Radio 3 in Concert

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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

Music: Classical

The best concerts from across the UK and Europe. Available to listen online for 30 days

Experience the best concerts from across the UK and Europe. Available to listen online for 30 days

Radio 3 in Concert: Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony

Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony

BBC Radio 3 - Radio 3 in Concert, Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony

Maxim Emelyanychev conducts Saint-Saëns with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Maxim Emelyanychev conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in an all-Saint-Saëns programme, including the 'Organ' Symphony and first Cello Concerto with Steven Isserlis.

Maxim Emelyanychev, one of the outstanding conductors of the younger generation, leads the period instrument Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in an all-Saint-Saëns programme.

Camille Saint-Saëns's long musical life began in the first half of the 19th century as extraordinary child-prodigy – he wrote his first composition aged three – and ended in 1921 as reactionary grand-old-man of French music. He had the distinction being mocked by Berlioz at one end of his career (as a composer who “knows everything, but lacks inexperience”) and dismissed by Debussy at the other (as “the musician of tradition”).

But the 'French Beethoven' (as Gounod described him) turned out to have staying power. This concert amply demonstrates  Saint-Saëns's gift for dazzling orchestral narrative and memorable tunes, opening with the symphonic poem Phaéton, with its vivid galloping horses and climactic lightning bolt, and closing with the visceral excitement and grandeur of the 'Organ' Symphony. In between, Steven Isserlis is the soloist in the first Cello Concerto, and  in the ever-popular Danse macabre OAE concertmaster Matthew Truscott plays devilish violin to the rattling skeleton bones of the xylophone. 

Recorded in January at the Royal Festival Hall, London, and introduced by Martin Handley.

Saint-Saëns: Phaéton, op. 39
Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, op. 33

8.20 pm
Interval music (from CD) 
Rameau: Les Paladins (Suite – selection)
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Gustav Leonhardt (conductor)

8.30 pm
Saint-Saëns: Danse macabre, op. 40*
Symphony No. 3 in C minor, op. 78 ('Organ Symphony')

Steven Isserlis (cello)
*Matthew Truscott (violin)
James McVinnie (organ)
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Maxim Emelyanychev (conductor)

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