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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 Tom Conti

Monday - Rob Cowan with Tom Conti

23/06/2016

Thursday - Rob Cowan with Tom Conti

BBC Radio 3 - Essential Classics, Thursday - Rob Cowan with Tom Contisearch

With Rob Cowan. Including Biber's Rosary Sonatas and Chopin's Cello Sonata in G minor.

With Rob Cowan. Including My Favourite Tenor Arias; Music in Time: Biber's Rosary Sonatas; Artist of the Week: cellist Daniil Shafran, featured in Chopin's Cello Sonata in G minor.

9am
My favourite... tenor arias. Throughout the week Rob shares some of his favourite tenor arias, with voices both familiar (Franco Corelli, Richard Tucker and the legendary Carlo Bergonzi) and unfamiliar (Bruno Prevedi and Flaviano Labo). The repertoire ranges from the touching simplicity of Pergolesi's 'Nina' to the searing melodrama of Leoncavallo's 'Vesti la giubba', via Verdi, Giordano and Ponchielli. 

9.30am
Take part in today's music-related challenge: listen to the clues and identify the mystery person. 

10am 
Rob's guest this week is the Tony Award-winning and Oscar-nominated actor, writer and director Tom Conti. Famous internationally for his roles in films such as Shirley Valentine, Reuben, Reuben and The Dark Knight Rises, Tom was recently voted the most popular actor in the West End in the last 25 years. Tom talks about his career-defining acting roles and shares a selection of his favourite classical music, including works by Donizetti, Handel and Verdi, every day at 10am. 

10.30am
Music in Time: Baroque
Rob places Music in Time as he heads back to the Baroque era and a landmark in the repertoire of the violin - Heinrich Biber's extraordinary sequence of Rosary Sonatas, which require the player to continually retune the instrument in a practice known as 'scordatura'. The result is an expanded palette of tone-colours, which Biber uses to heighten his portrayal of scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary.

11am
Rob's artist of the week is Daniil Shafran, the 'other' great Russian cellist, who Rob considers to have a more individual style than the better-known Rostropovich. Shafran is deliciously quick-witted in the Shostakovich Sonata, passionate in Brahms's 2nd, and profoundly responsive to the voices of Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninov. His tone, full and sensual, was quite unlike anyone else's. 

Chopin
Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 65
Daniil Shafran, cello
Anton Ginsburg, piano.

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