Episode 1

In Afternoon on 3 this week you can hear the BBC Symphony Orchestra performing live and also in recordings from its recent tour to Japan and South Korea, featuring British music. Plus the BBC Singers live and in recent recordings with more music from these isles and also from France and Eastern Europe, featuring music appropriate for Remembrance Day. There's also a focus throughout the week on twentieth-century music inspired by earlier music.

We begin today with Sakari Oramo conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra live from their home in London, the Maida Vale studios, with Brahms's Variations on a theme by Haydn, Hindemith's viola concerto Der Schwanendreher. Then, this live transmission takes a break during which we hear a performance by the BBC Singers, recorded earlier this year, of Walter Vale'e Requiem for double choir under conductor Paul Brough, appropriate for remembering the victims of war. After that the concert continues live again from Maida Vale with the BBC SO and Britten's string orchestra masterpiece inspired by his teacher Frank Bridge.

That concert is followed by another recent recording by the BBC Singers as they perform Dvorak's Mass in D major Op.86, as well as Kodaly's motet Jesus and the Traders.

Penny Gore presents.

LIVE - from London's Maida Vale Studio 1

Brahms: Variations on a theme of Haydn
Hindemith: Der Schwanendreher - concerto for viola and small orchestra
Lise Berthaud (viola),
BBC Symphony Orchestra,
Sakari Oramo (conductor).

2.55pm - Interval
Walter Vale: Requiem - Introit and Kyrie; Sanctus and Benedictus; Agnus Dei and Communion
BBC Singers,
Paul Brough (conductor).

3.05pm - LIVE from London's Maida Vale Studio 1

Britten: Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge
BBC Symphony Orchestra,
Sakari Oramo (conductor).

3.30pm
Dvorak: Mass in D major, B.153
Kodaly: Jesus and the Traders
Stephen Disley (organ),
BBC Singers,
Justin Doyle (conductor).

Our Thursday Opera Matinee continues Radio 3's series of Verdi's complete operas, as part of the Verdi 200 celebrations: this week you can hear 'Attila', a not entirely historically accurate tale of love and war featuring the famous King of the Huns.