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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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BBC Proms

Music: Classical

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The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival. Stunning performances, unique collaborations and the sheer joy of live music. Relive 2023's highlights before the new season begins.

BBC Proms: 2015 Season: Proms Interval

BBC Proms: 2015: Proms Interval: The Summer House

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royal albert hall

16/08/2015

The Summer House

2015

BBC Radio 3 - BBC Proms, 2015, Proms Interval, The Summer House

Kate Clanchy on the importance of the summer house to people in Scandinavia and Russia.

Kate Clanchy reflects on the importance of the summer house to people in Scandinavia and Russia, including artists such as Grieg, Sibelius, Nabokov and Tove Jansson.

In Norway you'd call it a sommerhus, in Finland a mokki, in Russia a dacha and in Sweden a stuga. In English there is no adequate word for these havens in the forests and by the water where our northern neighbours withdraw for the summer. 

Kate Clanchy, who has spent time in mokkis and stugas, reveals how these are not mere second homes for the wealthy - most people have access to one. Nor are they places of total relaxation: there are logs to be chopped, potatoes to be grown and mushrooms and berries to be gathered. The summer house is where people reconnect with the land, with nature, with each other and themselves.

She contemplates the atmosphere and the light, and the way this imbues so much of the music and writing we love, the work of Grieg, Sibelius, Chekhov, Nabokov and Tove Jansson, author of 'The Summer Book'. 

Producer: Julian May 

First broadcast 11/08/2010.

BBC Proms: 2015

BBC Proms: 2015: Proms Interval

Proms Interval

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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