Afternoon Concert

Original version

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

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Music: Classical

Unique performances with BBC Orchestras, Choirs and other great orchestras

Unique performances with BBC Orchestras, Choirs and other great orchestras from around the world

Afternoon Concert: BBC Symphony Orchestra and Singers

BBC Symphony Orchestra and Singers

BBC Radio 3 - Afternoon Concert, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Singers

Ethereal Nordic choir, Rachmaninov and biblical Bliss with the BBC SO and Singers.

The BBC SO and Singers perform the UK Premiere of Anders Hillborg’s Breathing of the World, Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto, and Arthur Bliss's setting of the New Testament.

Some of Anders Hillborg’s earliest lessons in music were learnt singing in choirs. In a concert recorded at St Giles’ Cripplegate in February, the BBC Singers present the first performance of a new choral work by the Swedish composer alongside some of his established favourites, including the simple song lined with mourning O Dessa Ögon and the spine-tingling surround-sound of the 16-part Mouyayoum. Complementing Hillborg’s works, Ragnar Rasmussen and the Singers bring us the radiant and heartbreaking love songs by Hillborg’s compatriot Sven-David Sandström and Olivier Messiaen’s cut-glass miniature O Sacrum Convivium.
Followed by a performance recorded at the Barbican in January this year by legendary American pianist Garrick Ohlsson of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto with its towering technical demands for the soloist. The composer took the part for the 1909 world premiere in New York, preparing for it by practising on a dummy keyboard aboard ship on the Atlantic en route to the US. Early the following year he gave a performance with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Gustav Mahler.
The afternoon closes with a rare opportunity to hear Bliss' Mary of Magdala in a recent recording with Dame Sarah Connolly as Mary Magdala, James Platt as Jesus and the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC SO under Conductor Laureate Sir Andrew Davis. Bliss was drawn to the story describing it as ‘one of the loveliest stories in the New Testament' where at the sepulchre, Mary Magdala was the first to see the risen Christ supposing him to be the gardener. 
Presented by Georgia Mann.

2pm
Anders Hillborg: The Cradle Song, O Dessa ögon, The Breathing of the World (UK premiere) 
Sven-David Sandström: Four Songs of Love 
Anders Hillborg: Stella Maris, Lilla Sus Grav 
Esa-Pekka Salonen: Songs from Kalender Röd 
Olivier Messiaen: O sacrum convivium
Anders Hillborg: Mouyayoum
BBC Singers
Theo Hillborg, saxophone
Filip Graden, cello
Ragnar Rasmussen, conductor

c.3.20pm
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 3 
Garrick Ohlsson, piano
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Robert Spano, conductor

c.4.10pm
Arthur Bliss: Mary of Magdala
Dame Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano
James Platt, bass
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis, conductor

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