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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 Al Murray

Wednesday - Rob Cowan with Al Murray

26/10/2016

BBC Radio 3 - Essential Classics, Wednesday - Rob Cowan with Al Murray

Artists of the Week: Academy of St Martin in the Fields, featured in music by Mendelssohn.

With Rob Cowan. My Favourite Piano Duos; Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte; Artists of the Week: Academy of St Martin in the Fields, featured in Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No 2.

9am
My favourite... piano duos. If three's a crowd, two's definitely company, and when it comes to piano duos - whether for two pianos or for four hands at a single instrument - that company can be richly rewarding. Rob's favourite piano duos include works by Mozart, Schubert, Bartók and Lutoslawski, as well as a magical vintage recording of a waltz by Arensky - definitely not to be missed!

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

10am 
Rob's guest this week is the stand-up comedian Al Murray. Best known for his alter-ego 'The Pub Landlord', Al has performed sell-out shows around the world, as well as making television appearances at The Royal Variety Performance and Live at the Apollo. Al has written books in his pub landlord persona, including The Pub Landlord's Book of British Common Sense and Let's Re-Great Britain. Outside of his pub landlord character, Al has presented Al Murray's Road to Berlin, about the last phase of the Second World War, for the Discovery Channel and Al Murray's German Adventure for BBC Four. He is currently touring his new show 'Let's Go Backwards Together'. Al shares a selection of his favourite classical music, including works by Bach, Handel and Orff, and talks about playing percussion, and reminisces about his performance on the triangle in Dvorák's New World Symphony, every day at 10am. 

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.

Music in Time: Classical 
Rob places Music in Time. Today the spotlight is on the Classical era and Beethoven's pioneering 'An die ferne Geliebte', a series of interlinking love-songs which paved the way for song-cycles by Schubert and Schumann. 

11am
Rob's artists of the week are the late Sir Neville Marriner's orchestra, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, a superb gathering of players who can turn their hands to virtually any repertoire and make a handsome job of it. We'll hear them in masterpieces from Bach to Bartók, dropping in on Mozart, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky along the way.

Mendelssohn 
Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 40 
Murray Perahia, piano 
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Neville Marriner, conductor.

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Wednesday - Rob Cowan with Al Murray

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