Radio 3 kick-starts 2016 with New Music

• New Year New Music: a week-long celebration of new music and composers to kick-start 2016, including Gerald Barry, Tansy Davies, Jonathan Dove, Roxanna Panufnik, Max Richter, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Errolyn Wallen
• World premiere broadcast of Stockhausen’s pioneering electronic utopian masterpiece Hymnen in 4.0 Surround Sound
• First ever live broadcast of In Tune from the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern
• Live broadcasts of performances from London Contemporary Orchestra and Leafcutter John live from St John at Hackney
• La Monte Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano to be broadcast overnight, intended by the composer to be heard while immersed in the colour magenta

Radio 3 offers an alternative New Year’s resolution for Radio listeners to discover new things with New Year New Music, a week exploring the power of new music, from iconic masterpieces to avant-garde experiments, looking to the next generation of talent and exploring the best in contemporary music.

Avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s 1961 masterpiece Hymnen will kick-start 2016 with a world premiere broadcast in surround sound on New Year’s Day, using the original four-channel tapes from The Stockhausen Foundation for Music. Combined with the recording from a recent performance by the London Sinfonietta, this will be the very first time this work is broadcast as it was meant to be heard, allowing listeners to experience one of the pioneering pieces of the 20th century in 4.0 surround sound. The work has a utopian theme, blending and transforming recordings of national anthems from around the world with many other sounds and atmospheres to create a powerfully immersive experience.

Composer Of The Week will also for the first time explore Stockhausen’s mind and music throughout the week, finding out what makes him one of the most original and innovative composers of the 20th century.

Stockhausen Foundation for Music commented: “If Stockhausen had only known that there would someday be the possibility of 4-track radio listening as is now the case. So together with Stockhausen, the Stockhausen Foundation for Music is delighted that the BBC is pioneering this world premiere 4-channel broadcast.”

Looking at innovative composers, Radio 3 will welcome in the New Year with a series of live broadcasts celebrating and exploring contemporary music, with Friday 8 January’s edition of In Tune live for the very first time from the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern, exploring the current Alexander Calder exhibition.

BBC Radio 6 Music presenter Stuart Maconie presents a concert from St Michael’s Church, Manchester, exploring three American masterworks looking at the influence American composers have had on contemporary music, and the week will culminate with a live broadcast from St John at Hackney in East London, with live performances from Leafcutter John, new art songs performed by soprano Juliet Fraser, and the London Contemporary Orchestra presented by Sara Mohr-Pietsch.

Radio 3 will broadcast a special overnight edition of pioneering composer La Monte Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano, a five-hour piano work exploring overtone harmonies designed to be heard while the listener is immersed in the colour magenta.

Special editions of Essential Classics with an in-depth focus on some of today’s prominent composers will also broadcast during the week, focusing on Jonathan Dove, Errolyn Wallen, Max Richter, Roxanna Panufnik and Mark-Anthony Turnage. Irish composer Gerald Barry will reveal his Private Passions to Michael Berkeley for the first time, and the composer Tansy Davies will introduce her favourite new music in Saturday Classics.

Looking to the next generation of future talent, Radio 3’s drive time programme In Tune will feature interviews and music from BBC Proms Inspire, as well as exciting new announcements about the 2016 scheme.

KD

New Year New Music - Highlights

Saturday 2 January

Saturday Classics
13:00-15:00
As part of the New Year New Music season, composer Tansy Davies, whose opera Between Worlds recently premiered at the Barbican, presents a personal choice of music.

Presenter/Tansy Davies for the BBC

Hear And Now
22:00-00:00
Robert Worby and Sara Mohr-Pietsch introduce a concert by the Arditti Quartet. The concert was recorded at November’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and features the new string quartet by Harrison Birtwistle, as well as UK premieres of works by John Zorn, Iris ter Schiphorst and Klaus Lang.

Presenters/Robert Worby and Sara Mohr-Pietsch, Producer/Chris Wines for the BBC

Sunday 3 January

The Well-Tuned Piano
01:00 – 07:00
The Well-Tuned Piano by La Monte Young is an epic piano solo lasting for five hours. It's a classic of American Minimalism, composed in 1964 (though Young considers it to be still a work in progress). Max Reinhardt introduces this recording, in which the composer performs on a specially tuned piano.

La Monte Young is one of the first minimalist composers, along with Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich. He is especially known for his development of drone music. He started out as a jazz musician, but then studied composition with Stockhausen in Germany, and also electronic and classical Indian music in the USA. He considers The Well-Tuned Piano to be his masterpiece.

Presenter/Max Reinhardt

The Early Music Show
14:00-15:00
Stevie Wishart presents a special New Year New Music programme. She takes a look at how early music still resonates through the contemporary music of our time.

She will feature her own compositions as well as recordings of music performed by young performers such as Voice Trio. Voice perform secular and non-secular music from the medieval music of Hildegard of Bingen to 21st-century commissions.

Presenter/Stevie Wishart, Producer/Marie-Claire Doris for the BBC

Essential Classics

4-8 January
09:00-12:00
Throughout the week of New Year New Music, five leading composers of the current generation tell Rob about a piece of music that has influenced them and share one of their own works.

Monday: Rob talks live to Jonathan Dove, one of the UK’s most successful opera composers. Jonathan’s early career at Glyndebourne propelled him onto the world stage of operatic writing.

Tuesday: Today Rob talks to Errollyn Wallen. Errollyn is committed to proving that there are no barriers in music. Her works range from opera and television scores to music for the opening of the 2012 Paralympic Games.

Wednesday: The composer and producer Max Richter joins Rob in the studio. Max has written for film, theatre and ballet, and is well known for his record-breaking work Sleep, and for his remix of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Thursday: Rob talks live to Roxanna Panufnik, a composer whose commissions include works for Westminster Cathedral Choir, the BBC, Polish National Opera and English National Ballet. She enjoys tailoring her compositions to the skills of particular artists, for instance in her pieces for the violinist Tasmin Little and the oboist Douglas Boyd.

Friday: Rob talks live to internationally renowned composer Mark-Anthony Turnage, whose works express a wide range of emotions ranging from tenderness and loss to aggression. His third opera, Anna Nicole, made headlines when it premiered at the Royal Opera House in 2011.

Presenter/Rob Cowan, Producer/Richard Denison for Somethin’ Else

Composer Of The Week: Stockhausen

4-8 January
12:00 – 13:00

There aren't many composers with a place on the cover of a Beatles LP – Karlheinz Stockhausen's face is top row, fifth from the left on Sergeant Pepper. Stockhausen's name is better known than almost any other composer of our age. Yet even though much of his music isn't well known, by reputation he excites extremes of opinion. An open mind is all you need, when, for the first time on Composer Of The Week, as part of Radio 3's New Year New Music season, Donald Macleod and his guest, composer writer and broadcaster Robert Worby, introduce you to the mind and music of one of the most original and innovative composers who's ever lived.

Presenter/Donald Macleod, Robert Worby for the BBC

4-8 January
22:45-23:00

The story of new music is peppered with events that have altered the course of musical history. For the New Year New Music season, the programme asked five Radio 3 presenters to each tell the story of one of these 'seismic moments'. From silence and ambient sounds to riot and revolution, these intriguing events have, in different ways, changed the progress of sound and culture – or, as one of our five suggests, have they?

Monday: Robert Worby's selected seismic moment in new music is the first performance of John Cage's controversial 4'33 and its impact on performers and audiences ever since.

Tuesday: Sara Mohr-Pietsch's chosen seismic moment in new music looks to the fall of the Berlin Wall and a new appetite for Eastern European composers in the West.

Wednesday: Ivan Hewett's selected seismic moment in new music looks to Brian Eno's 1978 album, Ambient 1: Music For Airports, where he created a new genre which he named ambient music.

Thursday: Sarah Walker's chosen seismic moment in new music describes the notorious 1973 concert when Carnegie Hall played host to the radically minimalist Four Organs by Steve Reich.

Friday: Tom Service on musical creativity and the lack of seismic shock in the 21st century.

Presenters/various, Producer/Elizabeth Allard for the BBC

Tuesday 5 January

Late Junction
23:00-00:30
As part of Radio 3’s New Year New Music, Max Reinhardt is joined by the experimental musician and multimedia artist Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us, whose audio collage work involves the manipulation and reworking of sampled material. Plus, music from Dominic Murcott with harpist Sioned Williams, percussionist Corrie Dick, contemporary Finnish folk from the Vilma Timonen Quartet and a remix of Laura Cannell's Cathedral of the Marshes.

Presenter/Max Reinhardt for the BBC

Thursday 7 January

Late Junction
23:00-00:30
As part of Radio 3’s New Year New Music, Max Reinhardt is joined by the songwriter, producer and instrument builder Leafcutter John, whose recent work has included collaborations with Polar Bear and Melt Yourself Down.

Plus, new music from sound artists Mariele Neudecker, Sofie Alsbo and Camille Norment, and a bluegrass re-working of The Cure courtesy of Texan band Whiskey Shivers.

Presenter/Max Reinhardt for the BBC

Radio 3 In Concert
19:30-22:00
Stuart Maconie introduces a concert by the Manchester-based contemporary music ensemble, Psappha, of characteristically inventive music from America by Steve Reich, Elliot Carter and George Crumb. Live from St Michael's in Ancoats, Manchester.

In a programme of conflicts and reconciliations, Reich's Double Sextet fuses a live performance with a recorded double of itself, Elliott Carter's Triple Duo explores the potential for small ensembles within an ensemble, and George Crumb's Quest, an atmospheric journey for solo guitar and a diverse group of instruments, juxtaposes the colourful and varied with the familiar.

Presenter/Stuart Maconie for the BBC

Friday 8 January

In Tune
16:30-18:30 BBC Radio 3
Suzy Klein presents a special edition live from London’s Tate Modern, as part of Radio 3's New Year New Music week.

Suzy talks to Director of Exhibitions at Tate Modern, Achim Borchardt-Hume, about the gallery’s Alexander Calder exhibition of colourful mobiles. There is also live music from Guildhall School percussionists playing New York School composers who were friends of Calder.

Presenter/Suzy Klein, Producer/David Gallagher for the BBC

Radio 3 In Concert
19:30-22:00 BBC Radio 3
A New Year New Music concert featuring some of the most interesting developments in contemporary music.

London Contemporary Orchestra presents a snapshot of where new music is at in 2016, with music by Jonny Greenwood, Caroline Haines, Laurence Crane and Catherine Lamb, and a new work for solo violin and orchestra by Edmund Finnis. Plus solo sets by electronica wizard Leafcutter John, maverick Irish composer/performer Jennifer Walshe, and soprano Juliet Fraser. Live from St John at Hackney in East London.

Presenter/Sara Mohr-Pietsch, Producer/Philip Tagney for the BBC

KD 

Related BBC Links

• BBC Proms Inspire