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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

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

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

Composer of the Week: Charles Gounod (1818-1893)

Composer of the Week: Charles Gounod (1818-1893): Episode 5: Final Years

Charles Gounod (1818-1893)

Episode 5

Episode 5: Final Years

Final Years

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Charles Gounod (1818-1893), Final Years

Donald Macleod explores Gounod's final years.

Donald Macleod explores Gounod's final years, when the composer turned away from the stage to focus once again on religious music.

In his final years, Gounod turned away from the stage to focus once again on religious music. After the huge success of his oratorio Rédemption at the Birmingham Festival, he was invited to conduct the premiere of another a few years later. The work proved to be equally popular but had to be performed in his absence. Georgina Weldon, who had been his friend and nurse a decade earlier, had turned vindictive foe and threatened to have him arrested should he ever set foot on English soil again. Donald Macleod introduces part of that enormous work, plus two of Gounod's chamber works: the Petite Symphonie for nine wind instruments and the only string quartet of his ever to be published.

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 explores the life and music of Charles Gounod

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of Charles Gounod, known today for little other than the song Ave Maria and the hugely popular opera Faust, yet an important French composer

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Charles Gounod (1818-1893)

Episode 5: Final Years

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