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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 Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Wednesday - Rob Cowan with Jocelyn Bell Burnell

23/03/2017

Thursday - Rob Cowan with Jocelyn Bell Burnell

BBC Radio 3 - Essential Classics, Thursday - Rob Cowan with Jocelyn Bell Burnellsearch

With Artist of the Week: Arturo Toscanini, featured conducting Wagner's Gotterdammerung.

With Rob Cowan. Including Musical challenge; Music in Time: Schubert: Allegro in A minor, D947 'Lebenssturme'; Artist of the Week: Arturo Toscanini, in Wagner's Gotterdammerung.

9am 
Rob sets the tone and mood of the day's programme with a range of music to intrigue, surprise and entertain. 

9.30am 
Take part in our daily musical challenge: identify a piece of music played backwards. 

10am
Rob's guest this week is the astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Whilst still completing her PhD at Cambridge University Jocelyn made what is considered one of the greatest astronomical discoveries of the twentieth century. She discovered Pulsars, small stars near the end of their life-cycle which emit radio signals, pulses. Uncovering Pulsars has unlocked many doors in the field of astrophysics, validating and enabling many other notable scientists. Jocelyn has since become a role model for young students and female scientists throughout the world, and when she became professor she doubled the number of female Physics professors in the UK. As well as discussing her life and work, Jocelyn has chosen a selection of her favourite classical music.

10.30am 
Music in Time: Romantic 
Today Rob delves into the Romantic period with a late piano duet by Schubert: the wonderfully dramatic Lebensstürme, D.947. It's a work that demonstrates Schubert's development of the piano style, surpassing his early works with its abrupt gestures, symphonic drive and a new, more concentrated energy. 

Double Take 
Rob explores the nature of performance by highlighting the differences between two interpretations of Brahms' Scherzo in C minor from the 'F.A.E' Sonata, in highly contrasting accounts from violinists Isabelle Faust and Itzhak Perlman. 

11am 
Rob's Artist of the Week is the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. Considered one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, he was admired for his faithfulness to the score as well as for the incendiary thrust he brought to his interpretations. His career began sooner than perhaps he might have expected. Whilst on tour in South America as an Assistant Chorus Master he was called upon to conduct Verdi's Aida after three other conductors were either booed-off by the audience or rejected by the cast; Toscanini was only 19, but he conducted the whole opera from memory. He went on to be a leading opera conductor, entrusted with the world premieres of Puccini's La Bohème and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, and he was Principal Conductor at La Scala, Milan twice during his career. He spent much of his working life in America, leading the Metropolitan Opera, the NBC Symphony Orchestra - an orchestra created for him - and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He was also the first non-German conductor to appear at Bayreuth. This week Rob's chosen his interpretations of Elgar's Enigma Variations, Beethoven's 7th Symphony, Debussy's Iberia, part of Wagner's Götterdämmerung and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1 with Vladimir Horowitz.

Wagner 
Götterdämmerung (excerpt) 
Helen Traubel (soprano) 
Lauritz Melchior (tenor) 
NBC Symphony Orchestra 
Arturo Toscanini (conductor).

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 Jocelyn Bell Burnell

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