大象传媒

A 大象传媒-led weekend of over 100 live music events across the UK - from Cornwall to the Shetland Isles and Belfast to Birmingham - launching the nationwide countdown to the London 2012 Festival.

Radio 3 celebrates live music-making all weekend, handing on the baton from concert to concert, featuring a wide range of professional and amateur events and talking to the people who've made it all happen. Presented by Andrew McGregor and Suzy Klein.

John Toal introduces a historic cooperation: live from the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, the Dublin-based RT脡 Concert Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra perform together for the first time. The massed orchestra will perform the world premiere of a new 大象传媒 Radio 3 commission, Praise Aloud the Trees by Northern Ireland composer Brian Irvine. The text is from Sweeney Astray, a translation by Seamus Heaney of Buile Suibhne, a 12th-century Irish cycle about the Ulster petty king "mad Sweeney", who lost his reason at the Battle of Mag Rath or Moira in 637.

Also on the programme are a showpiece for each orchestra: the RTE Concert Orchestra play Korngold's "Robin Hood Suite" - music to the 1938 film score Adventures of Robin Hood - and the Ulster Orchestra play Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio espagnol. The concert begins with the combined orchestra in the aptly named "On the Waterfront" Symphonic Suite by Leonard Bernstein.

Bernstein: On the Waterfront - Symphonic Suite
Korngold: Robin Hood Suite
Rimsky Korsakov: Capriccio espagnol
Brian Irvine: Praise Aloud the Trees (Radio 3 commission) for 2 orchestras and choir
Chorus
Ulster Orchestra
RT脡 Concert Orchestra
Jurjen Hempel (conductor).