Performance On 3 – Judith Weir
Friday 18 January
7.00-8.45pm BBC RADIO 3

The irony, wit and immediacy of Judith Weir's music is celebrated by the BBC Symphony Orchestra's annual Composer Weekend at the Barbican in London. The weekend, Telling The Tale, aims to give an overview of the composer at the height of her creative powers, whose music never fails to enchant with its directness, lightness and narrative flow.

This first main evening concert of the weekend, broadcast live, includes orchestral pieces – Forest, Natural History, Winter Song and The Welcome Arrival Of Rain – performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under conductor André de Ridder. It is interspersed with British folk music from concertina maestro Simon Thoumire, with pianist David Milligan and the English Acoustic Collective.

From no more than the "seed" of its opening melody, Weir's Forest grows organically into a dense, flourishing work for a large orchestra. The piece unfolds to reveal what the composer describes as the "forest of folklore and pre-history", a place of anxiety and refuge. The song-cycle Natural History, with soprano Ailish Tynan, draws on the exquisitely concise language of Taoist poetry and its exploration of human and animal lives, while The Welcome Arrival Of Rain vividly evokes sensations associated with the Indian monsoon.

Presenter/Martin Handley, Producer/David Papp

BBC Radio 3 Publicity