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

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Afternoon Concert

Music: Classical

Unique performances with BBC Orchestras, Choirs and other great orchestras

Unique performances with BBC Orchestras, Choirs and other great orchestras from around the world

Afternoon on 3: British Symphonies

Afternoon Concert: British Symphonies: Episode 1

Episode 1

British Symphonies

BBC Radio 3 - Afternoon Concert, British Symphonies, Episode 1

Jonathan Swain presents music by Stanford, Wesley, Liszt, Bartok and Vaughan Williams.

Jonathan Swain presents third symphonies by Stanford and Vaughan Williams. Plus Wesley: I wish to tune my quiv'ring lyre. Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No 1. Bartok: Violin Concerto No 2.

Jonathan Swain continues Afternoon on 3's month-long celebration of British symphonies with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra. Today he introduces two 'number threes': Stanford's 'Irish' Symphony from the Ulster Orchestra and Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Plus the BBC Singers in choral music by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, and the BBC SSO playing Liszt and Bartok from their recent tour to the Netherlands.

Across the week in Afternoon on 3 you can hear three Vaughan Williams Symphonies: nos. 3, 5 and 9. The week's other British symphonists are Ernest Moeran, Elizabeth Maconchy, Robert Simpson and James MacMillan. And to complement the British music there are Austro-Hungarian and German classics, from Mozart and Beethoven via Schumann, Brahms and Liszt to Bartok and Webern. 

The Thursday Opera Matinee is a little-known work by Arthur Honegger and Jacques Ibert, L'Aiglon, about the life of Napoleon Bonaparte's son - The Young Eagle' of the title.

Stanford: Symphony no. 3 (Irish)
Ulster Orchestra,
Vernon Handley (conductor).

2.40pm
S S Wesley: I wish to tune my quiv'ring lyre
BBC Singers,
Conductor Paul Brough.

2.45pm
Liszt: Mephisto Waltz no. 1
3.00pm
Bartok: Violin Concerto no. 2
Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin),
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra,
Ilan Volkov (conductor).

3.40pm
Vaughan Williams: Pastoral Symphony (Symphony no. 3)
Ruby Hughes (soprano)
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra,
Andrew Manze (conductor).

Afternoon Concert: British Symphonies

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.

Continuing a celebration of British symphonies with the BBC SSO and the Ulster Orchestra

Jonathan Swain continues a celebration of British symphonies with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra

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Episode 1

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