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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: Thursday - Rob Cowan with Noma Dumezweni

Thursday - Rob Cowan with Noma Dumezweni

20/10/2016

BBC Radio 3 - Essential Classics, Thursday - Rob Cowan with Noma Dumezweni

Including Artist of the Week: Emil Gilels, featured performing Chopin's Piano Sonata No 3.

With Rob Cowan. Including My Favourite Baroque Concertos. Music in Time: Fela Sowande's African Suite; Artist of the Week: Emil Gilels, featured in Chopin's Piano Sonata No 3.

9am
My favourite...Baroque concertos. Rob's selection includes a lively bassoon concerto by Vivaldi, a festive trumpet concerto by Torelli, and Bach's darkly intense Triple Concerto for flute, violin and harpsichord. He also chooses a pair of Concerti Grossi: the final (and Rob believes the loveliest) of Handel's Op. 6, and one of the Corelli set that was Handel's inspiration.

9.30am
Take part in today's musical challenge: trace the classical theme behind a track from the world of rock music.

10am 
Rob's guest this week is the actress Noma Dumezweni. Noma is currently starring as Hermione in the West End play Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, the much-anticipated stage sequel to J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. She has recently played the title role in Linda at the Royal Court Theatre, receiving outstanding reviews. Her other theatre credits include Feast and Belong also for the Royal Court, A Human Being Died That Night at the Hampstead Theatre, The Fugard and The Market theatres in South Africa and Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York and Macbeth, Breakfast With Mugabe, The Winter's Tale and Romeo and Juliet for the Royal Shakespeare Company. She won the Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role for A Raisin In The Sun for the Young Vic at the Lyric Hammersmith. Her film credits include The Incident, Dirty Pretty Things and Macbeth, and she has made appearances in television series including Casualty, Capital and Dr Who. Noma will be talking about her career and sharing a selection of her favourite classical music throughout the week. 

10.30am
Power of Three - the next episode in a 70-part daily series of pioneering sounds from the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3 archives presented by David Hendy.

Followed by 
This week, Rob places Music in Time, and explores the music of six pioneering African and African-American composers. Nigerian organist and composer Fela Sowande (1905-1987) is considered the "father of Nigerian Art Music". In 1934 he came to London, where he studied the organ and European classical music, and worked as a bandleader, BBC Theatre organist, and accompanist for Adelaide Hall. His African Suite for string orchestra includes traditional melodies and a popular highlife tune.

11am
Rob's artist of the week is the pianist Emil Gilels. Gilels was born in Odessa on 19th October 1916, and Rob celebrates the centenary of this great musician with dazzling recordings demonstrating the breadth of his repertoire. Gilels married power to finesse like no other pianist. His Mozart was elegant and incisive, his Beethoven rigorously argued, his Schubert graced by charm and clarity, and his Chopin, ever attentive to the music's emotional and intellectual aspects, making him in Rob's eyes the complete musician.

Chopin
Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor
Emil Gilels (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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Thursday - Rob Cowan with Noma Dumezweni

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