BBC Radio 3 and BBC orchestras and choirs

Live music, new commissions, and the celebration of contemporary composers – historical and living – are at the heart of BBC Radio 3’s upcoming programming. Radio 3 continues to be the only place to find live classical music every day, broadcasting from the finest UK festivals and concert halls, to international performances from the continent, thanks to its partnership with the European Broadcasting Union. Autumn also sees the BBC’s orchestras and choirs begin their new seasons across the country, having given over 300 performances in over 75 venues so far this year.

As we enter the second quarter of the 21st century, Radio 3 has commissioned 25 composers to write 25 pieces of music reflecting on one of the events happening in each year of the first quarter-century of the millennium, from 2000 to 2025. The 25 new commissions – recorded by BBC orchestras and choirs and New Generation Artists – will premiere on Tom Service’s Saturday Morning programme from 25/01/2025 and will be broadcast on the network throughout the week. Among the new works, Anna Clyne is inspired by the expectations for a new era in 2000, while Stephen Hough musically evokes the tragedy of 9/11, Errollyn Wallen remembers the London 2012 Olympics, and Thea Musgrave marks two years since the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Other composers include Karl Jenkins, Rakhi Singh, Gavin Higgins and Nkeiru Okoye.

Inspired by what would have been the 100th birthday of modernist musical giant Pierre Boulez, Radio 3 presents a landmark new 40-part series The Modernists, (W/T – from January 2025), each episode tracing back the life and work of some of the 20th century’s greatest composers – from Takemitsu to Berio, Ruth Crawford Seeger and Stockhausen.

On the day of Boulez’s centenary (30/03/2025) Radio 3 celebrates the legendary French composer with programming across the day, including live performances from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Kate Molleson discussing Boulez’s legacy in key locations in France.

Marking the beginning of the BBC Singers’ centenary celebrations Radio 3 in Concert presents the ensemble’s Centenary Concert live from the Barbican Hall in London (02/10/2024), presented by Georgia Mann and Clive Myrie. Featuring a host of star artists and special guests including Eric Whitacre, Anna Lapwood, and Abel Selaocoe, alongside the Singers’ Chief Conductor Sofi Jeannin, the concert is part of a week-long celebration of the ensemble’s 100th birthday on Radio 3, including specially-recorded works from the group every day on Classical Live (30/09 – 04/10).

In 2025 Radio 3 celebrates 25 years of New Generation Artists (NGAs) with a day of music performed by current and former young artists on the station’s flagship talent scheme. The NGAs scheme is designed to support young musicians on the threshold of an international career to reach the next stage of their development, through opportunities to perform around the UK, concerts and recordings with the BBC orchestras and choirs, and studio recordings for Radio 3.

Coinciding with BBC Arts’ film The Last Musician of Auschwitz, Radio 3 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with a day of reflection (27/01/2025). There is a special focus on the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s new recording of Jonathan Dove’s In Exile – which features a cello part created for soloist Raphael Wallfish, whose mother, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, is a concentration camp survivor. Throughout the day, listeners hear from artists and refugees whose classical compositions and performances are firmly part of the canon, lifting the human spirit through the decades.

Also coming up on Radio 3 is a Day of Dance (08/11/2024) dedicated to the history of dance music– from Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances to Piazzolla’s tangos, medieval estampie to 19th century waltzes, tarantellas to polkas, ballet to bhangra. With some special guests over the course of the day, there is live music from the New Generation Artists on Classical Live, and the day culminates in a dance-themed Friday Night is Music Night with the BBC Concert Orchestra from Alexandra Palace in London, hosted by former Strictly Come Dancing contestant Katie Derham and Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood.

Linked to the first ever edition of the London Soundtrack Festival, on 21/03/2025 Radio 3 broadcasts a concert live from London’s Wigmore Hall, with a programme of film and game music including a new commission by Hildur Guðnadóttir. Also on the day, a special edition of Friday Night Is Music Night live from London’s Alexandra Palace features the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Richard Balcombe presenting some of the best-known themes ever written for screens large and small, including James Bond, ET, Poirot, Out of Africa, Pride and Prejudice and a tribute to composers and lyricists who would have turned 100 in 2025 – Ron Goodwin (633 Squadron), Alan Bergman (Windmills of Your Mind) and Richard Sherman (Mary Poppins). Also on the programme, the world premiere of a special suite of the greatest TV Quiz Show themes, arranged by Iain Farrington.

Highlights from the speech offering on Radio 3 include two Sunday Features. In Cathedral Music in Crisis (17/11/2024), sports broadcaster and choral music enthusiast Eleanor Oldroyd investigates some major challenges facing British cathedral choirs today, as she travels across the UK to explore how institutions are responding to fast changes in our modern society, tackling inequalities of gender, socio-economic status and ethnicity within their choirs. In Wolf Hall (24/11/2024) listeners follow composer Debbie Wiseman as she creates the soundtrack for the second instalment of Wolf Hall – the TV adaptation of the last book of Hilary Mantel’s trilogy, which is airing on BBC TV ten years after the first series. There are also contributions from actor Damian Lewis and director Peter Kosminsky.

After a record-breaking year for the 2024 BBC Proms with 10.6 million views on TV, 4.6 million streams on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, and an average main evening attendance at the Hall of 96%, the BBC Scottish Symphony takes a mini series of BBC Proms to South Korea for four concerts: from a ‘First Night’ with the orchestra’s Chief Conductor Ryan Wigglesworth to a West End Musical Gala Concert and culminating in a suitably celebratory ‘Last Night’ with violinist Hilary Hahn, featuring some well-known favourites by Henry Wood and Edward Elgar.

The above extracted from…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2024/bbc-confirms-major-new-arts-and-culture-commissions