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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 Georgia Mann.

Essential Classics: Wednesday - Rob Cowan with Simon Sebag Montefiore

Monday - Rob Cowan with Simon Sebag Montefiore

17/08/2016

Wednesday - Rob Cowan with Simon Sebag Montefiore

BBC Radio 3 - Essential Classics, Wednesday - Rob Cowan with Simon Sebag Montefiore

Proms Artist of the Day: pianist Martha Argerich, featured performing Ravel's Jeux d'eau.

With Rob Cowan. My Favourite Duos; Music in Time: Bach: Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit; Proms Artist of the Day: pianist Martha Argerich, featured in Ravel's Jeux d'eau.

9am
My Favourite... Duos. Rob shares his favourite examples of these works for two musicians, where each artist's response to the other is put under the spotlight, creating what is perhaps the ultimate expression of chamber music. Rob's choices explore a selection of instrumental combinations including duos for strings by Bartók, a duo for pianos by Schubert, and duos for percussion, and guitars. 

9.30am
Take part in our daily musical challenge and identify the place associated with a well-known work.

10am 
Rob's guest, historian, writer and television presenter Simon Sebag Montefiore, will be sharing a selection of his favourite classical music, including works by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky that link to his writing on Russia, every day at 10am. Simon's acclaimed history books have been published in over 45 languages and include Jerusalem: The Biography, Catherine the Great and Potemkin and Young Stalin. His latest book, The Romanovs 1613-1918, chronicles the stories of twenty tsars and tsarinas, and is already a bestseller in the UK, Australia and the USA. Simon has also won literary prizes for his fiction work. He has written the first two instalments of a trilogy of thriller-love-stories set in Russia. The second in the series, 'One Night in Winter', won the Best Political Novel of the Year Prize and was longlisted for the Orwell Prize. 

10.30am
Music in Time: Baroque
Rob places Music in Time. He heads back to the Baroque period to explore the unique instrumental colour that Bach brought to his sacred works, focusing on his early funeral cantata Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV106, 'God's time is the very best time', also known as Actus Tragicus.

10.45am
Rob's Proms artist of the day is the pianist Martha Argerich, who will be performing Liszt's Piano Concerto No.1, with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim at tonight's BBC Prom. This morning Rob features her in Ravel's Jeux d'eau, a euphoric depiction of water fountains, inspired by a piece by Franz Liszt.

Ravel
Jeux d'eau
Martha Argerich (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.

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Wednesday - Rob Cowan with Simon Sebag Montefiore

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