The Listening Service

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

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Music: Classical

An odyssey through the musical universe, presented by Tom Service

Rethink music with The Listening Service. Tom Service presents a journey of imagination and insight, exploring how music works

The Listening Service: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

The Power of Love Songs

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

BBC Radio 3 - The Listening Service, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

Tom Service explores the finale from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Tom Service explores the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and asks whether this musical vision of utopia is more dangerous than the composer could ever have imagined.

In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Tom Service explores arguably the most famous piece of music in the world: the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. It's a piece which has been appropriated by everyone from the European Union, to the writer Anthony Burgess, who used it as an unsettling counterpoint to the murderous exploits of the characters in his novel A Clockwork Orange. Tom asks whether Beethoven's original vision of a musical utopia has actually turned out to be far more dangerous than the composer could ever have imagined.

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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Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

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