“We are more than just a radio station” said Alan Davey, announcing highlights of Radio 3’s autumn and winter season in which classical might still be at the heart of the station’s output, but arts and drama, jazz, roots music and new talent play an important part.
Drama is represented in a strong lineup that celebrates the great US playwright Arthur Miller in the centenary of his birth. David Suchet, Zoe Wanamaker and director Howard Davies, who in 2010 brought the award-winning production of Miller’s All My Sons to the West End, have reunited to create a new production of another classic Miller play, Death of a Salesman, that will be broadcast on 11 October.
Harriet Walter curates a season of new productions of plays by Harold Pinter, Moira Buffini and Nicholas Wright that will broadcast in November, and Sir Tom Stoppard’s Artist Descending a Staircase – written for Radio 3 in 1972 and later adapted for the stage, will return to the airwaves in its first new radio production since its BBC premiere.
The Free Thinking Festival of ideas will be hosted by Sage Gateshead for its 10th year from 6 to 8 November, with a keynote speech given by American poet Claudia Rankine who will talk about the power of language and what it means to be black in the new millennium.
“Diversity is on the agenda” said Davey, confirming the station’s ongoing commitment to featuring work by female composers, building on their Celebrating Women Day in March 2015. He announced a partnership with the British Academy of Songwriters Composers and Authors to produce a diversity in composition seminar day to be held in the new year.
Nurturing new talent and education is a central concern of the station, said Davey. BBC Introducing – the initiative that allows unsigned musicians to upload their material for possible airplay – is being extended to the UK’s classical composers and performers. The scheme has helped launched the careers of pop acts including Florence + the Machine, James Bay and Jake Bugg. Radio 3’s presenters and producers will select the best pieces and performances for airplay on drive-time programme In Tune and contemporary music programme Hear and Now.
Davey also confirmed that Pied Piper, a much-loved show presented by David Munrow from 1971 to 1976 whose aim was to introduce children to music of all kinds and all eras, was to return in some form. “I want to capture that spirit of exploration and excitement,” he said.
The new year brings a week celebrating contemporary classical music that will be launched on 1 January with the world premiere of the four-channel transmission of Stockhausen’s electroacoustic classic Hymnen. Radio 3 has acquired copies of the original four-channel tapes of Regions (ie Movements) 1, 2 and 4 from the Stockhausen Foundation for Music, and alongside these will be broadcast a recording of a live performance by the London Sinfonietta of Region 3, making the BBC the first to broadcast the complete work as it was conceived by Stockhausen in 1967.
Davey spoke of the “elephant in the room” – Classic FM. “We do different things but there’s room for both of us – we’re both an important part of the UK’s classical music ecology,” he said. Earlier this week his station announced a pop-up collaboration with their commercial rival Jazz FM. Would he consider a similar partnership with Classic FM? “Of course – if we could find the right thing,” he said.
Finally, rounding off a year in which Michael Berkeley’s Private Passions celebrated its 20th anniversary, will be Alan Bennett’s first and long-awaited appearance on the show. Bennett credited the programme for partly inspiring The History Boys, but has never appeared on the show in which guests discuss the influence music has had on their lives and careers.
