The perfect classical half hour

Available for 29 days

Take time out with a 30-minute soundscape of classical music. This evening's mixtape begins with music from Ralph Vaughan Williams' first ever film score - the Prelude to '49th Parallel' from 1941. Rachmaninov and Vivaldi lead us into back-to-back female French composers Augusta Holmès and Nadia Boulanger. Gerald Finzi follows with a beautiful Bagatelle for clarinet and piano, before Charles Villiers Stanford takes us into the choral world with The Blue Bird. US composer William Grant Still closes the sequence by evoking a human soul entering 'heaven', or 'Summerland', played by Jeneba Kanneh-Mason. Produced by Joe Blamey. To listen on most smart speakers, just ask your smart speaker to "Play BBC Radio 3".