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Radio 3 – 70 Years reborn
Alan Davey, Controller, BBC Radio 3
Radio 3 Controller Alan Davey traces the history of Radio 3 and looks forward to the Third Programme's 70th anniversary celebrations in 2016.
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Radio 3 – 70 Years reborn
Alan Davey
Controller, BBC Radio 3
In September of this year it will be 70 years since the beginning of the Third Programme, the early incarnation of what is now Radio 3. We think this landmark is an occasion to address the future, drawing on some principles of the past, ditching others, and just use it as an excuse for a party for all our listeners.
In Penelope Fitzgerald’s book about the BBC in wartime, Human Voices, a character describes BBC staff as ranging from ‘the intensely respectable to the barely sane’. It fits, too, as a description of the idea of setting up a high culture radio station, remorselessly intellectual, in the rubble of WW2 and in the beginning of a long period of post war austerity ‒ it wasn’t until 1953 that freedom from hunger was declared.
Yet 1946 was a time of optimism and possibility. The welfare state and the NHS were about to replace fear, and to conquer Beveridge’s ‘five giants’: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness, disease. But as well as this, it was a boom time for optimism about, and interest in, the arts. J M Keynes had set up the Arts Council that year to spread interest in culture across the nation. His battle cry, ‘Death to Hollywood’ (i.e. to the Americanisation of...
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Folk music a closed book? Ten tracks for you to try...
Verity Sharp
Presenter, BBC Radio 3
How it all began for Verity: Annbjørg Lien and Bruce Molsky
I’ll be honest with you. I never used to like folk music very much. If it wasn’t all rumpty-tumpty, four square tunes in a wincingly sour D major, it was notes relentlessly whizzing by at such a speed it left me feeling faintly nauseous. Where was the subtlety, the depth, the point?
Enlightenment came in stages. The first was witnessing Bruce Molsky and Norwegian Hardanger fiddler Annbjørg Lien trading tunes in a bar late one night. Over three thousand miles separate New York and Oslo, and these two had barely met, and yet from the way they were playing music together you’d think they’d known each other since birth. As one old time fiddle tune after another twined itself around those of the Hardanger, I began to fully appreciate what that old cliché of 'music being able to transcend language' really meant. These two were rapt in note-to-note, heart-to-heart dialogue, creating a bubble around them that grew as more of us gathered round to listen. This was love made audible. Love...
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New Year New Music ‒ Tune in and Turn on a Love for the New
Alan Davey
Controller, BBC Radio 3
Birtwistle: The Minotaur (Royal Opera House/BBC)
January begins in the most traditional way for BBC Radio 3, with the New Year's Day concert from Vienna, Well known waltzes and a touch of Viennese glamour – a Broadcast tradition of many years.
But then we want to begin something new – a week long season called New Year, New Music, which will celebrate and present music of the last 60 years, and hopefully will help to demystify contemporary classical music, music that some find it hard to find a way into, but which in reality offers a world of beauty and intellectual challenge that is well worth an investment in time and effort to appreciate.
We will have a great range of new music which will be woven throughout the day in the heart of the schedule.
I remember Harrison Birtwistle’s The Minotaur, which when it was first performed at the Royal Opera House created a bit of a stir and even a violent reaction against it. When it was revived a few years later, it was greeted by enthusiastic audiences as the...
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Northern light ‒ and darkness
Petroc Trelawny
BBC Radio 3 Presenter
Petroc in Tromsø
The nights are long in Tromsø at this time of year. The North Norwegian city’s residents are halfway through the season of Polar Night, when they bid farewell to the sun for more than six weeks.
Recording Music Matters there, producer Andy King and I made the most of the three hour long stretch of twilight that falls in late morning. For a brief period, the view across the bay that divides...
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Northern Lights, Northern Words
Alan Davey
Controller, BBC Radio 3
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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...
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Brabbins in Brabant with the BBC Symphony Orchestra
Phil Hall
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sint Janskerk Den Bosch
A quick survey across some of my colleagues in the orchestra revealed that apart from the odd concert in Amsterdam or Rotterdam, most of us had not toured the Netherlands since our youth orchestra days. A pity, since the country possesses some excellent concert halls and some of the most affable people on the planet, plus it's easy to get to by train.
So it was that the BBCSO boarded the...
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Orlando on Radio 3 - Pioneering Live Online Commentary
Martin Smith
Editor, Network Radio & Special Projects
Lawrence Zazzo as Orlando, Fflur Wyn as Dorinda, Daniel Grice as Zoroastro
It’s a familiar sight in offices around the world: the intense stare at the screen, the reluctance to get up for a coffee, the sustained quiet. Yes – there’s a major sporting event and everyone is following the online commentary. Not everyone can be at Centre Court or in Monaco, but they get up-to-the-minute reaction, images, highlights and conversation through the BBC website.
Our Network...
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Strange and fantastic: lighting up Patagonia with the BBC NOW
Naomi Thomas
Principal Second Violin, BBC National Orchestra of Wales
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The full crew
Visiting Patagonia in Argentina has been quite bizarre! I’ve just spent a week and a half with 11 other BBC NOW musicians working with schools, special schools and local orchestras in the Welsh colony of Patagonia. Although I was brought up in England, I was born in Aberystwyth in Wales and we kept the Welsh tradition going very strongly at home. Walking about this South American town (over...
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BBC Symphony Orchestra success at the Lahti Sibelius Festival
Phil Hall
BBC Symphony Orchestra
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Sibelius and his family at Ainola
The BBC Symphony Orchestra first went to Finland in 1956 (with Sir Malcolm Sargent) and returned 40 years later with Vernon Handley. Thus it was a rather unusual pleasure to escape the rigours of the Proms for a few days and become a part of the 150th birthday celebrations for Sibelius in the Finnish city of Lahti.
It was a particular pleasure for me as my very first orchestral job was at the...
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Gearing up for the Last Night
Benjamin Grosvenor
Concert pianist
Benjamin Grosvenor's Proms debut in 2011
Four years ago I made my BBC Proms debut at the First Night of the Proms. It was a great honour, and a very special experience for my debut to be at the opening of the festival.
The Royal Albert Hall is a truly unique venue - an iconic building, with such a rich history. I first performed there in 2005, but it was only when returning for my first Prom that I realised how much the feel of the...
