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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: Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)

Composer of the Week: Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894): Episode 1: The Bon Vivant

Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)

Episode 1

Episode 1: The Bon Vivant

The Bon Vivant

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894), The Bon Vivant

Donald Macleod traces Chabrier's roots from a childhood in Auvergne to the salons of Paris

Donald Macleod traces Chabrier's roots from a childhood in provincial Auvergne to the salons of Paris, where he charmed all the day's leading artists and had success with L'etoile.

Donald Macleod explores the engaging personality and music of Emmanuel Chabrier, a man whose reputation has come to rest on a handful of hits, yet whose originality is acknowledged by some of the leading voices of French music in the twentieth century, among them Debussy and Ravel.

Chabrier must surely be one of the most likeable fellows to have graced this earth. It seems no-one had a bad word to say about him. His wide circle of friends included all the leading musicians, writers, poets and painters of the day. Chabrier owned a remarkable collection of impressionist paintings including several by Manet, who produced the best known portrait of the composer.

Emmanuel Chabrier's life slots into a fascinating point in French musical history. When he was born in 1841, Berlioz was already thirty-eight and famous, Saint-Saëns was six, while the rising stars of the future, Massenet and Fauré, were not yet born. Despite Wagner's dominance, and indeed Chabrier's own reverence for the German composer, Chabrier's music retains a staunchly Gallic individuality, with critics subsequently paying tribute to him as a "direct forerunner of the modern school." The reason for this may well relate, at least in part, to his studies. Chabrier was largely self-taught, and although he was better educated than most musical amateurs, he never followed the accepted route into the Paris Conservatoire or a similar institute. He trained first in law, only taking up full time composition in his thirties.

In the first of the series, Donald Macleod traces Chabrier's roots from a childhood spent in provincial Auvergne to the salons of Paris, where his engaging personality charmed all the leading artists of the day, eventually leading to success with a sparkling confection for stage, l'Étoile.

Joyeuse marche
Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo
Hervé Niquet, conductor

Duo de la chartreuse vert (Act 3, l'Étoile)
Georges Gautier, tenor, Le roi Ouf
Gabriel Bacquier, bass, Siroco
Lyons Opera Orchestra
John Eliot Gardiner, conductor

Bourrée fantasque
Allan Schiller, piano

L'éducation manquée (excerpt)
Jean-Louis Georgel, baritone, Pausanias
Mireille Delunsch, soprano, Gontran
Brigitte Desnoues, soprano, Hélène
Orchestra du Collegium Musicum de Strasbourg
Roger Delage, director

Larghetto for horn & orchestra
Pierre Del Vescovo, horn
Capitole Toulouse Orchestra
Michel Plasson, conductor

L'Étoile (Act 1, excerpt)
O petite étoile.....Je suis Lazuli!
Colette Alliot-Lugaz, soprano, Lazuli,
Magali Damonte, mezzo, Aloès
Ghislaine Raphanel, soprano, La Princesse Laoula
Lyons Opera Orchestra
John Eliot Gardiner, conductor.

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 Emmanuel Chabrier

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of Emmanuel Chabrier, a composer whose originality is acknowledged by leading voices of French music in the 20th century

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Composer of the Week

Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)

Episode 1: The Bon Vivant

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