BBC Radio 3 Season Launch 2015/2016
BBC Radio 3 Controller Alan Davey today unveiled a raft of new commissions across the music and culture station, alongside new initiatives and a pledge to continue to work with the commercial radio sector to support the Classical Music industry.
Published: 1 October 2015
We are more than a radio station; we are a radio station, a digital service, a collection of some of the finest orchestras and choral groups in the world and we’re an internationally renowned classical music festival, The BBC Proms.
Some of the highlights include:
- The launch of BBC Introducing Classical for composers and performers
- A season of new music in the New Year featuring the world premiere of Stockhausen’s electroacoustic Hymnen in 4.0 surround sound
- Radio 3 to work with BASCA on a diversity in composition seminar day
- An Arthur Miller Season featuring David Suchet and Zoë Wanamaker (pictured above with Howard Davies) reunited in Death of Salesman, Alfred Molina in A View From A Bridge, essays on Miller from Richard Eyre, Margot Leicester, Ron Hutchinson, David Thacker and Tony Kushner
- A Northern Lights Season featuring new commission for Emily Hall inspired by one of the most northerly parts of the UK, Unst; a new drama about Sibelius starring Tim Pigott-Smith, and playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz to adapt newly commissioned plays from Denmark, Iceland and Sweden
- Harriet Walter to curate a season of Drama On 3 for first time
- 10th anniversary year of Free Thinking Festival line-up includes Juliet Stevenson, Forward Poetry Prize winner Claudia Rankine, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Peggy Seeger, Joanne Harris and Sheila Hancock
- Alan Bennett to appear on Private Passions
- First new production on radio of Tom Stoppard’s Artist Descending A Staircase since its premiere 43 years ago on Radio 3
- BBC Concert Orchestra to celebrate 40 years of the Oliviers conducted by Principal Conductor Keith Lockhart, featuring Maria Friedman performing and directing alongside Daniel Evans, Adrian Lester and David Thaxton
- Ilan Volkov to extend contract as Principal Guest Conductor of the Scottish Symphony Orchestra
- New Generation Artists 2015 line-up announced
A full list of announcements is available in the Media Pack, which can be downloaded here.
In a speech he gave at a press conference this morning, Alan Davey, Controller of Radio 3, said: “We are more than a radio station; we are a radio station, a digital service, a collection of some of the finest orchestras and choral groups in the world and we’re an internationally renowned classical music festival, The BBC Proms.
"It’s part of what makes us so distinctive and which wouldn’t be possible without the licence fee. We are a whole universe of high quality culture. We operate in classical music, culture, jazz and world/roots music. We are utterly unique, a cultural institution and part of the cultural ecology of the UK.”
AH/VT2/KD
