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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

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

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

Composer of the Week: Wagner and His World

Composer of the Week: Wagner and His World: Episode 4: Wagner and Liszt

Wagner and Liszt

Episode 4

Episode 4: Wagner and Liszt

Wagner and His World

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Wagner and His World, Wagner and Liszt

Donald Macleod explores the relationship between Wagner and Liszt.

Donald Macleod explores the relationship between Wagner and Liszt, a close musical confidant and a composer with whom he shared ideas.

Franz Liszt stands apart amongst the influences on Wagner's life and music. Not only was he a close musical confidante whose unfailing support had helped Wagner secure fame and success at a time when he was in exile, but the two composers shared new ideas as their work changed the face of music in the mid-19th century. Liszt would also, somewhat to his chagrin, become Wagner's father-in-law after Wagner fell in love with his daughter Cosima, who at the time was married to the conductor Hans von Bülow.

Donald Macleod juxtaposes two highlights from Wagner's mature music-dramas with piano works by Liszt written around the time of Wagner's death, in Venice, in 1883. We'll also hear the work written for Cosima Wagner's birthday in 1870, the Siegfried-Idyll, in its charming original version for 13 instruments. Plus a real Wagner oddity, his youthful setting of "Gretchen Am Spinnrade", inspired by Goethe's Faust.

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 Wagner's important musical connections and relationships

Donald Macleod explores the connections and relationships that helped establish Wagner as the most revolutionary musical thinker of the 19th century

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Wagner and His World

Episode 4: Wagner and Liszt

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