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 (4/5)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

BBC Symphony Orchestra (4/5)

BBC Radio 3 - Afternoon Concert, BBC Symphony Orchestra (4/5)

Kurt Weill's The Firebrand of Florence – an 'opera for Broadway' recreated.

The Firebrand of Florence, Kurt Weill's 1945 'opera for Broadway', recreated at London's Barbican Centre.

Kurt Weill: The Firebrand of Florence 
Broadway operetta in two acts.
Music and lyrics by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin.
Book by Edwin Justus Mayer, based on his play The Firebrand.
Script adaptation and narration by Sam Kenyon.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra assembled an all-star cast for this landmark recreation at London's Barbican Centre in 2000 of the work with which Kurt Weill hoped to lead American musical theatre in a new direction. Although The Firebrand was, in Weill's words,' killed by its production,' it contains sumptuous music on a scale not seen on Broadway before. It's based on scenes from the life of the Renaissance sculptor, Benvenuto Cellini who has been sentenced to hang for the attempted murder of Count Maffio. It opens with a memorable scene  in Florence's public square where Cellini awaits his fate and it ends with jugglers and dancers in faraway Fontainebleau. But, in between, there are twists and turns of love, betrayal and adventure with numbers like, 'You're Far Too Near Me,' 'When the Duchess is Away,' The Little Naked Boy,' 'Love is Enemy' and finally a reprise of 'Life, Love and Laughter.'
Presented by Penny Gore. 

Benvenuto Cellini..... Rodney Gilfry (baritone)
Angel, his model and paramour..... Lori Ann Fuller (soprano)
Alessandro de Medici..... George Dvorsky..... (bass)
The Duchess of Florence..... Felicity Palmer.... (mezzo)
Emilia, Cellini's servant..... Lucy Schauffer..... (mezzo)
Ascanio, Cellini's apprentice..... Stephen Charlesworth..... (baritone)
Ottaviano de Medici, the Duke's treacherous cousin..... Roger Heath..... (bass)
Marquis Pierre, the French Ambassador..... Robert Johnston.... (tenor)
A Hangman..... Henry Waddington..... (bass)
Maffio, a villainous Florentine count..... Stuart MacIntyre ..... (baritone)
Simon Russell Beale..... (narrator)

BBC Singers [Chorus Master: Stephen Betteridge]
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Andrew Davis  (conductor)

Followed at c. 4pm by another work in this week's series exploring Music from the Frozen North. Today a short work which charts the no man's land between acoustic and electronic music from a composer who works regularly with artists such as his fellow Icelander, Bjork. 

Valgeir Sigurðsson: Eighteen hundred and seventy-five for orchestra and electronics 
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Rumon Gamba (conductor)
 
Anna Clyne: <<rewind<< 
BBC Symphony Orchestra, André de Ridder (conductor)

at c. 4.20pm
A triptych of choral works by David Hennessy which are the expression of a single consciousness in three states of being—anticipation, the absolute present, and finally, looking back. 

David Fennessy:  Letter to Michael
David Fennessy: Ne reminiscaris 
David Fennessy: Hashima 
BBC Singers, Nicholas Kok (conductor)

The set begins with words produced by a patient diagnosed with schizophrenia who produced pages and pages of text – thousands of lines in pencil which were addressed to her husband who had ceased to visit her. She simply wrote the words “Sweetheart Come” over and over again or sometimes just the word “come”. That's followed 'Remember not,' and the set ends with settings of a poem found graffitied on a wall of the abandoned Hashima Island in Japan, and the final entry of the 10th-century text Sarashina Nikki, a memoir of a lady in waiting during the Heian Period of Japanese history.

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