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Sound of Cinema on BBC Radio 3
Roger Wright, Controller, BBC Radio 3 & Director, BBC Proms, said: “As part of Sound of Cinema, I am delighted that Radio 3 will broadcast a special edition of In Tune with live music and guests from the film industry. It is a great thrill to be working with our colleagues across the BBC to bring together comprehensive programming for our audiences.”
Season Programme Information
In Tune will be live from the BFI in the season’s opening week for a gothic inspired programme on Friday 13 September looking at how the spookiest scores in cinema have worked, and The Tippett Quartet will be performing music by the master of unsettling strings, Hitchcock’s favourite composer Bernard Herrmann. This programme will be presented by Suzy Klein.
For each of the three weeks of the season Essential Classics will feature a film-related guest, including the highly decorated and double Academy Award nominated film composer Debbie Wiseman. The strand will also feature Neil Brand, the British author, composer, silent film accompanist and presenter of the BBC Four series, The Sound of Cinema, who will explore the way music works in film to capture a moment. His Guide to Film Music (WT) every day at 11am, will be made available to download. Also, in each programme, film music lovers will be able to test their knowledge in the daily brainteaser.
Throughout the season, Donald Macleod will present Composer of the Week on the subjects of the composer in Hollywood, British film composers and a week of programmes devoted especially to the hugely successful film composer, John Williams.
Film critic Mark Kermode, will make a guest appearance as presenter of Live In Concert throughout the week of 15 September as he presents 4 film music concerts from the BBC orchestras, including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra on 15th September, the BBC Concert Orchestra on the 16th September, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra on the 17th September and the BBC National Orchestra
of Wales on the 18th September.
In a series of Twenty Minutes interval features across the season, Tom Service will talk to some of the most successful film composers of the day about their collaborations with iconic directors. Highlights will include director Ken Loach and composer George Fenton discussing their 20 year partnership, composer Carter Burwell reflecting on working with the Coen Brothers and composer James Horner will look back on his academy award winning collaborations with the director, James Cameron.
From 16 September–20 September, Simon Heffer discusses five films filmed in the decade after the war in The Essay: Heffer On British Film which show British cinema dealing with gritty social issues and dramatic high standards. Films include It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), The Browning Version (1951), Mandy (1953) and Yield to the Night (1956). Five writers will explain their passion for the ground-breaking film director and producer duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in The Essay: Praising Powell and Pressburger.
From 23 September-27 September The Essay will hear from Deborah Bull on the Red Shoes, film historian Ian Christie on The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Rev Richard Coles on A Matter of Life and Death, novelist A L Kennedy on I Know Where I'm Going and film critic Peter Bradshaw on Black Narcissus.
Radio 3 presenter Matthew Sweet hosts a week of reflections on film music itself with essays from American cultural critic Camille Paglia on the film composers she most admires, the silent film composer Neil Brand and two essays from Matthew himself on the world of the film studios where musicians played on set to create the right mood for the actors and an exploration of what happens in the cinema when the music and talking stop, from the enigmatic final shots of Antonioni’s The Passenger to Michael Haneke’s Caché.
Matthew Sweet presents a special edition of Night Waves broadcasting a discussion from the BFI about the 1960s gothic horror, The
Innocents, on Thursday 19 September. Other guests across the season include directors Alan Parker, Beeban Kidron, Kevin Macdonald and Mike Figgis; actors Tim Piggott-Smith and Olivia Williams; composers Howard Blake, Debbie Wiseman and Alex Heffes, plus
Herrmann’s widow Norma Herrmann.
On Saturdays in Hear and Now Film editor and sound designer Walter Much talks to Robert Worby about the art of film editing and the influence of musique concrete on his work in such films as THX 1138 and The Conversation. And from last year’s Hear and Now
Fifty Series - on key works from the late 20th Century musician and writer David Toop celebrates Toru Takemitsu’s soundtrack for
Masaki Kobayashi’s 1964 horror film Kwaidan, based on Lafcadio Hearn’s retelling of Japanese ghost stories, with commentary from film scholar Peter Grilli.
On Saturday 21 September, Between the Ears examines how in 1956, cinema had its first full electronic film score and movies would never sound the same again as the creature from the Id found its voice in Forbidden Planet. Presenter Ken Hollings and the Radiophonic Workshop breathe new life in the creature & celebrate the lasting mystery of a revolutionary score. This is both a celebration and an electronic séance.
World Routes presenter Lopa Kothari meets A R Rahman, who brought about a revolution in Indian cinema in the 1990s with music that brought in fresh elements from Indian traditional and sacred music, plus western pop and classical. Rahman also insisted on a state of the art approach to sound quality, and two decades on, the technical standards in Indian films and in urban Indian cinemas are the equal of anywhere in the world. Emerging from the Tamil film industry, Rahman moved to Bollywood and then popularised Indian film music to a global audience, not least with his song ‘Jai Ho’ from ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Rahman is still based in the Tamil city of Chennai, and Lopa Kothari visits his studio, and also Rahman’s own music conservatory, where he is seeking to train a new generation of orchestral and traditional Indian musicians to perform for Indian films in the future. This programme is planned for broadcast on 22 September.
Other BBC Radio 3 content across the season includes throughout the season,
Radio 3’s Breakfast Show will run an A-Z of film music from listener suggestions and requests
Late Junction will feature Late Junction musical collaborations based on BFI short films
The Radio 3 overnight programme Through The Night will feature on 14th September a concert of the Danish National SO which includes Prokofiev - Alexander Nevsky Cantata
Or, more briefly, everything you always wanted to know about film music but weren't quite interested enough to ask. Felicitations to all those who devoted so much of their time to making this a Radio 3 special event.
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