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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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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 - Rob Cowan with Helen Sharman

Monday - Rob Cowan with Helen Sharman

19/05/2016

Thursday - Rob Cowan with Helen Sharman

BBC Radio 3 - Essential Classics, Thursday - Rob Cowan with Helen Sharmansearch

Includes Artist of the Week: Clifford Curzon, featured in Brahms's Piano Sonata in F minor

With Rob Cowan. Including My Favourite Hollywood Film Scores; Music in Time: Liszt: A Faust Symphony; Artist of the Week: Clifford Curzon, playing Brahms's Piano Sonata in F minor.

9am
My favourite... Hollywood film scores. Rob takes a trip to the cinema as he shares his favourite scores from the golden age of Hollywood. The showreel includes classics such as Max Steiner's soundtrack to Gone with the Wind and Erich Korngold's The Sea Hawk, as well as Bernard Herrmann's iconic shrieking strings accompaniment to Hitchcock's horror movie Psycho. 

9.30am
Take part in our daily musical challenge: identify a piece of music played backwards.

10am
Rob's guest is the astronaut Helen Sharman. Helen Sharman made history when she became the first Briton in space in 1991. Helen's space mission came about after she heard a radio advert for an astronaut whilst working as a research chemist. She beat over 13,000 other applicants to become a crew-member on the eight-day mission. Throughout the week Helen will be reflecting on her trip into space twenty-five years on, talking about life after the mission and sharing a selection of her favourite classical music, including works by Liszt and Haydn, and Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, which she first saw during astronaut training in Russia. 

10:30am
Rob places Music in Time as he explores the Romantic period with Liszt's forward-looking Faust Symphony, which not only fuses the symphonic and tone poem genres, but also includes an early use of a twelve note row.

11am
Rob's artist of the week is the British pianist, Clifford Curzon. A pupil of such distinguished figures as Artur Schnabel, Wanda Landowska and Nadia Boulanger, Curzon was praised for his grace and poise at the keyboard. He specialised in music from the Classical and Romantic periods, especially from the Austro-German tradition, and this week, Rob features some of the pianist's most celebrated recordings, including piano sonatas by Brahms and Liszt, piano concertos by Mozart (K.488) and Beethoven (No. 5 'Emperor) and Schubert's ever-popular 'Trout' Quintet.

Brahms
Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 5
Clifford Curzon (piano).

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