Love, song and travel

Live from the BBC's Maida Vale Studios, Ben Gernon conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Tonight we hear two famous song cycles featuring British singers, the UK premiere of British composer Anna Clyne’s Abstractions (in which five contemporary artworks are re-imagined in music) and Tchaikovsky’s symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini – she was the tragic beauty immortalized in Dante's Divine Comedy.

And in a week of Radio 3 in Concert that highlights some of Britten’s works with orchestra, tonight we hear Les Illuminations for which the young composer set surreal and evocative texts by Arthur Rimbaud - soprano Sally Matthews is the soloist. BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist James Newby sings Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer, which sprang into life in the wake of an unhappy love affair. Mahler wrote the four poems himself: they and the music reflect his emotional journey.

Presented by Martin Handley

Anna Clyne: Abstractions, UK Premiere
Gustav Mahler: Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen

8.05pm
Interval. Ravel from former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Aleksey Semenenko

Ravel: Violin Sonata No.2 in G
Aleksey Semenenko (violin)
Inna Firsova (piano)

Part 2 8.20pm
Benjamin Britten: Les Illuminations
Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini

Sally Matthews (Soprano)
James Newby (Baritone) - BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Ben Gernon (Conductor)