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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

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

Composer of the Week: Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943): Episode 2: Back from the Brink

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

Episode 2

Episode 2: Back from the Brink

Back from the Brink

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943), Back from the Brink

Exploring the work that brought Rachmaninov global fame: his Second Piano Concerto.

Donald Macleod discusses the work that brought Rachmaninov global fame: his Second Piano Concerto.

This week Donald Macleod explores Rachmaninov the pianist-composer, focusing on his concertante piano works. Today, the work that brought him global fame: his Second Piano Concerto.

In March 1897, what should have been a triumphant occasion for Rachmaninov - the première of his First Symphony - turned into an unmitigated catastrophe. An under-rehearsed orchestra under the baton of a poor and, according to some accounts, inebriated conductor was enough to disadvantage the work so seriously that its composer was plunged into silence for the next three years. An encounter with the novelist Tolstoy was arranged, in the rather surprising hope that the surly old curmudgeon might be able to set the diffident young composer back on track. After that failed, the services of Dr Nikolai Dahl, a music-loving hypnotherapist, were called upon. Whatever Dahl did, it did the trick, and Rachmaninov's writer's block was spectacularly broken with his Second Piano Concerto, which quickly became a major international success.

Morceau de fantaisie in G minor
Fughetta in F
Howard Shelley, piano

Piano Concerto No 2 in C minor, Op 18
Sviatoslav Richter, piano
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra
Stanislaw Wislocki, conductor 

Cello Sonata in G minor, Op 19; 3rd mvt, Andante
Leonard Elschenbroich, cello
Alexei Grynyuk, piano

Suite No 2 for two pianos, Op 17; 4th mvt, Tarantella
Martha Argerich, Gabriela Montero, pianos

Producer: Chris Barstow.

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.

Profiling Rachmaninov the pianist-composer, focusing on his concertante piano works

Donald Macleod profiles Rachmaninov the pianist-composer, focusing on his concertante piano works

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Composer of the Week

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

Episode 2: Back from the Brink

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