Category: Radio 3
Date: 28.02.2006
Printable version
Wagner's Ring cycle broadcast in one day
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Schedule cleared for entire day of English music on St George's Day
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Radio 3's 60th birthday year celebrates other anniversaries - Royal Court's 50th,
Miles Davis' 80th and Samuel Beckett's centenary among others
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Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio 3 celebrates spring 2006 with a series of firsts for the network.
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On Bank Holiday Monday (17 April), Richard Wagner's Ring cycle will be broadcast in its 15-hour entirety, from 8.00am to midnight, in a performance from Bayreuth conducted by Daniel Barenboim.
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And to celebrate St George's Day on Sunday 23 April, Radio 3 will devote the entire day to English music, including rarities from Bantock, Potter and Scott.
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Fiona Shaw presents Shakespeare and English Music and the day ends with a special two-hour programme of English folk music, presented by Verity Sharp.
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Drama on Radio 3 starts this spring with a star line-up - an adaptation of Alan Bennett's acclaimed play The History Boys starring Richard Griffiths in his Olivier Best Actor role, and a new production of Anton Chekhov's Swan Song starring Paul Scofield - both broadcast on 12 March.
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The Royal Court's 50th anniversary on 2 April is marked with an evening of live performances of new commissions from Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka, Arnold Wesker, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Joe Penhall and Laura Wade.
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The centenary of Samuel Beckett is also celebrated in April with new productions of Krapp's Last Tape, starring Corin Redgrave, and Embers, directed by Stephen Rea and featuring Michael Gambon, Sinead Cusack and Rupert Graves.
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In Radio 3's 60th birthday year - a year with particular emphasis on British music - other composer anniversaries to be marked by the network include Benjamin Britten, Malcolm Arnold, Gerald Finzi, Hubert Parry, Grace Williams and Richard Rodney Bennett.
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And the 80th anniversary of Miles Davis' birth will be celebrated with a weekend of special programmes (26 and 27 May).
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Davis will also be featured as a Composer of the Week later in the year.
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Speech programmes also introduce new initiatives this spring.
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The Verb begins a new series of commissions in which rock and pop musicians - including PJ Harvey, Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos and Belle & Sebastian - will write a short story or prose poetry inspired by a lyric of their choice.
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And Night Waves' special week-long series The Return of Faith (13-17 March) explores the resurgence of religion across the globe.
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Further Programme Information
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Wagner's Ring Cycle in a day (Monday 17 April)
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At the helm in this acclaimed Bayreuth recording is Daniel Barenboim, who this year delivers Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio 4's Reith Lectures.
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The operas feature Anne Evans as Brünnhilde, Siegfried Jerusalem as Siegfried and John Tomlinson as Wotan, with presenter Donald Macleod guiding listeners through the day.
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Interactive support is offered online at bbc.co.uk/radio3, including synopses and beginners' guides, and live on-air surtitles will be available via DAB digital radio and digital television.
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A time-delay service will be available on the live audio stream, enabling listeners to start the experience two and four hours later.
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Audiences will be able to Listen Again via bbc.co.uk/radio3 for a week after the broadcasts and excerpts from all four operas are free to download at the Warner Classics website.
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A film of the Bayreuth performance of Die Walküre will be screened at the Royal Opera House, concurrent with Radio 3's broadcast.
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Ö÷²¥´óÐã TWO and Ö÷²¥´óÐã FOUR will broadcast the Royal Opera House's performances of the full Ring cycle this spring.
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Ring excerpts downloadable via the Warner Classics website from the time of broadcast:
Das Rheingold: Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge
Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries
Siegfried: Heil dir, Sonne!
Götterdämmerung: Funeral March
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English Music Day (Sunday 23 April)
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From 9.00am to noon, Rob Cowan presents a selection of English rarities in The Cowan Collection after an English start to the day with Martin Handley on Morning on 3.
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A live edition of The Early Music Show featuring music by Purcell is followed at 2.00pm by a Sunday Gala recital by Thomas Allen of English song.
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At 3.30pm Brian Kay presents a special live edition of 3 For All with English music requests and an English-focused Music Matters precedes The Choir, in which Aled Jones explores the English Anthem and English music premiered at the Three Choirs Festival.
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In the evening Fiona Shaw presents Shakespeare and English Music and, ending the day, Verity Sharp presents a two-hour celebration of English traditional music, performed and recorded specially for the show by many of the leading names in the field.
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The programme looks at some of the surviving festivities linked to other feast days in England, such as the May Day 'Obby' Oss parade in Padstow and the Easter Monday coconut dancing in Bacup.
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The stories behind these traditions will be unfolded in a series of illustrated conversations with musicians and story tellers, such as Martin Carthy, Chris Wood and Hugh Lupton.
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Throughout the year Afternoon Performance will feature cycles of English symphonies by Edmund Rubbra, Humphrey Searle, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold and Arnold Bax and Composer of the Week will include Hubert Parry, Gustav Holst, Andrzej Panufnik and George Lloyd.
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In July Performance on 3 will feature Delius in Bradford, a week of orchestral concerts and recitals for the new festival directed by Tasmin Little.
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Anniversaries celebrated on Radio 3
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Composer of the Week will feature annivesary composers Elisabeth Lutyens (centenary of birth), Grace Williams (centenary of birth), Richard Rodney Bennett (b.1936), Malcolm Arnold (b.1921) and Gerald Finzi (d.1956).
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Benjamin Britten (d.1976) celebrations from the Wigmore Hall - featuring all the major Britten song cycles and quartets - will be broadcast in early December.
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Radio 3 will broadcast all the Malcolm Arnold symphonies in Afternoon Performance.
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The Janet Baker Week (24-28 April)
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In a week of Performance on 3, Radio 3 celebrates Janet Baker, with recordings including archive material, introduced by Iain Burnside with contributions from the artist herself.
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Speech and Drama on Radio 3
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Sunday Feature - Goodbye Confucius (Sunday 5 March, 9.30pm)
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Confucian values formed the basis of Chinese society for more than 2,000 years, but those values were brutally renounced in the last century as Maoist China jettisoned its ancient philosopher.
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China expert Rana Mitter explores how Confucius is being rehabilitated in today's China as ancient sage, contemporary business guru and tourist attraction. Confucianism is now being promoted as a possible solution to the country's 21st-century dilemmas.
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Drama On 3 - Swan Song by Anton Chekhov (Sunday 12 March, 6.30pm)
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Paul Scofield stars with Alec McCowen in a new production for Radio 3 of Chekhov's brilliant short play translated by Michael Frayn.
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Chekhov captures all the pain and self-delusion of an elderly Russian actor struggling to come to terms with his enforced retirement: he will never act again.
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Drama On 3 - The History Boys by Alan Bennett (Sunday 12 March, 7.00pm)
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The National Theatre's sell-out production of the 2005 Olivier Award-winning Best New Play comes to radio with Richard Griffiths in his Olivier Best Actor role.
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Griffiths plays Hector, a romantic motorbike-riding maverick English teacher with a habit of quoting poetry, who is devoted to the passing on of knowledge and a love of literature to his beloved unruly boys.
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Night Waves - The Return of Faith (13-17 March, 9.30pm)
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Isabel Hilton starts the week with a journey to Turkey to meet those in the vanguard of the entrepreneurial Islamic movement, a new middle class with a strong commitment to a capitalist working ethic.
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They have been called Islamic Calvinists and their new powerful beliefs are setting in motion religious reform, repositioning Islam as a cornerstone of the free market.
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Isabel traces the wider impact of this on Turkey's cultural and political landscape.
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The following evening, Paul Allen discusses how the Chinese authorities are turning back to religion in a bid to create a moral framework for their new breed of so-called 'Little Emperors' - the self-centred products of China's one-child policy who find all the tools and enticements of emergent capitalism at their disposal.
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Wednesday's programme focuses on Middle America, where Philip Dodd examines first-hand the battle for the heart of Evangelical Christianity.
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The week is rounded up with one of the foremost champions of Darwinism, philosopher Daniel Dennett, who is joined by writer Karen Armstrong to explore why religion has made such a comeback on the world stage.
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They ask if it is a part of our evolutionary make up that cannot be argued away, if religion fills a moral vacuum created by the consumer society, or if it is the only means left available for the oppressed to express their powerlessness.
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The Royal Court: 50 Years on (Sunday 2 April, 8.00pm)
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On 2 April 1956 the English Stage Company staged its inaugural production at the Royal Court.
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Exactly 50 years on, Radio 3 and the Royal Court are collaborating to celebrate what became the most important new writing theatre in Britain.
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We have commissioned five new plays from different generations of Royal Court writers - Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka, Arnold Wesker, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Joe Penhall and Laura Wade have all written new pieces which will be performed and broadcast live on Radio 3 from the stage of the Royal Court.
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Beckett Centenary on Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio 3 (Sunday 9 April)
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As part of the celebrations marking the centenary of the birth of Irish playwright Samuel Beckett (born 13 April 1896), Radio 3 broadcasts new productions of Krapp's Last Tape and Embers.
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As part of the evening Stephen Rea, who directs Embers, also presents a feature Beckett and his Actors.
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Night Waves will present a Landmark programme on Waiting for Godot (7 April) and The Verb examines the legacy of Beckett's writing with new commissions from Richard Bean and Kay Adshead.
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Wilfred Owen (12-18 November)
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The complete war poems will be broadcast over the week, launched by a Sunday Feature followed by features, letters and a special commission from Judith Bingham in Performance on 3.
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