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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

Private Passions Podcast

Private Passions

Discussion & Talk

Music: Classical

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates, and talk about the influence music has had on their lives

Private Passions: Gwyneth Lewis

Gwyneth Lewis

02/06/2013

BBC Radio 3 - Private Passions, Gwyneth Lewis

Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis introduces her personal musical choices.

Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis introduces her personal musical choices, including Poulenc, Brahms, Mozart, Bach, a French chanson and one haunting Welsh folk song.

As part of British music season on Radio 3, poets from across the country reveal the music which inspires them.
Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis has the unusual distinction of having written the largest poem in the world, and it's about music. The words are six feet tall, inscribed over the entrance to the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, the music venue designed by Zaha Hadid: 'In these stones horizons sing'. Gwyneth has a passion for opera and the human voice, a passion which began early when her father played his favourite operas on every car journey - the whole family would sing along. As a child she sang in her school choir, singing opera in Welsh. Gwyneth talks very movingly about the depression she has suffered throughout her life; it was music - and particularly a Brahms choral work (the Alto Rhapsody) which she says 'saved my life'. She reads a poem inspired by listening to opera singers, The Voice. And although she is Welsh through and through and she was for a time National Poet of Wales - she reveals that she doesn't have much time for Welsh music.
Choices include Verdi, Poulenc, Brahms, Mozart, Bach, a French chanson - and one haunting Welsh folk song.

Producer Elizabeth Burke
First broadcast 02/06/2013.

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.

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