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

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Discovering Music

Music: Classical

Programme which examines a different piece of music each week

Programme which examines a different piece of music each week, looking at the musical form or the composer's style, and exploring the many things contributing to the overall experience

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Discovering Music: Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5

10/02/2012

BBC Radio 3 - Discovering Music, Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5

Stephen Johnson explores the private codes hidden in Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony.

Stephen Johnson explores the private codes hidden in Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony: is it a musical triumph over the composer's inner demons - or something more cryptic?

Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony is the middle of a last, great trilogy of symphonies whose musical ideas, the composer admitted, address great issues of Fate, Death, and Providence.

Stephen Johnson explores the connections between Tchaikovsky's last three symphonies, written at a time when the composer was struggling with depression and fears over his homosexuality.

How do these masterpieces intersect with the composer's own troubled psychological state? And how much can we really read into the way that their themes and motifs develop and intersect as emblematic of Tchaikovsky's own inner world?

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.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Discovering Music

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5

Contributors

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3