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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: BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Afternoon Concert: BBC National Orchestra of Wales: Episode 4

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Episode 4

BBC Radio 3 - Afternoon Concert, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Episode 4

The BBC NOW performs music by JA Carpenter, Copland, Ives, W Schuman and Bloch.

Including the BBC NOW performing live in Cardiff. Carpenter: Adventures in a Perambulator. Copland: Piano Concerto. Ives: Three Places in New England. Plus W Schuman and Bloch.

Fiona Talkington links up live with American radio presenter Fred Childs in Minnesota, for the second Americana concert in the BBC National Orchestra of Wales's autumn series at BBC Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff. This season, Afternoon on 3 is celebrating American music, with a particular focus on composers who established a new orchestral identity from the cultural melting pot of the twentieth-century United States. 

John Alden Carpenter won fame with his first orchestral work in 1914, an unusual view of American day to day life, from a child's perspective. These action-packed - and tune-filled - adventures, inspired by Carpenter's own daughter - are so vivid that Walt Disney considered them at one point for a sequel to Fantasia. Aaron Copland played the the solo piano for the premiere of his own Piano Concerto in 1926 - to unkind reviews. These days it's difficult to understand how this jazz-influenced score could seem so shocking, reflecting as it does what Copland saw as the two sides of jazz: "the slow blues and the snappy number". It's a bold, unbridled piece, full of new York exhuberance and swagger. Another New Yorker, William Schuman also embraced jazz and folk traditions. Schuman was a prolific composer and vital force in American musical life as an administrator: his works deserve to be heard more often. 

Also this afternoon, an American classic by the quintessential American maverick, Charles Ives, inspired by his native New England. And Louise Fryer shares a sneak preview of a new recording with Raphael Wallfisch and the BBC NOW, featuring music by Swiss-born Jewish composer Ernest Bloch, who settled in America during the First World War.

John Alden Carpenter: Adventures in a Perambulator
BBC National Orchestra of Wales,
Wilson Hermanto (conductor).

2.30pm
Copland: Piano Concerto
William Wolfram (piano),
BBC National Orchestra of Wales,
Wilson Hermanto (conductor).

2.45pm
Ives: Three Places in New England
BBC National Orchestra of Wales,
Nicholas Collon.

3.10pm
William Schuman: Symphony no. 3
BBC National Orchestra of Wales,
Wilson Hermanto (conductor).

4.00pm
Bloch: Schelomo
Raphael Wallfisch (cello),
BBC National Orchestra of Wales,
Benjamin Wallfisch (conductor).

Afternoon Concert: BBC National Orchestra of Wales

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.

Performances given by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at Welsh music festivals in 2013

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Episode 4

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