the International Festival including singers Maria Callas, Kathleen Ferrier, Jessye Norman; instrumentalists including cellist Pierre Fournier, violinist Moskowsky (also famous as a composer of many showpieces), violinist Isaac Stern, the Amadeus Quartet, the Orpheus Choir and…the list goes on.

Maria Callas performing with La Piccolo Scala at the festival in 1957

Can you talk us through an average day for the Radio 3 team during the International Festival?

It’s quite a conveyor-belt of production as we are a fairly small team with usually two producers alternating concerts every day for three weeks. The team arrive at the Queen’s Hall at about 8am to re-rig and check the equipment and the communications to London. The presenter, (either Donald Macleod or Jamie MacDougall) arrives at around 9am to meet the producer, check over the script, make any last minute changes that have occurred recently. The trickiest thing here is when the repertoire changes at very short notice, which creates a flurry of activity including changes to the online and digital radio information and not least some speedy re-scripting to introduce the new piece. The producer meets and talks to the artist to finalise any last details that affect the broadcast including when they might come off stage between pieces, any changes or concerns and often a short interview for inclusion in the broadcast.

Before the concert begins we’ve normally tweeted, Facebooked and shared stories and pictures about the concert. The producer keeps in close touch with Radio 3 via telephone and ISDNs to make sure we dovetail into the morning's programming. This often includes a short ‘two-way’ conversation between our presenter and the presenter on-air before the concert begins. At 11am the presenter and concert go live on air whilst we monitor the performance and audio. We make notes for future reference and are ready to take action in case something happens like a string breaking or in case anything happens inside the hall that disrupts the concert. In the interval we stay on air with script, conversation or music and we finally hand back to Radio 3 as the applause comes to an end.

What can listeners look forward to in this year’s Radio 3 coverage of the International Festival?

Radio 3 continues in its role as partner with the International Festival, broadcasting live, fifteen morning concerts from the Queen’s Hall and recording six Usher Hall concerts for later broadcast. There will also be live editions of programmes such as Breakfast, Record Review and In Tune from the BBC at the Edinburgh Festivals hub and two documentaries looking at the history and founding of the festival – one which will use archive recording and new interviews to trace an oral history of the early years of the festival, and the second, which will tell the story of how after 1945 arts festivals such as Edinburgh were created across Europe to re-establish a spirit of international co-operation. We’ll also be delving into our archive, looking back at some of the great moments captured on the radio over the past 70 years – these moments will include twelve concerts featuring some of the finest artists to appear at the International Festival.

In a year in which both the Festival and Radio 3 are 70 years young it’s set to be a brilliant three weeks of music making and recording - stay tuned!

Lindsay Pell is Senior Producer for Music at BBC Scotland.

Listen to BBC Radio 3 and keep up to date with the station on twitter and facebook.
Find out more about the Edinburgh International Festival 2017.
Watch Donald McLeod at work at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2015.

The festive season begins when the announcer says so

2016-11-27T17:54:30+00:00

My Christmas starts with Advent, signposted by the Sunday afternoon broadcast of Radio 3’s Choral Evensong. The broadcast is the starting point for a month of preparations, culminating in Radio 4’s Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve and a big warm Italian-influenced family get-together in leafy Purley soon after.

Both services hark back to childhood memories. My first experience of Nine Lessons was our school carol service – a seemingly grand affair in St Edmundsbury cathedral attended by every pupil and their parents. Those with a demonstrable ability to sing processed up the aisle to Once in Royal David’s City. Those without shuffled uncomfortably in the pews, bored by proceedings.

The order of service followed that of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. Readings and congregational carols were interspersed with various John Rutter creations. The air was cold and the organ was loud.

I had always thought that our school carol service, and the Christmas Eve service it aped, was the beginning of Christmas. Thirty-five years later I’ve changed my mind.

A few years after my first school carol service, I joined the school chapel choir, a subset of keen and able singers who sang in church services at school and various churches across the county. One of those events – one we all initially resented slightly because it fell on a Sunday afternoon in late November – was the Advent carol service. This was a much smaller affair, attended by maybe only 50 in the congregation. The advent carol service competed for my enthusiasm. Spoilt by the scale of the end of term Carol Service, Advent felt like an effort.

O Come O Come Emmanuel - the Advent hymn sung in Choral Evensong at Johns College, Cambridge on Sunday 27 November 2016.

One year the service was billed as a candlelit event. Our opening carol - Veni Veni Emmanuel (O Come, O Come, Emmanuel ) - suddenly took on a new significance. Intimacy and modest theatrics were combined with a majestic introduction from the organ, an eager congregation rising to its feet and an insistent and irresistible kind of commitment all condensed in the most deliciously austere of carols.

O Come O Come Emmanuel was for the hard-core singers it seemed to me. Us in the school chapel choir were the advance party, signalling the start of end-of-term countdown.

Today, Choral Evensong fills a gap. It gives me an opportunity to participate in a live relay of an event that stirs up unexpectedly fond childhood memories. But its magic is more than O Come, O Come Emmanuel. Like Nine Lessons it is, I now come to understand, the opening introduction given by the announcer. If ever there was a script I long to have an opportunity to read on-air it's this:

Its 3pm and time to go live and time to go to the Chapel of St John's College, Cambridge for a service for Advent with carols.

The pattern of the liturgy reflects the season of Advent's growing anticipation both of the celebration of Christ's nativity at Christmas and looking forward to his second coming in glory.

There are four sections in the service: the message of Advent; the word of God; the prophetic call; and, the Christ-bearer.

And each section consists of antiphons, hymns carols and prayers with lessons from the Bible read from members of the College.

The full order of service can be found on page 128 of Radio Times and on the BBC Radio 3 website.

O Come O Come Emmanuel takes on a rich significance today. It’s the moment when I feel I have permission to get stuck into my preparations for the festive season. It’s when I pickle, plan, decorate and reflect, a time when things glisten, dangle, flicker, and bubble, and a time when I start making plans for the next twelve months. And when I hear O Come O Come Emmanuel's crawling base, rousing refrain, and terrifying descant a tear comes to my eye. I wouldn't want it any other way.

It’s signalled now, not only by a carol, but by a script read out on BBC Radio 3. That’s when the season begins – when the announcer says so.

Jon Jacob is Editor, About the BBC Blog

Listen to Choral Evensong on BBC Radio 3 on Sunday and Wednesday afternoons.
Service for Advent for Carols is repeated on Wednesday 30 November at 3.30pm on BBC Radio 3 and available on BBC iPlayer Radio until Sunday 25 December 2016.

How BBC Radio 3 is connecting audiences with pioneering sound

2016-10-04T13:09:38+00:00

Experience jazz and hip hop inspired by the urban environment with saxophonist and 'Jazz Now' presenter MC Soweto Kinch.

On Thursday last week we marked the 70th birthday of Radio 3’s predecessor the Third Programme, which took to the airwaves at 6pm on 29th September 1946. Against the backdrop of our pop-up glass studio at Southbank Centre, where members of the public can get close to the process of live radio, performance and classical yoga, Alan Davey, Controller of Radio 3, launched 70 days of celebrations and new commissions, underlining the Third Programme’s ambition, values and spirit which live on in BBC Radio 3 today.

On Friday, to honour the moment, and look to the future we launched our new brand campaign - three pioneering films from pioneering artists across classical and contemporary music, poetry and jazz, all commissioned by BBC Radio 3.

Alongside these films, which feature Matthew Herbert deconstructing Beethoven’s last string quartet into electronics, Alice Oswald’s immersive poem Rain sweeping through a house and Soweto Kinch’s hip-hop infused jazz invigorating an urban estate, we have created three online exploration films which investigate each work, offering unique insight into the minds of the artists and the genres they are evolving.

This is nothing new. From its inception amidst the rubble of 1946, the Third Programme brought bold and brave work to its audiences, shaping the musical and cultural landscape and championing new talent who would go on to define the future of their art forms.

‘Above all experiment’ was a founding principle of the Third and this is as true for Radio 3 now as it was then. We are the most significant commissioner of new and contemporary music in the country, we broadcast more live classical music than any other station, continue to break technological boundaries in sound, and support new composers, performers and artists across the UK.

Our new advertising campaign may surprise. It might even shock you. The truth is it is a genuine experience of Radio 3 - distinctive content which can connect, inspire and resonate with culturally adventurous audiences of any age or background.

Through our advertising we want to communicate the breadth, scope and role of Radio 3 as an active player and commissioner across classical, contemporary, world music and jazz as well as drama, poetry, philosophy and ideas. A station which not only reflects and responds to the cultural conversation but leads it.

Emma Smith explores the influences and environments that inspire Soweto Kinch’s Jazz.

Alongside the campaign we are also launching a new look across our platforms and at our events with a contemporary and colourful light wave design. Our logo, colour spectrum and backgrounds bring a renewed sense of dynamism and vibrancy to the Radio 3 brand as we look to the next 70 years.

We hope you will experience more pioneering sound with us.

Philip Raperport is Head of Marketing, BBC Radio 3 and Classical Music

Watch the Pioneering Sounds films on the Radio 3 website.
Read Controller Alan Davey's blog post marking 70 years of the Third Programme and Radio 3.

70 years young: Radio 3, still pioneering new music and new ways to enjoy it

2016-09-29T09:15:56+00:00

This year, as many of you know, Radio 3 reaches a landmark, that of 70 years since the founding of the BBC Third Programme, our predecessor.

We still have many of the same values as those of 1946, for seven decades we’ve been pioneering in bringing great culture and music to people and enabling them to engage in depth and to discover new things. In our DNA is a continuing habit of bold, ambitious distinctive programming, showcasing and developing new talent, trialing the new, and commissioning works that become a part of the fabric of culture in this country today and that’s why we’re claiming this anniversary to celebrate the whole of Radio 3 its history and its future.

Among our anniversary plans, are a two week partnership with Southbank Centre, 'Sound Frontiers', where we run the network from a glass box in the Festival Hall, and a renewed effort to bring new talent and new work to our audiences.

Alan Davey with Jude Kelly, Artistic Director, Southbank Centre launching Sound Frontiers: Radio 3 Live at Southbank Centre

Over 70 days, from our anniversary on Thursday 29th September, we’ll be supporting both existing and new talent, from poetry to new music. For instance, in order to bring new music to more people we have teamed with Sound and Music to embed composer Matthew Kaner in our output - he'll be composing a new piece every week for the next 70 days, music that will be heard on Radio 3 Breakfast. The first Collide was premiered on Tuesday 26th September.

We’re also showcasing new poets in Three Score and Ten, a journey through the archives of our poetry output which sees greats like Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas and W H Auden reading their own work through to new works from poets like Alice Oswald, Simon Armitage and Liz Lochhead creating new poems for us. There's much more, as you'll see from some TV trails showcasing work we have commissioned which begin to be shown on Friday 30th September.

In tandem with our experimental content creation spirit, what many might not realise is our relentless commitment to quality sound. Classical music is so complex and wonderful in its sound makeup we need to translate that experience in a concert hall for audiences at home so they can feel immersed in the performance. Radio drama by the same token is such an intimate art form, that sound quality can really add to and enhance that experience. The Third programme was the first in this country to broadcast in stereo, Radio 3 experimented with quadrophonic, and to date we are proud of the HD 320 kps HD uncompressed sound we give listeners online, and we are looking to see if there are practical ways of taking this quality even further if this offers an advantage to the listener.

We have previously broadcast the BBC Proms in HD sound and quality surround sound, but this summer we’ve been undertaking some very exciting trials in binaural recordings. It’s the first time we have recorded the proms in binaural and the signs are good. Some early data back from the trials is encouraging, with over half of all who tried it giving it 5 stars – which means it was in the top 10% of all BBC Research & Development sound pilots to date and the people rating it was double the average for BBC sound trials. All of this means our audience love the technology. It shows our audience are hungry to have the best quality audio.

Music isn’t the only space we are experimenting, next week our evening of Beckett plays which will be broadcast as part of our 70th anniversary season on Sunday 2nd October featuring Ian Mckellan and Stephen Rea is one such broadcast. The plays will give an insight into the development of Beckett’s style and approach to sound, and it felt an appropriate thing to use truly immersive sound for, through binaural. Tom Parnell will give you a taster later. We’re also broadcasting in binaural as part of our anniversary, some J.G. Ballard mini dramas which air as Between Ballard’s Ears, the plays have been adapted by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Brian Sibley.

You’ll also see further developments in how we reach new audiences in new platforms, with more shareable content being developed that will present our output in different ways, using the BBC music app and other new technology in the pipeline. Then we are looking at how we use technology in different ways to enhance the experience of a live classical concert. So the BBC Philharmonic are launching a series of nine free concerts, something only the BBC could do with its fantastic performing groups, in a collaboration with Salford University and BBC Research & Development, which will present a different way of experiencing a concert. The concerts will also be broadcast on Radio 3.

Using ground-breaking new technology from BBC Research and Development, the concerts will create a more immersive musical experience for audiences both in the venue and across the country. The performance and interval discussion will feature in an enhanced live video stream online, which will enable the audience to delve closer into the orchestra, receive synced information about the music and even view a live orchestral score. The concert audience are invited to bring their mobiles and tablet with them to access this information whilst they enjoy the performance. The performances will all be streamed live online and will be available for 30 days after broadcast. We know we have a discerning audience who care not only about what we play but also about the way they hear it, how they experience it and how easy it is to hear it.

Radio 3 presenters celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Third Programme, the predecessor of BBC Radio 3, on Thursday 29 September. L-R: Lopa Kothari, Sara Mohr-Pietsch, Max Reinhardt, Tom Service, Katie Derham, Petroc Trelawny, Sean Rafferty.

What we really celebrate this autumn, is not just about 70 years of the third programme or even how it became Radio 3, but what we celebrate is a pioneering spirit. A place and suite of experiences, funded by the licence fee, that allows everyone opportunities to understand humanity through pioneering music and culture - even nineteenth century music was shocking once.

As long as we continue to push frontiers both in commissioning and sound development, then we’ll be doing our job right for the next 70 years and continuing to enhance lives up and down the country.

Alan Davey is Controller of BBC Radio 3.

Strictly on the Radio

2016-07-22T11:36:49+00:00

Last night’s Strictly Prom featuring the nimble footwork of Radio 3 presenter Katie Derham is broadcast on BBC Four later tonight. For some of us who slavishly work our way through the summer using the Proms brochure as a guide, the party atmosphere in last night’s concert was an early Last Night of the Proms – a little treat at the end of the first week of concert-going.

There should be more parties during the summer, I think. Sometimes, the sound of a lavish Rodgers and Hammerstein melody or the tub-thumping exuberance of 42nd Street helps turn a school night into something of an occasion.

And a sense of occasion suits classical music well. That’s why some of my most favourite spaces to sit in are concert halls. Often cathedral-like spaces, there are few other opportunities which bring thousands of people together and, at various points in time, have them sat in contemplative silence.

That is an infectious experience. There is nothing quite like it. Similarly, when you find yourself in amongst an audience who aren’t prepared for the French national anthem and, almost as one, they stand up sweeping you up at the same time. Just as we did on the First Night.

As I have got older, so I’ve come to appreciate that there is, in addition to those on the stage, another ‘artist’ in a concert hall – the audience. And when the audience moves as one entity, injecting all sorts of emotions into proceedings, so the concert hall experience is elevated.

I hear that in the Proms broadcast. It is the surge of the audience at the end of a piece which I find myself more and more attuned to. The question comes from the stage: the answer from the audience. And sometimes, there’s a palpable rush I experience that emanates from deep inside to the back of my throat. A gasp usually follows, just as it did listening to the Strictly Prom. The excitement in Katie Derham's voice is obvious, and that is reflected in the audience applause. I listen to this standing in my kitchen staring out at a garden withering after a week of intense heat, reminded of how the Proms deliciously combines so many different potent elements of summer.

The cheers in this Prom are a response to the music and the dance at the Albert Hall. I can’t see the dance, obviously, but I can sense it through the crowd who, from time to time, whoop with excitement whenever a recognisable face bounds onto stage. Completing my imaginary tableau is the music. Familiar numbers from a sequined back catalogue featuring Tchaikovsky, and Khachaturian, South American dance rhythms and musical theatre classics. All lined up back to back, they give me a much-needed lift at the end of a long day at work.

The running order also reminds me of something else. Years ago – sometime in the mid-eighties – a similar programme of classical music aired on BBC Radio 2. Flautist James Galway powered through a number of arrangements of classic tunes arranged for him and the BBC Concert Orchestra in a special concert aired in the weeks before Christmas. Mum got me to record it so she could play it on the car stereo. I enjoyed listening to it so much that the tape never made it out of my tape recorder. And there it stayed until the tape recorder, through repeat listens and rewinds, ended up chewing up the tape itself.

The music in that James Galway concert - some of which features in the Strictly Prom - is now so familiar to me that it risks suffering the same fate Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. But what reinvigorates all of these tunes are the arrangements made by expert orchestrators. Scrunchy harmonies and unexpected textures breathe new life into familiar old friends. My pulse races as a result, James Galway and the Strictly Prom now inextricably linked.

Then I imagine just one lifelong devotee reflecting on their love of classical music in thirty or so years’ time, and wonder whether that devotion might have started at the Strictly Prom.

Jon Jacob is Editor, About the BBC Blog

Watch the Strictly Come Dancing Prom on BBC Four from 7.30pm on Friday 22 July 2016.
Listen to the live radio broadcast of the Strictly Prom via BBC iPlayer

Radio 3’s International Women’s Day - Celebrating Women composers

2016-03-04T10:52:22+00:00

Composer Clara Schumann once said “a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?”

This year, Radio 3’s International Women’s Day focus on women in music on 8 March looks at inspiring women of the past and present, and forward to the next generation of women composers, conductors and performers. Until we see gender parity at all levels within the world of classical music, we should take every opportunity to inspire women with the conviction that they can achieve anything they set their minds to. International Women’s Day provides us with an opportunity to do that.

I’ve always wondered what heights Clara Schumann might have scaled had she had the opportunities afforded to her male counterparts. Barbara Strozzi was one of the most important composers of Italian cantatas in the 17th century, and published over 100 vocal works during her lifetime – no mean feat considering the limited opportunities available to women in her day. By exploring her life in Composer of the Week I hope you will all enjoy discovering one of my favourite pieces of music, her cantata Che si può fare. It’s a complaint against the pitiless stars that carry us, inevitably, as the bass repeats, to an imaginary hell - but what a beautiful descent! I find it utterly mesmerising with its descending ground bass.

I am also looking forward to the Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert which comes live from the Royal College of Music’s Women in Music Festival. RCM alumni The Albany Trio, who are committed to bringing new audiences to works by female composers, play pieces by Rebecca Clarke, Judith Weir, and the world premiere of a work they’ve commissioned from Judith Bingham specifically for International Women’s Day, The Orchid and its Hunters.

Part of the challenge of bringing this music to a wider audience is that a lot of it hasn’t been recorded. The BBC's performing groups are all committed to changing that. For International Women’s Day the BBC National Orchestra of Wales has recorded a programme of music by contemporary Welsh composers for Afternoon on 3 showcasing some of the finest orchestral music in recent years, from the heroine’s anguish in Rhian Samuel’s Clytemnestra, based on the Greek Tragedy Agamemnon, to Hilary Tann’s ‘deepest respect’ to the victims of Tiananmen Square in The Open Field, along with broadcast premieres of three new pieces by Welsh composers.

Live in Radio 3 in Concert, the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jessica Cottis and BBC Singers conducted by Grace Rossiter perform several works inspired by natural phenomena. Thea Musgrave's virtuosic Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra, Helios, depicts the circular movements around the world of the ancient Greek sun god, and the BBC Singers and Symphony Orchestra join forces in Judith Weir's delicate piece for orchestra and chorus Moon and Star – an evocation of the vastness of space, with words by 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson.

The BBC Proms Inspire scheme for young composers has spotted the talents of Tansy Davies and Alissa Firsova to name but two, and is an excellent way for young composers to get themselves heard. But there are still more applications from boys than girls, with a worrying drop off from young women in the senior category (17-18 year olds). Do girls think composition isn't for them? A day like this is a way to shout from the rooftops that music is for everyone, and until young women feel empowered to put themselves forward we’re a very long way from parity. The Inspire team have set up a series of workshops for young women composers aged 12-20, led by composer Anna Meredith, musician Jack Ross and percussionist Beth Higham-Edwards, which will culminate in a performance of a piece they’ve created on In Tune – which comes direct from the Royal Festival Hall on the opening day of Southbank Centre’s Women of the World Festival, with Suzy Klein hosting live music from soprano Ruby Hughes and folk star Eliza Carthy.

Suzy will also be joined by Gillian Moore, Southbank Centre's head of classical music, and Jessy McCabe, the teenage student who successfully campaigned for one of Britain's biggest exam boards to include female composers on the A-level music syllabus. Jessy told me that Radio 3’s IWD focus last year gave her the ammunition and confidence: “not to take no for an answer when Edexcel originally replied” claiming that “Given that female composers were not prominent in the Western classical tradition (or others for that matter), there would be very few female composers that could be included.”

Performance poet Hollie McNish has written a book and a series of poems about motherhood. Composer Emily Hall has been commissioned to write a childrens' opera for Hull 2017. Scientist Helen Pearson is an expert on the longest running study of human development. Edwina Attlee is a writer with an interest in launderettes, sleeper trains, fire escapes, greasy spoons, postcards, and the working lives of women. She'll be sharing audio tales from the National Life Stories Archive at the British Library, where women talk about working lives spent on oil rigs, in steel plants, and a host of other places. Ailsa Grant Ferguson has studied Dorothy Leigh's Mother's Blessing, which was the bestselling book by a woman of the 17th century. They join Anne McElvoy on Free Thinking to look at the ways in which every day experiences in the lives of women feed into creativity.

All week The Essay features women telling their own inspirational stories including mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and conductor Alice Farnham. When the composer Nicola LeFanu was growing up it simply didn't occur to her that composition was an unusual thing for a woman to do; it seemed completely natural, surrounded as she was by women who wrote music: her mother, the composer Elizabeth Maconchy, and Maconchy’s friends including Welsh composer Grace Williams and Irish composer Ina Boyle. It was only when Nicola went on to study music herself that she realised how few women had been included in the books which told the history of Western Classical music. Her music and teaching have inspired many young women composers, but she laments the fact that opportunities which might have been available in the Sixties weren’t there in the Eighties. Each generation seems to face different challenges in the pursuit of equality.

If we give it the platform, the music speaks for itself.

Olwen Fisher is a Producer for Radio 3

International Women's Day is on 8 March find out more about Celebrating Women Composers

Northern Lights on BBC Radio 3

2015-12-04T15:09:46+00:00

Radio 3 Controller Alan Davey looks ahead to three weeks of in-depth programming in the Northern Lights season, and explains how the Icelandic sagas have come to dominate so much of Northern thinking and culture.

This weekend Radio 3 begins its celebrations of the culture of Northern countries, places which spend the winter months in darkness (compensated by long summer nights). This is triggered by the anniversary of the birth of Sibelius, Finland's best known composer, and a composer who is played a lot on Radio 3 and by the BBC Performing Groups.

But instead of just concentrating on Sibelius, we decided to look at artistic responses to 'the North' in many different ways, and to examine what 'the North' means in human imagination. As a triangulation point to this line of thought we are broadcasting on Sunday at 11.30pm a 'contrapuntal documentary' made by pianist Glenn Gould for CBC in 1967, called 'The Idea of North'.

My own fascination with the extreme North began when at university and I discovered the great Sagas of Iceland. Iceland is a nation with a great literary heritage which literally is based in the soil. From around the 10th century are the great Poetic Eddas: mythological poems that tell of the Gods - Oðin, Loki and so on - the mythology of which was brought together by a priest in 12th century Iceland called Snorri Sturlusson. Then there are the Scaldic poems - complex and compact works that use mythological images to convey emotion and thought - the medieval poet Egil Skallagrímsson uses this style in his great poem Sonnatorrek on the death of his son.

But the sagas are different. Laconic in style, they tell of people who lived in real places, and who quarrelled and feuded and killed one another for reasons that might be personal, legal or to do with relationships - always rooted in real places in Iceland you can visit today. The greatest of these sagas is Njals Saga - the story of a good man who tries to maintain his moral centre in a world where others kill and feud, which ends with he and his wife being burned alive in their farmhouse. But read the text and there is no emotion, only understatement, with the story told clearly and unflinchingly. My favourite is Laxdæla Saga, a story which revolves around strong women and fighting men - the two main characters, Kjartan, every inch the blonde warrior who is killed due to some complicated machinations around the magnificent Guðrun, who, when as a matriarch looking back on her life comments to her son 'Þeim var ek verst, er ek unna mest' - 'I was worst to the one I loved the most'. That's it in terms of summing up the emotions - a whole world of pain and life of regret is summarised in that one sentence.

As a student I ended up editing a saga called Gautreks Saga, a later work that combines the supposed history in Sweden of a community who are so poor that the eldest commit suicide every time a guest arrives - reflecting ancient traditions of hospitality, with a story of a man who gets on by being generous and giving gifts.

And these brilliant stories are told in one of the most beautiful languages in the word, Icelandic. The old language is still recognisably the language people speak in Iceland today. It is a Scandinavian language with an earthy, animated burr to it. If you want to hear it, listen to Icelandic musician Ásgeir's album Ðyrð í Dauðaþögn (literally 'Glory in the silence of death'). An English language version was made with the words translated by John Grant called in the Silence. You can hear the beauty of the language, and in the words, written by his 70-year-old father, you sense a link back to the great Icelandic Viking literary tradition, as in the song Hlòða Nótt (with a hard to translate first line of the last chorus)

Sum var gott en annað fylgi með
Reisir sverð og skjöld

(Some was good and wrapped with the other [ie bad]
Raise your sword and shield).

This is one aspect of the culture of the North. In 'Northern Lights' we'll be exploring the culture of many Northern countries, from Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq's music for the 1923 documentary Nanook of the North next Friday, to Sibelius' great Finnish epic, Kullervo hope you'll join us on Radio 3 to explore Northern Culture of all kinds, through December.

Alan Davey is Controller, BBC Radio 3

This post also appears on the BBC Radio 3 Blog.

Discover more about the Northern Lights season on BBC Radio 3

BBC Free Thinking 2015: Tearing up the rule book

2015-11-02T12:42:43+00:00

BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of ideas is now in its 10th year. It returns to Sage Gateshead from Friday 6 to Sunday 8 November 2015 for a weekend of provocative debate, new ideas, live music and performance under the theme ‘Tearing Up The Rule Book’.

Here Matthew Dodd, Head of Speech Programming, Radio 3, introduces this year's festival and shares some of his programme highlights.

Matthew Dodd is Head of Speech Programming, Radio 3

Radio 3 Controller Alan Davey: Expanding the audience for classical music is a matter to take seriously

2015-04-20T15:35:48+00:00

Controller Alan Davey has written on the Radio 3 blog this afternoon. He says:

"Classical music and its place in our culture is something I feel passionately about. We must be honest in identifying the challenges it faces and debate the issues with vigour.

But, if this is to happen, we need all sides of the argument to be reported and debated fairly and thoroughly. Expanding the audience for classical music is a matter to take seriously, as we do across the BBC, with projects like Ten Pieces ‒ bringing classical music to school age children, the work of the Performing Groups, the Proms, and above all BBC Radio 3, which remains the best place to discover classical and other serious music, as well as culture and ideas."

Jon Jacob is Editor, About the BBC Blog

Read the whole post on the Radio 3 Blog.

Many happy returns, Private Passions

2015-04-15T12:47:49+00:00

Private Passions at 20

Last night, Radio 3 Controller Alan Davey hosted an event in central London to mark the 20th anniversary of the station's weekly musical discussion programme Private Passions. Joining Alan for the celebration was the programme's presenter, composer Michael Berkeley, and a host of guests, some of whom had themselves appeared on the programme.

Over its twenty year history Private Passions has featured a wide range of guests including Elvis Costello, Sebastian Faulks, Janet Street-Porter, composer Harrison Birtwistle and, in 2006, Suzi Quatro. Joining Janet Street-Porter last night were other former guests Neil Tenannt, Richard Eyre, Deborah Bull, Julia Somerville, and the programme's most recent guest Jane Hawking.

We've included a selection of pictures taken at the event below.

Devotees of Private Passions will be pleased to hear that Radio 3 will broadcast a special edition of the programme this Sunday at midday. The programme will feature clips from ten archive episodes just recently released to the publi. You'll be able to listen to these archive episodes in full over the coming weeks via the programme's podcast feed.

Private Passions presenter Michael Berkeley

Radio 3 Controller, Alan Davey

Jung Chang and Michael Berkeley

John Sergeant

Neil Tennant and Janet Street Porter

Caroline Quentin

Jeremy Dixon and Julia Somerville

Jonathan Hellyer Jones and Jane Hawking

Richard Eyre and Sue Birtwistle

Vanessa Vie and Michael Horovitz

Jon Jacob is Editor, About the BBC Blog

Private Passions is broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at midday on Sundays.
Michael Berkeley will be sharing his Private Passions on In Tune today (4:30 – 6:30pm) - his unexpected musical pleasures will be made available online from Friday and there will be an anniversary programme this Sunday featuring some of Michael’s most memorable interviews.
Subscribe to the Private Passions podcast feed and listen to the latest episode of the programme plus especially selected archive editions made available in the next few weeks.

BBC Radio 3 Controller Alan Davey speaks at the Association of British Orchestras Conference 2015

2015-01-30T07:23:26+00:00

Alan Davey is the Controller of BBC Radio 3.

Last night, in his first speech since taking up the role, Alan spoke to the people from the classical music industry at the annual Association of British Orchestras Conference at Sage Gateshead.

The speech is available on the Media Centre website. We've published an excerpt below.

"Classical music – or indeed maybe we should describe it as serious, interesting, life-changing and complex music – as well as culture and ideas, are what the Radio 3 family is about. Doing in spades what we set out to do at my previous organisation, the Arts Council:

Creating great art and culture and putting it within the reach of everyone;

Doing so with a quality and care that does not discriminate and treat anyone as second class or entitled to less;

Through high-quality crafted broadcast sound, say to people that these great treasures are for you and here’s a way in for you;

Never dumbing down but providing everyone with the means to understand great music and culture for what it is;

Not just giving the audience what we think they want, but earning the right to be a trusted guide to new things and to do so in a spirit of generous authority;

Having an informal, but informed tone that wears its knowledge lightly;

That always has in mind the thrill of discovery and remembers the joy of hearing a great piece for the first time;

Ensuring as Helen Boaden mentioned yesterday that we continue to take creative risks and our talented Performing Groups are a major part of that, not least through their some 60 premieres a year – a major part of the BBC’s Music commitment.

That’s our mission and we need to use all our resources in whatever way we can to realise this in live performances, broadcast and online. That’s a powerful set of things to have at our disposal."

You can read the full speech on the BBC Media Centre website.

Celebrating the work of women composers on BBC Radio 3

2015-01-29T14:49:46+00:00

Charlotte Bray is one of five female composers who will feature in Radio 3's Composer of the Week

On Sunday 8 March Radio 3 will mark International Women's Day with programmes entirely dedicated to music written and chosen by women. The programmes will champion the talents and creativity of women who have written music throughout the centuries.

The day will include special editions of Breakfast, Sunday Morning, the Early Music Show and The Choir, all featuring works written by women composers. A special lunchtime concert live from the BBC's Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House will feature performances from some of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme. Katie Derham will present a live concert performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in an all-female programme.

In the lead-up to the day, Radio 3 will also broadcast programmes editions of CD Review, Essential Classics all featuring works by women composers. In Music Matters on Saturday 7 March, Radio 3 presenter Sara Mohr Pietsch examines how the world has changed for women writing music across the centuries, and why there are still fewer published women composers than men.

Additionally, special editions of The Essay will spotlight Women who have influenced musical life throughout history (Monday 2 March – Friday 6 March).

Each day in the week following International Women’s Day, Composer of the Week host Donald MacLeod will interview five female composers under the age of 35 - Charlotte Bray, Anna Clyne, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Hannah Kendall and Dobrinka Tabakova discussing life as a female composer today (Monday 9 March – Friday 13 March).

Edwina Wolstencroft from Radio 3 has curated the series of programmes for International Women's Day commented on the day, "There are six thousand women composers in history so why can most of us only name a handful? We as a station can’t solve the imbalances of the classical music industry - which inevitably reflect historic societal attitudes to women generally - but it's very important to take the time to explore the issues."

For details, performers and composers featured in the celebration for International Womens Day, take a look at the Media Centre press release which lists broadcast times in full.