Original version

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

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Migrated podcast image for: Composer Of The Week

Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Steve Reich (b.1936)

Composer of the Week: Steve Reich (b.1936): Episode 4

Steve Reich (b.1936)

Episode 4

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Steve Reich (b.1936), Episode 4

Donald Macleod explores Steve Reich's 'video opera' The Cave and Different Trains.

Donald Macleod talks to Steve Reich about two of his most original large-scale works of the late 1980s and 90s - the video opera The Cave and Different Trains, for string quartet.

Steve Reich explores two of his most original large-scale works of the late 1980s and 90s with presenter Donald Macleod. "The Cave" is a unique 'video opera', conceived by Reich in partnership with his wife, the artist Beryl Korot, exploring questions of Jewish, Muslim and American identity from ancient times to the present, and inspired by the Cave of Machpilai in Hebron, the burial place of Abraham.

Meanwhile, the Grammy Award-winning work "Different Trains", for string quartet and tape, has its inspiration closer to home, in the long journeys from New York to San Francisco Reich made between his divorced parents as a young child in the late 1930s and early 40s - a time when half a world away, Jewish men and women like himself were being transported by train to the death camps of Eastern Europe.

The episode ends with Reich and Donald Macleod discussing the composer's inspiration to a whole new generation of dance, electronica and rock musicians - with an excerpt from his seminal 1967 work "Piano Phase", remixed by British dance collective, D*Note.

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.

Donald Macleod talks to one of the world's most celebrated living composers, Steve Reich

Donald Macleod talks exclusively to one of the world's most celebrated living composers, Steve Reich, and presents music spanning his remarkable musical career

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Composer of the Week

Steve Reich (b.1936)

Episode 4

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3