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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: Friday - Sarah Walker with Wasfi Kani

Friday - Sarah Walker with Wasfi Kani

14/07/2017

BBC Radio 3 - Essential Classics, Friday - Sarah Walker with Wasfi Kanisearch

Artist of the Week: Edward Gardner, featured conducting Schoenberg's Gurrelieder (Part 3).

With Sarah Walker. Includes Musical challenge; Music on Location: Haydn's Symphony No 104; Artist of the Week: Edward Gardner, featured conducting Schoenberg's Gurrelieder (Part 3).

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

9.30 
Take part in today's musical challenge: two pieces of music are played together - can you identify them? 

10am 
Sarah's guest this week is the opera impresario Wasfi Kani. Wasfi is one of the UK's leading opera organisers and fundraisers, and the founder of Pimlico Opera and Grange Park Opera. After studying music at the University of Oxford she worked as a computer programmer in the City, before realising she wanted to return to music. She founded Pimlico Opera with the aim of using music and drama for the public good, and it was one of the first opera companies to specialise in performing in unusual places, such as hospitals, banks and prisons. Grange Park Opera has become one of the UK's most successful summer opera companies and is currently enjoying its first season at a brand-new theatre in Surrey. As a pianist, violinist and conductor, much of the music that Wasfi has chosen for the week is music that she's played herself, including music by Schubert, Richard Strauss and Mozart. 

10.30 
Music on Location: London 
Sarah explores the last of Haydn's 'London Symphonies', one of the twelve symphonies written for the composer's celebrated and lucrative visits to the city. 

11am 
Sarah's featured artist is one of Britain's most celebrated living conductors, Edward Gardner. Gardner is currently Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, but has spent much of his career in the opera house. From 2007-2015 he was Music Director at English National Opera and during this time he won the RPS Conductor of the Year Award and an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera. His big breakthrough came when he stood in at short notice for a répétiteur at the Salzburg Festival, and from there he went on to be Music Director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera. He regularly works with the National Youth Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBCSO) with whom he led the Last Night of the Proms in 2011. Sarah's chosen four of Gardner's recordings with the BBCSO: recordings of Walton's Symphony No.1, Szymanowski's Symphony No. 4 'Symphonie Concertante' (with pianist Louis Lortie), Britten's Violin Concerto with Tasmin Little, and Lutosławski's song cycle Chantefleurs et Chantefables with soprano Lucy Crowe. She's also chosen his recording of Schoenberg's Gurrelieder (Part III) with an array of musicians drawn from Norway, Sweden and the UK. 

Schoenberg 
Gurrelieder: Part III 
Stuart Skelton (tenor) 
Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (tenor) 
James Creswell (bass) 
Thomas Allen (speaker) 
Bergen Philharmonic Choir 
Choir of Collegiûm Mûsicûm 
Edvard Grieg Kor 
Orphei Drängar 
Students from the Royal Northern College of Music 
Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra 
Musicians from the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra 
Edward Gardner (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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