BBC Radio 3 wins special achievement award in 70th anniversary year
BBC Radio 3 has been honoured for its ‘extraordinary work’ at one of the most prestigious awards ceremonies of the classical music industry.
Published: 16 September 2016
We are hugely honoured and grateful to receive this prestigious award which recognises our strong spirit of adventure and ambition.
In a special honour, which is awarded every few years, the Gramophone Awards celebrated the extraordinary work of BBC Radio 3, as the 70th anniversary of the station and its predecessor, the Third Programme, approaches on 29 September.
Author and actor, and exceptional patron of the arts, Simon Callow, was there to present the award to Helen Boaden, Director BBC Radio.
BBC Radio 3 was recognised for being ‘pioneering and consistently successful’ as well as ‘helping to kick-start the careers of many artists’, including Igor Levit and Benjamin Appl, former BBC New Generation Artists who also won awards at the ceremony.
Helen Boaden, Director, BBC Radio, says: “We are hugely honoured and grateful to receive this prestigious award which recognises our strong spirit of adventure and ambition. From its earliest days, BBC Radio 3 has been devoted to offering audiences pleasure, challenge and exploration. It remains fearless in its commitment to musical quality, and creative invention.
"Radio 3 goes from strength to strength and continues to carry the torch of the Third Programme as a true pioneer, connecting audiences with remarkable music and culture and supporting new talent and the wider industry.”
James Jolly and Martin Cullingford from the Gramophone Awards, said: “No other organisation, anywhere in the world, has delivered so wholeheartedly the BBC’s first Director General Lord Reith’s three-word challenge; ‘to inform, educate and entertain’.
"But Radio 3 went a lot further: in its 70 years it has commissioned thousands of pieces of classical music and given them their first performances and broadcasts; it has supported many generations of young artists (notably in the past 17 years through its New Generation Artists scheme) and, through its performing groups (the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Chorus of Wales, the BBC Philharmonic and BBC Scottish SO, the BBC Singers and, partly funded by the BBC, the Ulster Orchestra), has been an integral part of the foundation of the whole nation’s musical life.”
In August, the station received the highest quarterly audience figures in five years with 2.2 million weekly reach according to RAJAR. This followed previous quarterly figures which were the highest in three years.
In September, to mark 70 years since the launch of the Third Programme which subsequently became BBC Radio 3, the station will broadcast from Southbank Centre 23 September - 7 October with special immersive events, new commissions and live music. It will also broadcast 70 days of new commissions across music and the arts and has an embedded composer who will create premieres for the station, week by week.
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