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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

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Private Passions Podcast

Private Passions

Discussion & Talk

Music: Classical

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates, and talk about the influence music has had on their lives

Private Passions: Archbishop Bernard Longley

04/04/2010

Archbishop Bernard Longley

BBC Radio 3 - Private Passions, Archbishop Bernard Longley

Michael Berkeley meets the new Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, Bernard Longley.

Michael Berkeley meets the new Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, Bernard Longley. His choices include music by Borodin, Bax, Poulenc, Verdi, Messiaen and Vaughan Williams.

On this Easter Sunday edition of Private Passions, Michael Berkeley meets the newly-appointed Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, Bernard Longley. He studied singing at the Royal Northern College of Music and at New College Oxford, and music has always been a great passion in his life. His choices include the famous Notturno movement from Borodin's Second String Quartet - a piece associated with the musical 'Kismet' which his mother particularly loved, - and the epilogue of Arnold Bax''s Third Symphony, a work which deserves to be heard more often. There's also the harrowing ending of Poulenc's opera 'Dialogues des Carmelites' - which Bernard Longley greatly admires as bearing witness to the courage and sacrifice of the Carmelite nuns during the French Revolution - as well as sacred choral music by Verdi - the Rex tremendae from the Requiem; Messiaen - his exquisite motet 'O sacrum convivium', which Bernard Longley sang when he was a member of the choir at New College, Oxford; Vaughan Williams - the Kyrie from the Mass in G minor, sung by the choir of Westminster Cathedral where Bernard Longley worked before his appointment to Birmingham; and Elgar - an extract from 'The Dream of Gerontius', first performed in Birmingham's Town Hall, and forever linked with the words of Cardinal Newman, a crucial figure in the life of the Birmingham Roman Catholic diocese.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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