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

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Radio 3 Live in Concert: Live from St David's Hall, Cardiff

Radio 3 Live in Concert: Live from St David's Hall, Cardiff: Episode 2: Britten

Live from St David's Hall, Cardiff

Episode 2

Episode 2: Britten

Britten

BBC Radio 3 - Radio 3 Live in Concert, Live from St David's Hall, Cardiff, Britten

David Atherton conducts Britten's Spring Symphony. Presented by Nicola Heywood Thomas.

Presented by Nicola Heywood Thomas, live from St David's Hall in Cardiff. Britten: Spring Symphony. BBC National Orchestra of Wales/David Atherton.

Live from St. David's Hall in Cardiff

Presented by Nicola Heywood Thomas

Britten: Spring Symphony

Paul Lewis (piano)
Elizabeth Atherton (soprano)
Jennifer Johnston (mezzo)
Andrew Kennedy (tenor)
Children's choirs from Brecon Cathedral, Cardiff Metropolitan cathedral, Llandaff Cathedral and St. Davids Cathedral
BBC National Chorus of Wales
Cardiff Polyphonic Choir
David Atherton, conductor

Part of Britten at the BBC. Spring Symphony is one of Britten's largest and most opulent scores. It celebrates the progress of winter into spring, culminating in a glorious May-tide festival in the sun-drenched "Suffolk of Constable and Gainsborugh". English poetry abounds, including settings of Edmund Spenser, Thomas Nashe, Henry Vaughan, Milton and others. Alongside the awakening of innocence there's also a rude earthiness, the orchestra includes a rustic cow-horn, and at the height of the finale, the massed children's voices sing the thirteenth-century song "Sumer is icumen in".

Paul Lewis is internationally recognised as one of the leading pianists of his generation. Since he became one of the very first Radio 3 New Generation Artists, his awards have included
the Royal Philharmonic Society's Instrumentalist of the Year, the South Bank Show Classical Music Award and three Gramophone awards. Paul is particularly associated with the music of Beethoven. His recordings of the complete sonatas were described by Gramophone as "one of the most highly prized recording marathons of recent years" and in 2010 he became the
first pianist to play all five concertos in a single season at the BBC Proms. The greatest of all the concertos is the Emperor, written in Vienna while Napoleon's guns thundered around. The nickname is unlikely to have been Beethoven's own, more likely it came from an admirer who considered it "an emperor among concertos". Whatever the case, this concerto is undeniably profound and thoughtful, full of nobility and grandeur.

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.

Britten 100: BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales in music by Beethoven and Britten

Britten 100: David Atherton conducts the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales in music by Beethoven and Britten

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