Record Review

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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

Magazines & Reviews

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 Kirsten Gibson and Anna Picard

Andrew McGregor with Kirsten Gibson and Anna Picard

BBC Radio 3 - Record Review, Andrew McGregor with Kirsten Gibson and Anna Picard

The best classical releases and Building a Library on Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas

The long-running showcase of the best classical releases. Plus, in Building a Library, Kirsten Gibson compares recordings of Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas and picks a favourite.

09.30 
Building a Library: Kirsten Gibson compares recordings of Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas and picks a favourite.

Uncertainty surrounds the origins Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. It's thought to be from the late 1680s, towards the end of Purcell's short life, and some evidence points to a Chelsea girls' school as the unlikely venue of its premiere. Unlikely because the exceptional quality of its music and drama make the English court a more probable location for one of the greatest of all English musical stage works. Based on part of Virgil's Aeneid, love, abandonment and despair are its eternal themes, all of which are devastatingly portrayed in its most famous number, Dido's lament 'When I am laid in earth', an aria which has always attracted some of the most starry singers. 

The current catalogue shows Dido is an internationally acknowledged masterpiece and the preserve of period performance specialists, but its recorded history began in the 1930s, long predating both of those aspects.


11.50
Anna Picard has been listening to recent recordings of Haydn, Beethoven and Schumann, including a complete set of the Beethoven Piano Concertos from Jan Lisiecki and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

11.25
Andrew chooses an outstanding new release as his Recording 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 Kirsten Gibson and Anna Picard

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