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

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The Listening Service: Impassioned argument: Elizabeth Maconchy's string quartets

Impassioned argument: Elizabeth Maconchy's string quartets

BBC Radio 3 - The Listening Service, Impassioned argument: Elizabeth Maconchy's string quartets

Tom Service surveys the 13 extraordinary string quartets of Elizabeth Maconchy.

Tom Service surveys the 13 extraordinary string quartets of Elizabeth Maconchy - the greatest 20th-century British composer you've probably never heard of.

"For me, the best music is an impassioned argument".  So said one of Britain's greatest 20th-century composers, Elizabeth Maconchy.  

Who??  Despite her many awards and medals - including a damehood in 1987 - and a lifetime spent promoting new music, Elizabeth's work slipped out of fashion and out of view in the latter part of her remarkable career.  With concertos and symphonies, vocal music, chamber works, five operas, an operetta and three ballets to her name, Elizabeth's voice is that of economy, elegance and rich expression.  And it is in her century-spanning 13 string quartets that her development - and musical outlook - as an artist are most closely expressed. 

With a cultural resurgence in all things mid-century, Tom Service chats to Janell Yeo of the Bloomsbury Quartet and considers whether the time is now ripe for a reclamation of Elizabeth's place at our musical top table.

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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Impassioned argument: Elizabeth Maconchy's string quartets

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