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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: Women of the MacDowell Colony

Composer of the Week: Women of the MacDowell Colony: Episode 1: A Place for the Arts

Women of the MacDowell Colony

Episode 1

Episode 1: A Place for the Arts

A Place for the Arts

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Women of the MacDowell Colony, A Place for the Arts

Focusing on Marian MacDowell, instrumental in setting up the MacDowell artists' colony.

Donald Macleod focuses on Marian MacDowell, who was instrumental in setting up the MacDowell artists' colony. Plus music by Wenhui Xie, Amy Beach and Marion Bauer.

You can see why composers love the place: birches, beeches, maples, breathtaking natural beauty and, above all, silence. Since composer Edward MacDowell founded his 'colony' in 1907 some five thousand artists have visited to find inspiration and peace.

Among the so-called colonists are more than a century of women composers who have left their work on classical music. This week Donald Macleod explores the breadth and impact of their work and recalls his own trip to the colony, soaking up the beauty of the site in the dazzling colours of Fall in New England.

Today that crimson light falls partly on Marian MacDowell, pianist wife of Edward, who was instrumental not just in setting up the colony but also had carte blanche in the early days to select who came. There's music from 19-time visitor Marion Bauer, Chinese composer Wenhui Xie, and also Amy Beach who left considerable funds to the Colony after her death in 1944. We also hear from Marian MacDowell's biographer, Robin Rausch.

Beach: A Hermit Thrush at Morn, Op. 92 No. 2
Joanne Polk, piano

Wenhui Xie: Sonettia a Orfeo
Alda Caiello, soprano
Maldo Bonifacio, director

Bauer: Viola Sonata (1935)
3rd movement, Allegro
Arnold Steinhardt, viola
Virginia Eskin, piano

Beach: Piano Concerto in C sharp minor, Op.45 (1898-1899)
1st movement, Allegro moderato
Alan Feinberg, piano
Nashville Symphony Orchestra
Kenneth Schermerhorn, conductor

Beach: From Grandmother's Garden, Op.97
Virgin Eskin, piano.

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.

Focusing on the work of the female composers who have visited the MacDowell Colony

Donald Macleod explores the work of the many female composers who have visited the Edward MacDowell artists' colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire

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