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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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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)

Composer of the Week: Gabriel Faure (1845-1924): Episode 3: Master of Charms

Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)

Episode 3

Episode 3: Master of Charms

Master of Charms

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Gabriel Faure (1845-1924), Master of Charms

With Faure's first stab at opera, his starting an affair and the rescoring of his Requiem.

Donald Macleod focuses on Faure's first stab at opera, his starting an affair and the rescoring of his Requiem.

Donald Macleod follows the dramatic thread running through Gabriel Fauré's musical output. Today, Fauré takes his first stab at opera; starts an affair; and pimps his Requiem.

When Fauré received his first commission for an opera, to be produced in the summer of 1900, it must have felt long overdue - he'd been on the lookout for a suitable libretto for the previous couple of decades. The invitation came not from a conventional opera house but from the town of Béziers, in the Languedoc, famous for bullfights and wine but with no reputation, thus far, for music-drama. A local bigwig had built an enormous Roman-style amphitheatre there, with the intention of staging open-air operas on themes of classical antiquity to audiences of 10,000. Fauré's lyric tragedy Prométhée, about the Titan who brought fire to mankind, was a huge success. Fire was kindled offstage too, when the 55-year-old Fauré met Marguerite Hasselmans, the 24-year-old daughter of one of his Paris Conservatoire colleagues. A relationship ignited which was to stay alight until Fauré's own flame was extinguished a quarter of a century later. While he was working on Prométhée, Fauré also oversaw the rescoring of his famous Requiem for full orchestra - the version in which it's usually heard today, and which, in time, provided the soundtrack to his own funeral.


Capriccio in E flat (8 pièces brèves, Op 84)
Jean-Philippe Collard, piano

Prométhée (Act 3, Prelude and Chorus of the Oceanides)
Choeur Maîtrise Gabriel Fauré
Orchestre National de l'Opéra de Monte-Carlo
Roger Norrington, conductor

Ballade, Op 19 (version for piano and orchestra) 
Valerie Tryon, piano
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Jac Van Steen, conductor

Requiem, Op 48 - version for full orch 
(Introit, Kyrie, Sanctus, Pie Jesu, Agnus Dei, In Paradisum)
Johannette Zomer, soprano
La Chapelle Royale
Collegium Vocale Gent
Orchestre des Champs-Élysées
Philippe Herreweghe, conductor


Producer: Chris Barstow.

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.

Donald Macleod follows the dramatic thread running through Gabriel Faure's musical output.

Donald Macleod follows the dramatic thread running through Gabriel Faure's musical output

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Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)

Episode 3: Master of Charms

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