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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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Record Review

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Music: Classical

A thorough look at the week's classical music releases, plus news and recommendations.

A thorough look at the week's classical music releases, plus news and the Radio 3 Disc of the Week recommendation.

Record Review: Andrew McGregor with Jonathan Cross and Erica Jeal

Andrew McGregor with Jonathan Cross and Erica Jeal

BBC Radio 3 - Record Review, Andrew McGregor with Jonathan Cross and Erica Jeal

Building a Library on Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, plus the latest recording news.

Andrew McGregor rounds up the best new and recent releases, and in Building a Library Jonathan Cross compares recordings of Stravinsky's ballet music, The Rite of Spring.

with Andrew McGregor.

09.30
Building a Library: Jonathan Cross listens to and compares recordings of Stravinsky's ballet music, The Rite of Spring.

Stravinsky's music for The Rite of Spring is arguably his most iconoclastic work and one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century orchestral music. It had originally been written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company, for which he had composed both the Firebird and Petrushka as a young and unknown composer. The premiere at the Theatre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913 caused such a 'riot' that the Rite of Spring has gone down in the history books as much for its notoriety as its influence. The Rite of Spring is subtitled 'Pictures of Pagan Russian in Two Parts' and expresses primitive rituals to celebrate the advent of spring. Its most notorious scene is that in which a young girl is chosen as a sacrificial victim and dances herself to death. The music is raw with savage harmonies, otherworldly melodies, and driving primitive rhythms that pulsate through the orchestra. It is a work that is so influential that it is now more often heard as a concert piece than in its original ballet setting.

10.50
Andrew McGregor discusses new recordings of chamber music with Erica Jeal.

11.25
Andrew chooses an outstanding new release as his Disc of the Week.

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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Andrew McGregor with Jonathan Cross and Erica Jeal

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