BBC Radio Christmas Launch 2015 - Radio 3

Rob Cowan’s guest in early December is Eddie Izzard. Comedian, actor and multiple marathon runner, Eddie is one of the foremost stand-ups of his generation and has entertained audiences the world over. Eddie spills the secrets of his unique brand of humour, and shares a selection of his favourite classical music.

Monday 7th-Friday 11th December, 9am–12pm
Producer: Sarah Devonald for Somethin’ Else

For Christmas Week, Rob Cowan’s guest is the festive jumper-wearer, Christmas tree industry investigator and enthusiastic carol singer, John Craven, who will be sharing some of his favourite classical music, including Sibelius and Vivaldi, a rendition of O Come All Ye Faithful courtesy of American tenor and Hollywood star Mario Lanza, and music from Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto played by Vladimir Ashkenazy.

Monday 21st-Friday 25th December, 9am–12pm
Producer: Sarah Devonald for Somethin’ Else

For New Year's week, Sarah Walker’s guest is star of the small screen as well as the silver screen, Alec Baldwin. Away from acting, Alec is a passionate classical music fan, whose Damascene moment was hearing Mahler's 9th Symphony conducted by Sir George Solti whilst driving his car in Los Angeles. From that point on Alec has listened to little other than classical music, with Mahler still a great love. Alec is also the announcer for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra: "It’s my favorite job that I’ve ever had.” As well as music by Mahler, Alec has chosen music including pieces by Sibelius, Rodrigo, Ravel and British composers including Vaughan Williams and Frank Bridge.

Sarah also presents 5 Reasons To Love… the Waltz, exploring its elegance and expressivity; its high-spirited flirtatiousness; its capacity to conjure up fairytale romance; the Viennese pride expressed in the waltzes of the Strauss family; and the way it can seem to spin out of control, revealing its darker side. With waltzes by composers including Weber, Liszt, Johann Strauss II (arr. Webern), Chopin and Prokofiev.

Monday 28th December–Friday 1st January 2016, 9am–12pm
Producer: Sarah Devonald for Somethin’ Else

In Tune Christmas Special

Sean Rafferty and Suzy Klein (pictured) host an afternoon of music making and Christmas cheer live from Broadcasting House’s historic Radio Theatre. Celebrating young talent with live music from singer Nicole Car and classical accordionist, Iosif Purits, discovered through BBC Music Introducing. Plus members of the Chineke! Orchestra with their founder, double bass player Chi-chi Nwanoku. Festive seasonal readings by guest star readers, including Joanna Lumley.

Friday 18th December, 4.30pm–6.30pm
Producer: Roger Short for the BBC

Sean Rafferty At Home

In two Christmas Day and New Year’s Day specials, Sean Rafferty visits soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa at home in the Sussex countryside to find out about her interests and musical passions, and talks with conductor Sir Roger Norrington at his home in Devon to find out more about the passions that have driven him in over 50 years as a performing musician.

Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, 3.45pm–5pm
Producer: Brian Jackson for the BBC

Private Passions With Alan Bennett And Chilly Gonzales

Alan Bennett remembers the music that filled his childhood: his father was a gifted violinist, and his aunts played the piano for silent movies. As a teenager, new worlds were opened up by concerts in Leeds Town Hall, where Bennett sat in the cheapest seats behind the musicians, "like sitting behind the elephants at the circus". And then came fame, and Hollywood: "Elizabeth Taylor actually sat on my knee at one point. It was not a pleasant experience." In a touching conclusion to the programme, Alan Bennett listens to Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius and is stirred to think about the boy he used to be, and what that boy might say to him now.

Music choices include a 1939 recording of I Can Give You The Starlight by Ivor Novello; a waltz by Franz Lehar; Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto; Bach’s St Matthew Passion; Walton’s 1st Symphony; Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius; and Ella Fitzgerald singing Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered. This last song inspired The History Boys when Alan Bennett heard it on Private Passions in 2010.

Sunday 20th December, 12pm– 1pm
Producer: Elizabeth Burke for Loftus Media

Canadian pianist Chilly Gonzales talks to Michael Berkeley about musical genius, the art of rapping, and above all the endless possibilities and joy he finds in the piano. Chilly chooses music by Mahler, Michael Nyman and Scarlatti, and songs from Faure, Dionne Warwick and Drake.

Sunday 27th December, 12pm– 1pm
Producer: Jane Greenwood for Loftus Media

Afternoon On 3: Bach’s Christmas Oratorio

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra are joined by the BBC Singers and a line-up of outstanding soloists for an afternoon performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, at Glasgow City Hall.

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
BBC Singers
David Hill conductor
Jennifer Johnston mezzo-soprano
James Gilchrist tenor (Evangelist)
Ben Johnson tenor
Benjamin Appl bass

Thursday 10th December, 2pm-4.30pm
Producer: Ellie Mant for the BBC

Afternoon On 3: Christmas With Gershwin and Ellington

BBC National Orchestra of Wales, led by their Principal Conductor Thomas Søndergård, swing into Christmas with an afternoon of classics by Gershwin and Ellington, live on BBC Radio 3. Acclaimed young pianist Joseph Moog joins the Orchestra for the first time to play Gershwin’s Piano Concerto, which fuses traditional form with Gershwin’s energetic rhythms; whilst Ellington’s reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s well-loved ballet themes transports us to a new jazz infused winter wonderland.

Friday 11th December, 2pm-4.30pm
Producer: Tim Thorne for the BBC

Afternoon On 3: Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas In Wales

The BBC Singers led by Chief Conductor David Hill, alongside brass quintet Onyx Brass, present a festive afternoon of Christmas choral music and story-telling including Welsh actor Richard Harrington (Poldark, Lark Rise To Candleford) reading Dylan Thomas’ enduringly popular prose poem, A Child’s Christmas In Wales.

BBC Singers
Onyx Ensemble
David Hill conductor
Richard Harrington narrator

Tuesday 29th December, 2pm-4.30pm
Producer: Ellie Mant for the BBC

Breakfast: Christmas Carol Competition 2015

In August, Radio 3 listeners and budding composers nationwide were invited to submit their entries for BBC Radio 3’s Breakfast Carol Competition 2015. The competition challenges amateur composers to write a choral setting for new poem “Comes the Light” commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and written by leading poet, broadcaster and author Roger McGough. The six shortlisted carols will be performed live on Radio 3’s Breakfast in the lead up to Christmas by the BBC Singers, directed by Chief Conductor David Hill. The winner will be decided by public vote, as listeners will be able to listen and download each of the shortlisted carols and to vote for their favourite via the Radio 3 website. The winning carol will be performed live on Radio 3’s Breakfast on Tuesday 23 December, and played throughout Christmas Day on Radio 3.

All entries are judged by an expert panel chaired by David Hill, Chief Conductor, BBC Singers, including Jamie W Hall, (bass with the BBC Singers), Griselda Sherlaw-Johnson of Oxford University Press, and Michael Emery (Lead Producer, BBC Singers). Master of the Queen’s Music and Associate Composer of the BBC Singers Judith Weir also joins the panel for the second year running.

Monday 21st-Friday 25th December, 6.30am– 9am
Producer: Elizabeth Funning for the BBC

Opera On 3: The Force Of Destiny

Verdi's The Force of Destiny, recorded last month at the London Coliseum.

Mark Wigglesworth conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the English National Opera, as well as a cast led by the soprano Tamara Wilson in a critically acclaimed performance as Donna Leonora, and the tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones as her lover Don Alvaro. Don Carlo di Vargas is sung by the baritone Anthony Michaels-Moore. Drawing from deep personal references, Calixto Bieito directs this new production at the English National Opera staging the tale of love and revenge - with the main characters incapable of escaping their doomed fate - in the middle of the Spanish Civil War. Presented by Donald Macleod.

Boxing Day, 6.30pm-10pm
Producer: Juan Carlos Jaramillo for the BBC

Northern Lights

BBC Radio 3’s Northern Lights season throughout December explores and celebrates the world’s most northerly music and culture, and the landscapes and environments that have shaped and inspired it.

Highlights include polar explorer Sara Wheeler revealing her Private Passions for the first time, and award-winning writer Stephen Wyatt weaving the psyche of Jean Sibelius, his music and a Finnish epic into a compelling drama, Finlandia, marking the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

Listeners will have the chance to hear Glenn Gould’s "contrapuntal radio documentary" The Idea of North made for CBC in 1967; the Helsinki Philharmonic and John Storgards play Sibelius live from Birmingham Helsinki Philharmonic; and John Storgards play Sibelius live from Birmingham with the 2015 International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition winner; in addition, World on 3 gives the first broadcast performance of Canadian inuit singer Tanya Tagaq’s soundtrack to the classic 1922 silent movie Nanook of the North by American filmmaker, Robert J. Flaherty.

Northern Lights - Saturday Classics: Krister Henriksson

Actor Krister Henriksson, known to many as rumpled Swedish detective Kurt Wallander, presents a personal selection of Nordic music. In Henning Mankell's novels and subsequent television films Wallander's musical tastes are very much operatic: his dog is even named after the legendary tenor Jussi Bjorling. Krister, who played the role for over a decade after a long and acclaimed stage career, presents a more varied selection today including orchestral works by Sibelius, Nielsen and Anders Hillborg, and performances by Swedish jazz artists Jan Johansson and Monica Zetterlund.

Saturday 5th December, 1pm-3pm
Producer: Ruth Thomson for the BBC

Northern Lights - Music Matters

Petroc Trelawny travels to Tromso, the 'capital of the Arctic' in the north of Norway. At 69° latitude, the region sees 24 hours sunlight in summer, but for two months in the winter, the sun disappears below the horizon and Tromso becomes one of the best places on earth to see the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). In this special edition of Music Matters, Petroc discovers a city's unique musical response to the Arctic's dark winter months.

As Petroc meets with joik singers, composers and performers, he explores their musical relationships with Norway's northern landscape and the spectacular Aurora Borealis, and finds music-making to be a therapy for people in the dark months of the year.

Saturday 19th December, 12.15pm-1pm
Producer: Andrew King for the BBC

Northern Lights - Yuletide In The Land Of Ice And Fire

Acclaimed Icelandic poet and author Gerður Kristný journeys into the curious world of Iceland’s Christmas myths.

With not one but 13 Santa Clauses, troll-like figures who sneak down from the mountains to make mischief at Christmas and a ‘Yule Cat’ who prowls through the snow looking for lazy people to eat, there are a myriad of fantastical – and sometimes sinister – festive tales indigenous to Iceland.

With music, sound, poetry and accounts from Icelanders bringing the tales to life, Gerður Kristný leads an atmospheric exploration of Iceland’s festive stories, providing insight into unique Icelandic cultural traditions and revealing larger, universal questions about the psychology of fear and why we tell children scary stories.

Saturday 19th December, 9.30pm-10pm
Producer: Lorna Skingley for the BBC

Other Highlights

Radio 3 links up with radio stations across Europe for The EBU Day Of Christmas Music (Sunday 20th December, across four programmes from 1pm-12.30am), Choral Evensong offers an archive broadcast from St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York City, first broadcast at Christmastide in 2007 (Wednesday 23rd December, 3.30pm-4.30pm), plus A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols recorded from the Chapel of King's College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve (Christmas Day, 2pm-3.45pm),the annual New Year's Day Concert from Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic live from the Musikverein with conductor Mariss Jansons (New Year’s Day, 10.15am-1pm) and New Year, New Music (New Year’s Day, 9pm-11pm) – a complete performance of one of the great set pieces of the late twentieth century avant garde: Karlheinz Stockhausen's iconic electroacoustic masterpiece Hymnen.

Related BBC links

• BBC Radio 3