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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 Ray Mears

Monday - Rob Cowan with Ray Mears

21/12/2016

Wednesday - Rob Cowan with Ray Mears

BBC Radio 3 - Essential Classics, Wednesday - Rob Cowan with Ray Mears

Artist of the Week: pianist Claudio Arrau, featured performing Schumann's Humoreske Op 20.

With Rob Cowan. Including My Favourite Polkas; Music in Time: Bach: The Art of Fugue; Artist of the Week: pianist Claudio Arrau, featured performing Schumann's Humoreske Op 20.

9am
My favourite... polkas. Rob shares a selection of his favourite polkas, a dance form that originated in 19th-century Bohemia. He features polkas by Smetana, Shostakovich, Schubert and Rachmaninov, as well as Johann Strauss II's ever-popular Thunder and Lightning Polka.

9.30am
Take part in today's musical challenge: can you work out which two composers are associated with a particular piece?

10am 
Rob's guest is the television presenter and writer Ray Mears. A bushcraft, wildlife and survival expert, Ray has presented shows including Ray Mears' Bushcraft, World of Survival and Extreme Survival. He has broadcast from around the world and recently presented Wild Australia with Ray Mears, and Wild France with Ray Mears. Ray has written books including Vanishing World: A Life of Bushcraft and Northern Wilderness, as well as his autobiography My Outdoor Life. His most recent book, Out on the Land: Bushcraft Skills from the Northern Forest, was released earlier this year. Ray shares a selection of his favourite classical music throughout the week, with choices ranging from Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man to Vaughan Williams' The Wasps and Schubert's Symphony No. 5. 

10.30am
Music in Time: Baroque
Rob places Music in Time, delving into the Baroque period with a form that has become synonymous with J.S.Bach: the Fugue. Rob examines the final fugue from a collection that Bach composed in his last decade, and left unfinished: The Art of Fugue.

11am
Rob's artist of the week is the Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau. A child prodigy, Arrau learned to read music before reading words, and at the age of eleven he could play Liszt's Transcendental Etudes, one of the most difficult works in the piano repertoire. He is known especially for his interpretations of composers from the Classical and Romantic eras, though he was also a champion of Baroque music, and in 1935 he gave a rendition of the entire keyboard works of Bach over twelve recitals. Throughout the week, Rob celebrates the recording legacy of this remarkable pianist, featuring Liszt's Fantasy on Hungarian folk-melodies, Schumann's Humoreske, Schubert's Piano Sonata D.958, Brahms' epic Piano Concerto No. 2, and Debussy's Images (Book II).

Schumann 
Humoreske, Op 20
Claudio Arrau (piano).

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