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Essential Classics

Music: Classical

Refresh your morning with a great selection of classical music

Refresh your morning with a great selection of classical music, presented by Suzy Klein and Ian Skelly

Essential Classics: Thursday - Sarah Walker with Andrew Neil

Friday - Sarah Walker with Andrew Neil

19/11/2015

Thursday - Sarah Walker with Andrew Neil

BBC Radio 3 - Essential Classics, Thursday - Sarah Walker with Andrew Neilsearch

Artist of the Week: pianist Murray Perahia, featured in Schubert's Fantasia in F minor.

With Sarah Walker. Including Five Reasons to Love the music of St Mark's, Venice; Tallis: Spem in alium; pianist Murray Perahia, featured in Schubert's Fantasia in F minor, D940.

9am
A selection of music including '5 Reasons to Love... the music of St Mark's Venice'. The iconic domes and multiple choir lofts of the opulent St Mark's Basilica in Venice led to the birth of the Venetian polychoral style, as composers experimented with the sound delays and unique effects of the building by positioning choirs around the cathedral. Throughout the week Sarah investigates how composers including Giovanni Gabrieli, Monteverdi and Merulo exploited the acoustics and architectural peculiarities of St Marks to create sixteenth-century surround-sound for their virtuosic vocal and instrumental compositions. 

9.30am
Take part in our daily musical challenge: can you work out which two composers are associated with a particular piece?

10am 
This week's guest is Andrew Neil. A veteran broadcaster and one of Britain's best-known political journalists, Andrew presents the BBC's live political shows the Daily Politics, the Sunday Politics and This Week. Andrew will be talking about his career as a newspaper editor and journalist, and sharing a selection of his favourite classical music, every day at 10am. 

10.30am 
Sarah places Music in Time with a recording of Tallis's Spem in Alium - Renaissance England's response to the Italian Striggio, who had written works for as many as sixty voice parts. 

11am
Murray Perahia's big break came in 1972, when he became the first North American to win first prize at the Leeds Piano Competition. Since then he has put a remarkably wide range of repertoire on disc in a recording career that has lasted more than four decades, and is still going strong. Sarah features Perahia in one of the greatest versions of Schubert's Fantasie in F minor, where he's joined by Radu Lupu. There's also a critically acclaimed account of Brahms's Handel Variations, and two popular piano concertos: Beethoven's third and Chopin's first. Plus there's a rare opportunity to hear conductor Georg Solti at the piano when he joins Perahia in Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. 

Schubert
Fantasia in F minor, D940
Murray Perahia, Radu Lupu (piano duo).

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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Thursday - Sarah Walker with Andrew Neil

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