Radio 3’s latest listening figures (RAJAR) reveal that the network has performed strongly during Controller Alan Davey’s first year in post, recording its highest audience total in three years, with the highest Breakfast figures since 2013, the highest morning figures on record (Essential Classics) and the second highest drivetime (In Tune) figures in the shows’ history.

In my first year it’s been an honour to lead the BBC Radio 3 family which includes BBC Radio 3, BBC Proms and the BBC performing groups, all of whom play an essential part in our purpose to connect audiences with remarkable music and culture.

I’m really proud of our constantly evolving offer which is unique, and lovingly curated by our brilliant team of experts and passionate producers.

We’ve enjoyed a strong year of special programming including Why Music? with the Wellcome Collection, a great Proms season, WOMAD, EFG London Jazz Festival, Northern Lights, New Year New Music and our International Women’s Day composers’ focus, as well as the programmes we do day in, day out, with live music on every night and more than 90 opera relays – more than any other broadcaster in the world.

We’ve also created a 'late night zone' of experimentation with a new Jazz programme (Jazz Now), a revamped Late Junction, and developed the idea of 'slow radio' with full-length dramas, operas, symphonies and special pieces of music like Max Richter’s 8-hour through-the-night lullaby, Sleep, or 'The Well Tuned Piano' – a 5-hour piano meditation on the colour magenta by La Monte Young, broadcast through the night... or the first full broadcast in surround sound of Stockhausen’s Hymnen.

The record figure for our morning show, Essential Classics – the highest in 10 years – shows the tweaks we’ve made there are really paying off.  These include introducing contemporary music and fixed features such as 'Music in Time'.

I’m also proud of Breakfast’s highest reach in three years: we’ve intentionally set out to let the music breathe, cutting back on news bulletins and allowing longer pieces of music. And our drivetime show, In Tune, with its unique live music and culture news, has delivered its second highest audience figure on record.

As we move into our 70th anniversary year, I’m delighted that Radio 3 – broadcast and streamed as always in beautiful uncompressed sound – continues to play such a special role in the daily lives of our listeners. That is down to the people who work here – knowledgeable, enthusiastic individuals who make great programmes with consummate skill and pride in what they do. 

This weekend Radio 3 begins its celebrations of the culture of Northern countries, places which spend the winter months in darkness (compensated by long summer nights).  This is triggered by the anniversary of the birth of Sibelius, Finland's best known composer, and a composer who is played a lot on Radio 3 and by the BBC Performing Groups. 

But instead of just concentrating on Sibelius, we decided to look at artistic responses to 'the North' in many different ways, and to examine what 'the North' means in human imagination.  As a triangulation point to this line of thought we are broadcasting on Sunday at 11.30pm a 'contrapuntal documentary' made by pianist Glenn Gould for CBC in 1967, called 'The Idea of North'. 

My own fascination with the extreme North began when at university and I discovered the great Sagas of Iceland.  Iceland is a nation with a great literary heritage which literally is based in the soil. From around the 10th century are the great Poetic Eddas: mythological poems that tell of the Gods - Oðin, Loki and so on - the mythology of which was brought together by a priest in 12th century Iceland called Snorri Sturlusson. Then there are the Scaldic poems - complex and compact works that use mythological images to convey emotion and thought - the medieval poet Egil Skallagrimsson uses this style in his great poem Sonnatorrek on the death of his son.

But the Sagas are different.  Laconic in style, they tell of people who lived in real places, and who quarrelled and feuded and killed one another for reasons that might be personal, legal or to do with relationships - always rooted in real places in Iceland you can visit today. The greatest of these sagas is Njals Saga - the story of a good man who tries to maintain his moral centre in a world where others kill and feud, which ends with he and his wife being burned alive in their farmhouse. But read the text and there is no emotion, only understatement, with the story told clearly and unflinchingly. My favourite is Laxdæla Saga, a story which revolves around strong women and fighting men - the two main characters, Kjartan, every inch the blonde warrior who is killed due to some complicated machinations around the magnificent Guðrun, who, when as a matriarch looking back on her life comments to her son 'Þeim var ek verst, er ek unna mest' - 'I was worst to the one I loved the most'. That's it in terms of summing up the emotions - a whole world of pain and life of regret is summarised in that one sentence. 

As a student I ended up editing a saga called Gautreks Saga, a later work that combines the supposed history in Sweden of a community who are so poor that the eldest commit suicide every time a guest arrives - reflecting ancient traditions of hospitality, with a story of a man who gets on by being generous and giving gifts.

And these brilliant stories are told in one of the most beautiful languages in the word, Icelandic.  The old language is still recognisably the language people speak in Iceland today.  It is a Scandinavian language with an earthy, animated burr to it.  If you want to hear it, listen to Icelandic musician Ásgeir's album Ðyrð í Dauðaþögn (literally 'Glory in the silence of death').  An English language version was made with the words translated by John Grant called in the Silence.  You can hear the beauty of the language, and in the words, written by his 70-year-old father, you sense a link back to the great Icelandic Viking literary tradition, as in the song Hlòða Nótt (with a hard to translate first line of the last chorus)

Sum var gott en annað fylgi með
Reisir sverð og skjöld

(Some was good and wrapped with the other [ie bad]
Raise your sword and shield).

This is one aspect of the culture of the North.  In 'Northern Lights' we'll be exploring the culture of many Northern countries, from Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq's music for the 1922 documentary Nanook of the North next Friday, to Sibelius's great Finnish epic, Kullervo - hope you'll join us on Radio 3 to explore Northern Culture of all kinds, through December.  

• Radio 3 Northern Lights Season
• Northern Lights programmes
• Discover more about the season

Visiting Patagonia in Argentina has been quite bizarre! I’ve just spent a week and a half with 11 other BBC NOW musicians working with schools, special schools and local orchestras in the Welsh colony of Patagonia. Although I was brought up in England, I was born in Aberystwyth in Wales and we kept the Welsh tradition going very strongly at home. Walking about this South American town (over 7000 miles from home) and suddenly coming across a Welsh flag outside a house is quite incredible. I’m very proud of being Welsh, and being here brings on that feeling of ‘Hiraeth’ that we have in Wales – which is a longing for your homeland – I think they feel it here, even though it’s the other side of the world, they’re extremely proud to be Welsh.

I’m fairly new to the experience of working in special schools and it was amazing to get such immediate reactions from the children. They wanted to play the instruments, interacting with rhythms that we were giving them; they took to all of it, just soaked it all up. In fact, there was a boy who had a riff of his own going: some of our players tried to play along with him and improvise around it and he really wasn’t happy ‒ he wanted to do it on his own! We later saw him going to another child in a wheelchair, put the scroll of the violin on to this boy’s arm and start playing to him, because he’d seen us do that with other children ‒ he got what we were trying to do, that it was something worthwhile, and that was very moving. 

During the week we also played with a string group from the small town of Trevelin who travelled to Gaiman, which is an eight-hour drive, in order to play with us. This string group was very impressive, they had some good violins, but generally in Patagonia they don’t have the instruments, or the facilities to develop; so we hope by us being here that it will inspire them to keep finding ways to carry on with classical music.

When we’re in the orchestra we’re quite removed from our audience so we don’t see how much it means to them, but out here we’ve really had an effect on the community; we’ve contributed to the cultural life and they’ve really contributed to our experience as well.

Lots of people from Wales have visited Patagonia this year because of the anniversary – it’s 150 years since the Welsh settlers arrived, but the teacher at one of the Welsh schools said to us she could sense that our visit had meant so much more. We hadn’t just come here for the celebrations – it was about the music and about engaging with the local communities.

We arrived in Buenos Aires yesterday where we have two concerts, which is very exciting because the Teatro Colón is such a famous concert hall. I played there, probably about 18 years ago with the English Chamber Orchestra so it will be interesting to see how it’s changed. I haven’t been to the other concert halls we’ll be playing, but I’ve heard that Santiago and Montevideo are supposed to be remarkable places to visit, and I’m looking forward to seeing a bit more of Argentina as well. With our week in Patagonia it’s only been a small group of us, so it’s going to be strange and fantastic for the full orchestra to be back to together again. It’s going to be just as rewarding, but in a different way. 

Hear the BBC National Orchestra of Wales tonight from 7.30pm on Radio 3 from the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, and hear more about the residency. 

• Watch Petroc Trelawny as he tours the Teatro Colon
• BBC National Orchestra of Wales
• BBC Performing Groups

The BBC Symphony Orchestra first went to Finland in 1956 (with Sir Malcolm Sargent) and returned 40 years later with Vernon Handley. Thus it was a rather unusual pleasure to escape the rigours of the Proms for a few days and become a part of the 150th birthday celebrations for Sibelius in the Finnish city of Lahti.

It was a particular pleasure for me as my very first orchestral job was at the other end of the 150km Lake Päijänne, in the small city of Jyväskylä.

Our first concert was a repeat of our Prom comprising two early works by the Finnish master, Sibelius: En Saga and Kullervo, the latter with the expanded Polytech Male Voice Choir, from Helsinki Aalto University of Engineering, who lent our chief conductor Sakari Oramo one of their splendid graduation hats for this photo...

Finnish is a very phonetic language and the choir's authentic vowel sounds and chiselled consonants really sent shivers down the spine in this gory story, even more so as they all sang from memory. Similarly, the soloists Johanna Rusanen-Kartano and Waltteri Torikka injected huge passion into their tragic roles. Before the interval Sakari had ignited a rollicking performance of En Saga which elicited a text message from Sibelius's great-grandson no less, saying it was the best performance he had ever heard.

After the concert various sections of the local Lahti Symphony Orchestra entertained their Brit counterparts. The Finnish principal double bass apologised to the BBCSO basses saying, 'I'm sorry, if I had known you were all this nice I would have cooked for you in my home!'

The next morning was free so people made plans - some went fishing in one of the many lakes, some went on boat trips, and I managed to squeeze into a car bound for Ainola, Sibelius's house an hour's drive south of Lahti.

I had wanted to go there for 30 years and despite being full of (very well-behaved) Finnish school children, the place oozed charm and character. Funny to think that members of the BBCSO had performed in Sibelius's lounge on that 1956 tour. Very moving, too, to see his writing desk and the bed in which he passed away. The excellent tour guide informed us of the composer's high-maintenance life-style which extended to his not allowing water pipes to be installed, as he didn't want even the noise of running water to disturb his creative process. His daughters too were only allowed to practice their instruments when he was out... I made a mental note to tell that to my children...

In the afternoon we rehearsed with the festival director, Okko Kamu. He told us that he last conducted the BBCSO 45 years ago and wondered if anyone remembered! He thanked us for the previous night's Kullervo which, he said, was stunning.

The concert comprised two of Sibelius's best-known works: the Violin Concerto (with Sergey Malov) and the Second Symphony. There is a nice tradition in Finland (also in Japan) of applauding the orchestra until every member has arrived on stage, 'tho I always worry they may be clapped-out by the end. Sergey gave a very intimate reading of the piece and followed it with a movement from Bartók's solo Sonata.

After the interval Okko conducted a beautifully paced and vigorous account of the symphony, ending with a wonderfully rousing coda which reminds me every time of many Finnish flags fluttering. This symphony is particularly special here and my old Finnish desk partner Jukka Hämäläinen informed me afterwards that he wept twice in the concert. Playing both this symphony and Kullervo in this beautiful hall on this, the great man's anniversary year, has been a privilege and something special which I suspect will stay long with all the members of the orchestra. Then it was time to say 'Kiitos' and 'Hei hei', fly home and finish (no pun intended) that other festival we had started in London two months ago..

Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Mozart's Serenade in B flat, K366 ('Gran Partita'), Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht and Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier Suite No.1 at the Barbican Hall on Wednesday 21 October at 7.30pm. The concert is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. Ticket information is here.

• Ainola
• Lahti Sibelius Festival
• BBC Symphony Orchestra

Most of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s cycle of Carl Nielsen symphonies is now complete, and I am hugely looking forward to completing this fascinating survey of the great Danish composer’s music mirrored by that of his contemporaries.

This year's other great birthday hero, Jean Sibelius, is an obvious companion, despite the almost diametrically opposed nature of the two composers' musical styles and philosophies. Tapiola (1926) is the Finnish composer's last significant symphonic statement, and here serves the purpose of showing how distant he had become to his Danish counterpart. Tapiola is an incredibly powerful, hypnotic piece of music which, when performed properly, makes a human feel very small indeed at the feet of the great God of the forests of Finnish mythology.

Sergey Rachmaninov is yet another composer who poses interesting possibilities for comparison with Nielsen. The 4th Piano Concerto (1926) is his most intimate, honest and self-revealing piece of music. Composed in a very long timespan of about ten years, it contains both destabilising uncertainty and a similar kind of simplification of musical means that Nielsen and Sibelius also went through in their later composing years.

John Foulds brings a welcome English sidestep to this programme. Categorised as 'a composer of light music’, the English musical establishment almost completely ignored the great skill and power of invention shown in his preserved larger-scale works, although in 2007 the BBC revived his heartfelt memorial to the dead of all nations ‒ A World Requiem ‒ once the centrepiece of the Royal British Legion's original Festivals of Remembrance. Most of Foulds’ scores were destroyed in India where the composer emigrated and later died of cholera. April-England (1926/32) is a reworking of a piano piece for orchestra, quintessentially English and very spring-like indeed, showing the composer's enormous skill in orchestration and harmony.

Finally, Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 6 (named by the composer as 'semplice' ['simple'] but in fact anything but) is his brilliant final milestone in symphonic art. Consisting of four movements, it looks and feels like a classical work, yet the contents all seem to be upside down. To me this music is incredibly emotional in its stylistic restraint and anti-Romantic feeling. The toy-music in the 'Humoresque', the almost impenetrable seriousness of the 'Proposta Seria' and the unbuttoned anarchy of the final Variations provide a musical merry-go-round without any boundaries. What exactly does Nielsen mean by finishing his towering symphonic output with two bassoons playing alone in their lowest register? 'It all wasn't so serious after all', perhaps?

Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Sibelius’s Tapiola, Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.4 in G minor, (soloist: Denis Kozhukin), Foulds’s April-England, and Nielsen’s Symphony No.6 (‘Sinfonia semplice’) at the Barbican Hall on Saturday 23 May at 7.30pm. The concert will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

This is always an exciting day for Radio 3: the moment when the truly salivating line-up of concerts and events that make up the world’s biggest classical music festival is revealed, and we begin in earnest the incredibly detailed planning that goes into broadcasting every Prom live. The technical challenges are huge ‒ in the course of a single day the team of highly skilled studio managers might be called upon to capture anything from a solo violin to a brand new contemporary work for a 100-piece orchestra ‒ and things like how many microphones, how many miles of cable, and exactly how long it’s going to take to reset the stage between the main evening Proms and complicated late night events need to be thought about now.

For the production team it’s a case of working out how best to provide that all-important context for our listeners: why you really should tune in to this performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, why the Aurora orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony is going to be unlike any you’ve ever heard before (it really is), what fresh insights come to light as a result of hearing all of Prokofiev’s piano concertos in the course of one evening, and why the work of Pierre Boulez is so visionary and vital to our understanding of today’s musical world. A crucial part of this context is of course the fantastic line-up of Proms Extra events over at the Royal College of Music, where every day a carefully chosen panel of experts is there to guide you through that night’s offering; these are then edited straight afterwards and broadcast in the interval of the Prom. It’s a neat idea, but as with all these things, planning is everything.

There’s a sense in which you could say the Proms are all in a day’s work for us – Radio 3 broadcasts a concert live pretty much every night of the week, after all – but there’s something very special about de-camping to Kensington for the summer. There’s nothing quite like the excitement of the first night, the famous queue snaking all the way down the steps and probably round the corner too, the sight of our BBC trucks parked outside Door 9, the familiar smell back-stage at the Royal Albert Hall, the incredible air of anticipation in the Hall itself… and above all, the knowledge that you’ve got a whole eight magical weeks of world-class music-making to look forward to. It’s a huge amount of work, for sure, but a challenge each and every one of us relishes. Bring it on.

• BBC Proms
• BBC Radio 3
• Royal Albert Hall

You may have read reports on comments I made this week about levels of classical music literacy now compared to the era of the Third Programme. The reports were given headlines that didn't really reflect what I actually said.  Therefore I’d like to expand on my comments here and put them back in the context in which they were delivered.  

I was asked about the challenges facing me as Controller of Radio 3 and how those might differ from those facing my predecessors, especially those involved in the Third Programme.

One material change I identified was the extent to which audiences arrive with a knowledge about classical music. That this means that we need sometimes to provide context to pieces ‒ but being absolutely clear we do not dumb down or simplify the content. We need to give people the means to approach complex music for what it is. That's clearly part of our job as a network ‒ we want everyone to be able to experience the great things engagement with great musical and other works of art can bring. 

I am quite clear that I am an example of this: I stumbled across classical music in my twenties when I was fortunate enough to live in Birmingham and could hear the CBSO every week ‒ and came to learn a great deal from Radio 3, building on my already existing love of music of all kinds.  That's why I take this issue of how we help people discover classical music so seriously.

Audiences have many choices nowadays, so in presenting complex music we need to do so not only in brilliant sound, not only by giving the excitement of live concerts every day, but with clear and informed presentation and online resources that help deepen people's knowledge.  That's the modern version of the Third Programme. Our audience members are intellectually curious and exacting in their standards, and are characterised by wanting to dig deep and not be short-changed in what they are offered.  

Classical music and its place in our culture is something I feel passionately about. We must be honest in identifying the challenges it faces and debate the issues with vigour. But, if this is to happen, we need all sides of the argument to be reported and debated fairly and thoroughly. Expanding the audience for classical music is a matter to take seriously, as we do across the BBC, with projects like Ten Pieces ‒ bringing classical music to school age children, the work of the Performing Groups, the Proms, and above all BBC Radio 3, which remains the best place to discover classical and other serious music, as well as culture and ideas.

If you want to hear what I actually said, here is the link to Radio 4's Feedback. 

After settling in and getting my bearings I stuck Owen’s text up on a huge, freestanding pinboard, spread out some of my initial sketches on the piano, and stared down at the blank manuscript paper. But nothing came. I started to feel worried. What if I had developed writer’s block? At home I often have the feeling there is never enough time in the day to get things done, but here the morning stretched on forever. They say a week at MacDowell is equivalent to four in the real world. Without the usual distractions of home there seemed to be endless hours to fill. But after a day or so adjusting to this new rhythm, it struck me: time was exactly what I needed and what I was here for. I quickly adjusted to life at MacDowell and began working on the piece in earnest.

The MacDowell Colony is a very special place. In 1896, composer Edward MacDowell and pianist Marian MacDowell bought a farm where they spent summers working in the peaceful surroundings. Shortly afterwards, Edward fell ill and talked to Marian about his wish to give other artists the same creative experience they enjoyed. Marian set about building a community on the estate where writers, artists, composers and filmmakers from all over the world could come to work. All the studios at MacDowell have names. Mine was called Watson and was one of the first studios Marian had built. It was initially used as a concert space, so had the dimensions of a small recital hall. Today, being a live-in studio, it is furnished with a bed, small kitchen, bathroom and giant wooden desk in front of a beautiful open fire. Artists are invited to inscribe their name on to wooden ‘tombstones’ hanging on the walls of each studio following their stay as a record of all those who pass through. On closer inspection of this lovely tradition, I discovered my studio had hosted Leonard Bernstein several times. He had composed his Mass there during a residency. Other composers included Aaron Copland and Meredith Monk. I was in good company!

My existence became a happy cycle of writing from morning until evening, punctuated with long walks in the woods and building fires to keep warm. Lunch was delivered in a picnic basket to the doorstep each day to minimize interruptions. In the evenings, the day’s work could be shared with other colony fellows over hearty home cooked meals and table tennis in Colony Hall. By the end of my residency I had written more than I could have hoped for. I had a full structure planned out with almost all of the vocal music written and about a third of the work completed in full score.  Back in the UK, I was lucky enough to find time and space in Wales and at Aldeburgh Music to continue working, until I eventually completed the piece.

Now, just before rehearsals begin, I look back to my first blog and Lawrence M. Krauss’s idea: everything comes from nothing. He explains in his book, A Universe from Nothing, how a vacuum is not really empty at all but full of matter and antimatter being continually created and destroyed. The infinitesimally small spot the universe would have occupied in its first moments would have been bursting with particles and energy that just had to go somewhere, and so they did. On reflection, I think the act of writing poetry or composing music is in some sense making something from nothing. And in a concert, there is silence and then the music starts. So, on some level Krauss’s idea could be a metaphor for all music and all art.

I hope you’ll join me and the BBC National Chorus and Orchestra of Wales for the premiere of A Violence of Gifts on Saturday 18 April at 7.30pm, either at St David’s Hall in Cardiff or by tuning in to BBC Radio 3 for the live broadcast.

The BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales will perform A Violence of Gifts on Saturday 18 April, 7.30pm at St David’s Hall, Cardiff. It will also be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

• BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales
• Mark Bowden
• Owen Sheers
• A Violence of Gifts – Blog Part 1
• A Violence of Gifts – Blog Part 2
• A Violence of Gifts – Blog Part 3

I find this a strange time of the planning year, when the present season is well over half way through. the new season has just gone public and my mind is focused on the season yet-to-be planned and the last few details of the Proms season ahead.  I know this to be true when a friend asked me what we are doing next season and my mind went blank ‒ full of this week’s concert and the ideas for 2016-2017 that are swirling around in my head.  And then I got home and went straight to the laptop to be reminded, as a smile crept over my face, of a season as full of musical adventures and journeys, pleasures and indulgences as you would expect of the BBCSO.

Any concert conducted by Sakari Oramo is a major event these days and his season-opening Mahler 3 will be unmissable, setting out a series of concerts that are truly inspired, including symphonies by Elgar, and Strauss’s monumental Alpine Symphony, but perhaps my favourite of Sakari’s programmes will showcase the orchestra section by section, with Schoenberg’s transcendental Verklärte Nacht for strings, Mozart’s sublime Gran Partita for wind ensemble, and bringing the whole orchestra together in a nostalgic evocation of old Vienna, Strauss’ suite from the opera Der Rosenkavalier. 

Our Total Immersion days of discovery explore the music of two recently departed European greats, Henryk Górecki and Henri Dutilleux and one very much alive master ‒ Louis Andriessen.  In fact Andriessen’s rich, irreverent and exuberant take on Dante, La Commedia ‒ part opera, part music-theatre ‒ this large-scale work is followed by two further operatic and completely contrasting collaborations with Opera Rara:  Zaza by Leoncavallo and Adelson e Salvini by Bellini.   Fans of great singing will remember our electrifying sell-out performance of Donizetti’s Belisario in 2012.

Commissions and premieres sit at the heart of what we do and with new works from Richard Ayres, Anna Clyne, George Benjamin and Ryan Wigglesworth leading the British contingent, and Andrew Norman, Brett Dean, Henryk Górecki and Richard Dubugnon showing how much exciting new music is being written around the world, there are many musical adventures waiting to be shared.  In fact, finding just the right context for a new work ‒ the ‘frame’, if you will ‒ is one of the great pleasures of introducing new works to our audiences.

Renée Fleming, one of the greatest sopranos of our time, returns to work with us in a new song cycle written for her by the Swedish composer Anders Hillborg, alongside Robin Holloway’s exquisite orchestrations of Debussy songs. Jiří Bělohlávek will conduct a programme that should carry a health warning, so rich is the musical fare on offer. Renée leads a whole host of glittering soloists and one of our strongest ever list of conductors; I would like to pay a particular welcome to Polish maestro Antoni Wit making his BBCSO debut and the long-overdue return of Markus Stenz.  

Of course, I don’t just have the privilege of managing the BBC Symphony Orchestra but also the outstanding BBC Symphony Chorus who will be featuring in a number of great choral works especially from the 20th century.  Edward Gardner and I have taken particular pleasure in recent years of planning a December programme that has nothing seasonal about it, and this year will be no different ‒ Tippett’s A Child of our Time with its profound spiritual choruses punctuating Tippett’s own anti-war text will, in Ed’s hands, be profoundly moving and unmissable.

Programming with the BBC Singers is like having another set of toys to play with and the wonderful virtuosic artistry they display thrills me every time.  I’m particularly looking forward to heading over to the luxurious acoustics of Milton Court at the Barbican for David Hill conducting Monteverdi’s great Vespers of 1610, when we’re joined by the vocal ensemble I Fagiolini and St James’s Baroque, and James O’Donnell taking time off from his day job at Westminster Abbey to direct Handel’s magnificent theatrical oratorio Saul, with a terrific cast including the wonderful Iestyn Davies.   As a life-long listener to R3 and R4, the mixture of spoken word and music has always been close to my heart, and so the chance to explore the heart-breaking poetry and musical settings of, and inspired by the battle of the Somme, contrasted with that most enchanting of seasonal stories ‒ Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales ‒ wrapped up in favourite and new carols will, for me, be irresistible.  Familiar faces and voices will join us for to narrate these concerts in Milton Court.  I’m feeling all toasty at the prospect already!

Whether you join us a season listener, a new audience member, or a willing participant in one of the many audience-friendly learning events we offer, everyone will be enormously welcome. And if you can’t make it along to see the music and thrill to its sounds, then R3 will be there to broadcast it for you.  That’s the wonderful thing about the BBC - you can have it both ways, and listen to it again!

• BBC Symphony Orchestra
• BBC Symphony Chorus
• BBC Singers

Jez Nelson introduces a special duo concert from two of America’s biggest piano stars

The Blue Note all-stars that headlined the label’s 75th birthday celebrations at last year’s EFG London Jazz Festival were good, but it was the opening duo who stole the show. Jason Moran and Robert Glasper both hail from Houston, Texas and are Blue Note fixtures, but they have very different approaches to the music. Moran draws inspiration from the visual arts and arguably has a more conceptual, compositional focus, as witnessed by his impactful score for the new Martin Luther King biopic, Selma. Glasper is as lauded in nu-soul, hip hop and R&B as he is for acoustic jazz and has made his name blurring those boundaries whilst honing his art. We’ve featured both, in various settings, many times on Jazz on 3 - but never together. 

To explore into these musical influences a little more I put the pair to the MP3 shuffle test before the show, delving at random into the music they take with them on the road – it’s a treat, especially if you’re into your gospel singers. And the importance to both of them of vocalists in general really shone through, Moran saying that he often asks himself, in the middle of a performance, ‘How would Mary J Blige sing this phrase?’.

The prospect of two modern Blue Note heroes, pianos kissing, strolling through the vaults of the great label’s catalogue, was an enticing thought and they didn’t disappoint. Beginning with a tribute to the first piano stars of Blue Note - Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, they moved from boogie woogie through abstracted sections under-pinned by Moran’s tamperings inside the piano to some timeless Herbie Hancock themes. I never tire of hearing the simple beauty of 'Maiden Voyage' but it was Glasper’s teasing around Hancock’s soul-fusion classic 'Trust Me' that really got me.

The duo have taken this show around the world and you get the sense it’s a fun thing to do every night – you won’t see this on the radio but Robert Glasper even treated us to a few ballet steps. It's a snapshot of two fine modern pianists enjoying their own and each other’s playing whilst revelling in one of the greatest recording legacies in music history.

Also in the programme, staying with the classic albums theme, singer Juliet Kelly visits a new night that involves playing seminal recordings to a paying audience, and we've brand new sounds from another of America’s most heralded piano players Vijay Iyer, with music from his new trio album. 

Tune in to hear all of this on Jazz on 3 this Monday 16 February at 11pm or listen online for 30 days after broadcast.

Jez

If you have comments about the show, or requests for music you’d like to hear, do get in touch at jazzon3@bbc.co.uk or on twitter at @BBCJazzon3

To mark International Women’s Day on Sunday 8 March we’re celebrating female composers both past and present. There are 6000 women composers in history, so why can most of us only name a handful? We as a station can’t solve the imbalances of the classical music industry - which inevitably reflect historic societal attitudes to women generally - but it's very important to take the time to explore the issues.

We will be celebrating today’s wealth of female talent and creativity and also championing history’s great trailblazers who helped pave the way for them. As well as recognisable names such as Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann we look at slightly lesser known names from history such as Barbara Strozzi and Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre who managed to make a name for themselves in a male-dominated world, alongside a range of composers working today including Charlotte Bray, Anna Clyne, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Hannah Kendall and Dobrinka Tabakova.

Our celebration isn’t about discounting or banishing male composers either; composer Anna Meredith includes music written by men in her Private Passions selection of music that has inspired her. Male presenters will be involved in the programming and male figures from the classical music industry including conductors Edward Gardner and Harry Christophers will also throughout the day champion the music of women composers they particularly admire.

However, this is certainly a focus on female creativity and to have a whole day of programming dedicated to the music written and chosen by women (including a Through the Night of music exclusively written by women composers) and complementary programmes across two weeks is testament to the great wealth of female talent around today and across the centuries.

• International Women's Day on Radio 3 - Full details
• International Women's Day
• Women Composers on Radio 3 - About the BBC blog

The number of Composer Collections on the Radio 3 website has reached a milestone of 40. Roger Philbrick is the senior content producer behind this long-running piece of in-depth curation, which has led to some 2000 archive composer programmes being made permanently available to listeners. As he prepares to leave the BBC after nearly 30 years’ service, Roger opens the composer jewel-box to show off the treasures inside ….

In 2002 I was working as Science producer for the Radio 4 website when it occurred to me that it might be possible to keep recordings of radio programmes online beyond the normal 7 day limit. This was fairly radical in the days before iPlayer or podcasts, but our audience approved and the idea quickly caught on with Arts and History programmes. Music broadcasts were trickier because we were only allowed to archive musical excerpts, rather than full performances. But this still allowed us to offer music documentaries and features with short musical illustrations.

A few years later, I moved to the Radio 3 online team and revelled in the wealth of music analysis programmes, presented with passion and in-depth knowledge by some of the best communicators in the business. The benefits of preserving these programmes were obvious: they had timeless value and provided encyclopaedic audio guides to the most popular composers and their works, perfectly complementing our concert broadcasts. So we started archiving Composer of the Week and Discovering Music on a weekly basis; later additions included editions of Music Matters, Proms Plus and finally CD Review’s Building a Library, which broadened the core composer/works menu to include comparisons of performance styles.

As I write, we are now able to offer almost 2000 programmes via the comprehensive Composers A to Z, plus less intimidating individual collections celebrating the 40 composers for whom we have most content. The formats range from short, bite-sized reviews of favourite works from Tom Service and Howard Goodall, through to complete biographical guides, delivered by Donald Macleod in his inimitable style. Among my personal favourites are the older, long-format editions of Discovering Music, in which Charles Hazlewood and Stephen Johnson take the audience on guided tours of the crown jewels of classical music, with extracts performed live by the BBC orchestras.

Assembling and curating this unique archive has been a privilege and pleasure, and I hope you find the contents as fascinating and entertaining as I have.

• Composers A-Z
• Discovering the Great Composers
• The Story of Music in 50 Pieces - with Howard Goodall and Suzy Klein
• Building a Library
• Opera Guides
• Roger Philbrick Music (personal website)

During my first week we launched BBC Four’s Year of Song and Dance, and Radio 3 will be linking up with some programmes around BBC Young Dancer; a whole Classical Voices Season will herald the return of the Cardiff Singer of the World competition.  And I ended the week at the Barbican with the BBC Symphony Orchestra performing Nielsen’s 3rd Symphony.  Sakari Oramo is proving to be one of the great Nielsen interpreters – if you missed it, you can find it on the BBC iPlayer...  I am also looking forward later on to listening to Radio 3’s Celtic Connections from Glasgow.

So bring on week two… With the prospect of hearing on Radio 3 the previously unbroadcast Simon Rattle Beethoven cycle with the CBSO – I was at the live concerts many years ago in a previous life – can’t wait to hear them again after all those years. 

• Listen again - Music by Sibelius, Rachmaninov and Nielsen's 3rd Symphony
• The Year of Song and Dance
• BBC Young Dancer
• Cardiff Singer of the World 2015
• Radio 3 - Celebrating Simon Rattle
• Radio 3 - Celtic Connections

BBC Symphony Orchestra chief conductor Sakari Oramo continues his Nielsen series on Friday the 16^th, with the Third Symphony. It starts with 26 bangs, as Sub-Principal Viola Phil Hall explains in this insider’s guide to the symphonies

Anniversary years often provide a useful opportunity for reviewing a composer's output. In 2015 we have the sesquicentenary of the birth of two of Scandinavia's greatest symphonists: Finland's Jean Sibelius and from Denmark, Carl Nielsen. In our 2014-15 Barbican season the BBCSO has elected to celebrate the six symphonies of Nielsen with chief conductor Sakari Oramo. A canny decision as Sakari has just finished recording them all for the Swedish BIS label with his ‘other’ orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, to much critical acclaim.

One of the nice things about doing a complete symphonic cycle (with the possible exception of those by Beethoven and Brahms) is that new discoveries will be made because you have probably not played them all before.  There are inevitably some that are performed much more than others and often it is the earlier ones that are overlooked in favour of the composer's more mature works.

It has been 25 years since we last played Nielsen's first two symphonies. When he wrote his first symphony Nielsen was still a jobbing second violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra in Copenhagen. He must have been a brave man (I can't imagine having a big piece of mine performed by critical colleagues!) yet the work was a success. Working on it with Sakari I was struck by some of the piece's novel ideas ‒ unusual use of instruments and key relationships ‒ but more so by how much like the Nielsen we all know and love it sounded. Sure, you can detect other influences (notably Brahms) but the piece already bears his quirky stamp, trademark energy and difficult fugal writing.

Even more so the Second Symphony which positively brims over at the start. As with four of the others, Nielsen gives this symphony a subtitle ‒ The Four Temperaments ‒ and each movement reflects these human moods brilliantly.

The optimistic Third Symphony ‒ Sinfonia Espansiva ‒ (my personal favourite which we will perform on Friday) starts with a bang; well, 26 bangs actually, the same note repeated, before launching into a typically urgent theme. Calm is restored in the bucolic second movement with the unusual inclusion of a wordless soprano and baritone.

The best known and most dramatic is the Fourth, known as The Inextinguishable; it is a continuous ‘tour de force’ relenting only for a brief quasi-Baroque passage in the middle. Written during the First World War, the double timpani ‘battle’ at the end is usually worth the ticket price alone!

Another battle of sorts takes place in the Fifth symphony, this time with the orchestra and a snare drum which seemingly tries to disrupt things in the first movement. The piece is also quite war-like but unusually in just two parts. In the second part the drummer plays in the distance, off-stage, as if defeated by the orchestra. Twenty years ago this led to an embarrassing situation when the BBCSO played it in Munich. The over-zealous usher tried to stop Kevin Nutty playing his drum off-stage saying: ‘You cannot play that here, there is a concert going on!’

The final Nielsen symphony is probably the most difficult and (ironically) sub-titled Simple Symphony! Although he reverts to four movements it is easily his most quirky and contains a movement for just wind and percussion instruments (with no real melody!) and is probably the only symphony ever written to end with a bassoon raspberry!

• Book for Friday's Concert
• BBC Symphony Orchestra
• Sakari Oramo - biography
• Carl Nielsen
• Radio 3 - Discovering Nielsen

Tomorrow night (Tuesday 18 November), the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Clark Rundell are appearing at the EFG London Jazz Festival with two new BBC commissions. The BBC CO's Associate Composer Guy Barker has used a scenario by Robert Ryan to paint a portrait in music of London's Soho, and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Trish Clowes appears with her own quintet with tracks from her new album and 'The Fox, the Parakeet and the Chestnut', also written specially for this concert.

You can hear the concert at 7.30pm live on BBC Radio 3, introduced by Sara Mohr-Pietsch. Guy Barker’s collaborator, Robert Ryan, says: ‘Earlier this year, I received a phone call from Guy Barker, saying he had a hankering to write a new orchestral piece for the BBC CO;  however, he was staring at a blank page and needed a framework. We have done this before, with dZf, a re-working of The Magic Flute, and last year That Obscure Hurt, a Henry James/Britten-inspired piece. I give Guy a narrative: he builds his music around it. This time all he had was “Soho” as a theme…’

Rob gives a fascinating and detailed explanation of the narrative he devised for Guy in this recommended personal blog post.

The concert will be available for 30 days on the BBC iPlayer.

• BBC Concert Orchestra
• EFG London Jazz Festival
• Guy Barker
• Robert Ryan