Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert

Original version

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

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

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Music: Classical: Chamber & Recital

Live and recorded concerts from all over the UK. Includes the Wigmore chamber music series

Live and recorded concerts from all over the United Kingdom. Also includes the flagship Wigmore chamber music series.

Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert: 2023 Hay Festival – Schubert Plus with pianist Charles Owen

2023 Hay Festival – Schubert Plus with pianist Charles Owen

BBC Radio 3 - Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert, 2023 Hay Festival – Schubert Plus with pianist Charles Owen

Sarah Walker presents Schubert Plus, performed by Charles Owen at Hay Festival.

Sarah Walker presents Schubert Plus, performed by the pianist Charles Owen at Hay Festival, with works by Schubert, Liszt and Franck.

Sarah Walker presents Schubert Plus, with music performed by the pianist Charles Owen, recorded at St Mary's Church, Hay-on-Wye, during the 2023 Hay Festival. The concert begins with two popular Impromptus by Schubert, starting with the Impromptu in G flat, D899/3, worked on during the summer of 1827 and completed after his visit to the city of Graz. The long serene melody possibly depicts how much he’d enjoyed those summer months. The Impromptu D935/3 from December that same year Schubert originally numbered as part of a continuation of the group he’d written over the summer, and not a second distinctive set. This work is similar to the slow movement of his String Quartet in A minor, with a beautiful flowing theme, but one which the composer Schumann criticised.

The concert continues with works by two other composers. Franz Liszt composed his Années de pèlerinage, troisième année, whilst he was staying in a suite of rooms at the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, a 16th-century mansion, not far from Rome. It’s a set of seven works, and in the fourth tone poem Liszt depicts the fountains of the villa. It’s one of the composer's most popular evocations of water and includes within the score a quote from the Gospel of St John. Charles Owen ends with music by César Franck from 1884, his Prélude, Choral et Fugue, which may have been inspired by the music of Bach. Franck composed this work after a period of writing works for the organ, and although it’s a popular work with pianists today and recorded many times, the composer Saint-Saëns questioned whether it was really a chorale, or a fugue.

Charles Owen, piano

Schubert: Impromptu in G flat, D899/3
Schubert: Impromptu in B flat, D935/3
Liszt: Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este, S153/4
Franck: Prelude, Choral et Fugue

Produced by Luke Whitlock

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2023 Hay Festival – Schubert Plus with pianist Charles Owen

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