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

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Kate Molleson

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

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

Composer of the Week: Philip Glass (1937-)

Composer of the Week: Philip Glass (1937-): Episode 2: Einstein on the Beach

Philip Glass (1937-)

Episode 2

Episode 2: Einstein on the Beach

Einstein on the Beach

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Philip Glass (1937-), Einstein on the Beach

Philip Glass joins Donald Macleod to discuss his 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach.

Philip Glass joins Donald Macleod to discuss his 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach, which is regarded as one of the most significant of the 20th century.

Donald Macleod continues the week of exclusive interviews with the composer Philip Glass, first broadcast to mark the composer's 75th birthday in 2012.

Philip Glass's music has captured the popular imagination - and come to soundtrack our lives - in a way almost unthinkable for a contemporary composer. Yet Glass also divides opinion like no other figure in contemporary music. A one-time "enfant terrible" of the New York arts scene of the 60s and 70s - whose simple, seemingly endless repetitions would stretch for hours and enrage critics - Glass has long since swapped hardline minimalism for a comfy, lushly Romantic sound...and alienated many of his former fans. Disarmingly frank, witty and engaging, Philip Glass has always wryly put aside criticism of his commercial success. All this week on Composer Of The Week, Donald Macleod talks to him about his extraordinary life in music, with a playlist that encompasses his entire career.

Glass's landmark work "Einstein On The Beach" (1976) dominates today's episode, as the composer describes how this acclaimed piece of music theatre - part conceptual art piece, part opera - came to be composed, in collaboration with the director Robert Wilson. Donald Macleod discusses the work's troubled genesis and surreal scenario - and how from its humble beginnings it's come to be regarded as one of the most significant operas of the 20th century.

We'll also hear a rare piece of film music from the late 1970s, released amongst pop albums on an art-rock record label (!), before the first instalment of the composer's recent "Concerto Project" - a sequence eight works for solo instrument and orchestra from the past decade.

Etoile Polaire (Etoile Polaire)
Philip Glass (keyboards)
Dickie Landry (saxophones, flute)
Joan La Barbara, Gene Rickard (voices)

Knee 1 (Einstein On The Beach)
Philip Glass Ensemble; Michael Riesman (conductor)

Knee Play 3, Trial 2, Prison, Knee Play 4 (Einstein On The Beach)
Philip Glass Ensemble; Michael Riesman (conductor)

Movement II (Concerto for Cello and Orchestra no.1)
Wendy Sutter (cello)
Orchestra of the Americas; Dante Anzolini (conductor)

River Run (Etoile Polaire)
Philip Glass (keyboards)
Dickie Landry (saxophones, flute)
Joan La Barbara, Gene Rickard (voices).

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.

Philip Glass joins Donald Macleod to discuss his life and music

Prolific, influential and controversial composer Philip Glass joins Donald Macleod to discuss his life and music. Including exclusive performances of some of Glass's new works

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Philip Glass (1937-)

Episode 2: Einstein on the Beach

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