Martin Rubenstein
Any excerpt from Paul Guinery's sadly missed programme, Sacred and Profane, which used to be broadcast on Sunday mornings many years ago.

Caroline Dove
Music Magazine - my earliest memory - but maybe that was on the Third Programme. Pied Piper - as a teenager a source of varied background and stimulating music with much-loved David Munrow. The Proms - so many memorable concerts over the years. Private Passions - always an unexpected and diverse pleasure. World Roots - discovering music beyond my worldTurning on the radio and hearing things you hadn't planned or expected to hear:Announcers with wonderful voices - Patricia Hughes and many more. Interval talks and silences. Drama Opera which I now love thanks to Radio 3. A Schubert impromtu or the Bach Christmas which was addictive and unfortgettable. There is so much over 40 years from the world's best radio station it is not possible to have only one top selection.

An excerpt from the Early Music Show 40th Anniversary Edition on David Munrow

Paul Dale
2 Proms moments. A concert from 1990 (I think) when Lutoslawski conducted the first performance of Chantfables et Chantfleurs and his 4th Symphony. And a Prom from 1999, the first performance of the second symphony of Peteris Vasks with the Bournemouth SO. Proof from one decade - if any is needed - that the symphony is not dead.

Sheena Liddell
Victoria's O magnum mysterium, the most exquisite and understated piece of choral writing I have ever sung in.

KJ
Any of the wonderful live jazz concerts.

Selene Mills
Broadcast of 1589 Florentine Intermedii in the 70s. I think this marvellous music would still be unknown to the general public without that performance. I was still at school when I heard it, and it was one of the major influences on my life.

Excerpt 1 from Florentine Intermedii (1979)

Excerpt 2 from Florentine Intermedii (1979)

I.Malloch Sugden
I'd go along with John Harvey.The Berlioz Requiem was absolutely mind blowing.Was it Beecham or is that merely wishful thinking,?Whatever it confirmed to me that Berlioz was going to play a large part in my enjoyment of music from the on,and so it had proved to be.

Ron Sands
Music must inevitably dominate, but let us not forget the superb spoken word broadcasts. Fenella Fielding playing the title role in Hedda Gabler remains memorable thirty (?) years on...

An excerpt from Hedda Gabler (recorded 1966)

Dharmachari Palaka
Seamus Heaney's 'Sweeney Astray'. I heard it by chance and it has stayed with me ever since!

An excerpt from Sweeney Astray (broadcast 11 November 1990)

Laurence Skelding
How about the prom premiere of Hugh Wood's Symphony with I think the BBCSO and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky?

An excerpt from the premiere of Hugh Wood's Symphony (Proms 1982)

Brian Avery
I was so impressed by the medium of radio as I grew up that I ended up working at BBC London as a technician in the late fifties, where I remember recording interviews with Sir Thomas Beecham. Among many glorious memories of live events, I remember "Under milk wood" staring Richard Burton, and Paul Hindemith conducting Beethoven's ninth. And Callas and Sutherland from Convent Garden.(I remember that the then director of radio was in the audience when Sutherland made her landmark debut in Lucia, and he canceled an entire evenings programming to go live to Convent garden) I also remember hearing Stravinsky conducting "Apollon Musagete' and a couple of live recitals from the Queen Elizabeth Hall by Alfred Deller. Its the live broadcasts that remain in the mind, luckily I taped a few on reel to reel. I have to say that bbc 3 was the basis of my musical and cultural education, please do not be tempted to dumb it down. I seem to remember that there was an evening only early version of the third channel before 1961, when I left the UK for Canada. Only the best is good enough. Let us hope that the next generation will have such memories as mine and those expressed above.

An excerpt from an interview with Sir Thomas Beecham in the late 1950s

David Moore
...where to begin ? ..the whole Discovering Music catalogue ... Building A Library....Proms and other festival coverage... To the fore for me though, the Samuel Beckett works for radio ... One of the finest writers ever in the english language.... Embers, despite the man-made animal sounds, remains miraculous.

Excerpt from Beckett's 'Embers' broadcast 9 April 2006

Discovering Music - Audio Archive

Building a Library database

BBC Proms 2007

Louise Taylor
The Bach and Beethoven Experiences were definitely the highlights - unmatched by any radio station in the world.As concerts, the Schubert bi-centenary concert from the Wigmore Hall in 1996 gets my vote.

A Bach Christmas

The Beethoven Experience

Giles Courtice
The conversation between John Maddox and Jacques Monod broadcast in the series 'Scientifically Speaking'. The series was presented by Maddox, who was then editor of the journal Nature, in the days when Radio 3 saw science as part of culture!

An excerpt from Analysis: The Doomsday Debate with Jacques Monod and John Maddox (2/6/72)

David Hunt
Quite simply, the most glorious moments were the many opportunities to hear the late, great tenor Ronald Dowd.

Martin Clay
Bach Christmas - the best thing I have ever heard on the radio. A wonderful shared musical community experience. Every Christmas since I feel that something is missing, and an intense sadness that it may well never happen again.

Pete
The Festival of India all-nighter of classical Indian music. Mongolian throat singers. The complete organ works of J.S. Bach.Most of all - the R3 announcers' seemingly limitless knowledge.

Russell Hackney
I am an artist now living in Vancouver Canada and the joy that R3 brings me is immeasurable. Andy Kershaw's programme is unmissable as is Private Passions and Nightwaves - Phillip Dodd is the best interviwer currently on air anywhere.A typical priceless experience for me was the recent Twenty Minutes edition when Sarah Kent visited Aiden Hart the icon painter - Sarah sensitively brought out Aiden's wisdom and he articulated many of my own thoughts which then informed my own work and the explaining of my work.When what one hears chimes with what one instinctively feels but finds hard to express, it is wonderful and Radio 3 seems to do this so often!Thank you R3.

An excerpt from 'Twenty Minutes - Doors to Heaven' broadcast 3 August 2007

Ian Radcliffe
The Music and poetry historical montage of the civil wars 16th century

Ian Radcliffe
The Fairy Queen Benjamin Britten, English Chamber Orchestra

ian radcliffe
last days of mankind karl kraus

Mark Lyndon
Radio 3 at its best is absolutely unbeatable. The late and much missed Sir John Drummond once presented a whole evening of pure magic devoted to the great Richter on 3. I wrote to congratulate Sir John, he wrote a charming postcard back. Now it is a treasured memento of the finest Radio Station in the world, probably.

sandra fulton
I owe a great deal of pleasure & knowledge of music to radio 3 over the years; and therefore, my children also do!In particular, I remember sitting on the floor listening to a wonderful Masterclass with, I think, Paul Tortellier. But there were others, also very good. Another devastating experience was the broadcasting of Akhenaten by Philip Glass. The occasion, as I remember it, occurred when the scheduled First Broadcast of Mask of Time, by Michael Tippett, couldn't be broadcast because of problems of some kind; so a previous year's First was substituted. I expect my family remember the occasion too - I had been making pastry but was lured into the sitting room to find out what the music was. I froze there in the doorway for the whole length of the opera. I believe my husband eventually rolled out the pastry! I've only picked two, at different points on the spectrum of things I learned; but there were also plays; world routes; so many other things I can't possibly list here! Just 'thank you'.

An excerpt from Akhnaten by Philip Glass

An excerpt from The Mask of Time by Tippett broadcast 2 March 1986

Michael Tippett talks about The Mask of Time

Paul Webber
The Byrd Gradualia series for the Marian feasts, with Cormac Rigby's comprehensive introductions.'The Octave of the Nativity' 1984. Ten liturgical reconstructions of the Masses for the Christmas season, again with introductions by Cormac Rigby.

An excerpt from Byrd's Gradualia recorded by the BBC Singers in 1996

Ray Palmer
The Long March of Everyman. A long series with the voices of all sorts of people and with the music of Vaughan Williams (Job- A Masque for Dancing)- introducing each programme.

An excerpt from The Long March of Everyman from 1972 (part 1)

An excerpt from The Long March of Everyman from 1972 (part 2)

Jenny van Tinteren
Bach Week. Nothing else ever touched it. Except perhaps one of your announcers getting irritated when the hour struck, and saying "I do hope the Mendelssohn didn't spoil your enjoyment of the Pips".

richard
I would like to hear the Karajan BPO Brahms 2 and 4 at the RFH in the 1980's. An amazing concert.

David Westbury
Isaiah Berlin's Mellon lectures on the Roots of Romanticism - really thought-provoking and delivered with great style.

An excerpt from Isaiah Berlin's first lecture from 1966

John Harvey
I have loads of moments to remember, but perhaps the most impressive for me was my first live performance of the Berlioz Requiem! It was in St. Paul's Cathedral in the 1960's, and I was completely blown away by the sheer majesty of sound. Berlioz has been my hero ever since!

Ruy Mauricio de Lima e Silva
Well, of course, being a Brazilian and a resident in my country, I only became entitled to hear anything from BBC by the time my wife kindly gave me a computer and broadband on my 2004 birthday. My first impulse was, of course, to tune in the Broadcasting House and specially Radio 3. I had a terrible riddle spinning on my brain since the early days of television in Brasil, that is to say 1950. There was a wonderful musical thunder played by a full orchestra everytime the channel entered on the air. and its name was never disclosed, though some years later I've heard it on the soundtrack of a British documentary, which gave me a sort of a hint. Since then, my interest in music has degenerated to each and every of its multiple forms, so that when I came to my early adulthood I have amassed a stunning listing of, probably, 2000 or 3000 items to buy.

Now in my late adulthood, I can proudly boast to have conquered or achieved each and every item of that mammoth list. With one exception. I was beginning to get resigned of dying without even knowing the name of that fantastic overture. I've even asked for help to dear (and very missed) Brian Kay, and he came up with a very beautiful London Overture, by John Ireland, but that wasn't it either. And then miracle came. I was listening to Brian Kay's 200th programme, in 2005, when those luxurious chords and festive bells invaded my room and my life with a lag of 54 years of apprehension.I was alive again and very suspectful of God's existence (to say nothing of BBC's existence)right after that flash of bliss - "The Voice of London"/Charles Williams. Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Beeb.Thanks, Maker. Now I can die.

An excerpt from 'The Voice of London' by Charles Williams (recorded by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Barry Wordsworth)

William Fielding
The Radio 3 announcers! To hear MB talking about PH getting into her "nightie" at about mid-night or hearing about encounters with trees or the weather being in "C minor". "Is there anybody listening?" at 7.05 on a Sunday morning. These, together with Test Match Special, are the real "creations" of Radio 3. And, what was wrong with a Radio 3 silence? I used to tune my radio to them. These little things are what make Radio 3 so special. Please do not overlook them or the wonderful series on Mozart string quintets and opera finales.Thank "you" (whoever you all have been/are) for a lifetime of discovery and companionship.

Richard Craig
Over the years I have been introduced to much wonderful music through your medium. I would love to hear a concert by the Berlin Phil conducted by Karajan as you broadcast them when they came to Britain.

An excerpt from Karajan's 1988 performance of Brahms' 1st Symphony at the Royal Festival Hall

Ian Gordon MacKenzie
Leonard Bernstein at the BBC London Proms conducting Mahler symphony no. 5 with the VPO. Stunning!!!