International Women’s Day

This year, Radio 3’s International Women’s Day celebration coincides with the centenary of women’s suffrage in the UK. Here’s our essential guide:

On Thursday 8 March, the day begins in the early hours on Through the Night (12.30am) as Catriona Young presents music composed by women from around Europe. Essential Classics (9am) takes a historical overview of women’s suffrage with New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton, and conductor Mirga Grazˇinyte˙ -Tyla drops in as a special studio guest. In Composer of the Week (12 noon) Donald Macleod heads to the London studio of the Oscarwinning composer Rachel Portman, who has written the music to The Duchess and Chocolat among many others. Judith Weir, the Master of the Queen’s Music, is the guest on Afternoon on 3 (2pm), as Radio 3 presents her opera Blond Eckbert alongside music she admires by women composers, including Kaija Saariaho (above) and Hildegard of Bingen.

The day culminates with a special live In Concert (7.30pm) at London’s LSO St Luke’s, featuring previously unpublished and unrecorded pieces by five women composers whose scores have been unearthed by academics involved in a joint BBC/ARTS and Humanities Research Council initiative. Conductor Jane Glover leads the BBC Concert Orchestra in performances by the selected composers, including Leokadiya Kashperova, a Russian pianist who taught Stravinsky, the esteemed African American Florence Price (see p46), and Augusta Holmès, the first woman to have an opera premiered in Paris.

Tune in too on 9 March, when the Voices of

Hope choir performs The Pankhurst Anthem live on In Tune from Sage Gatehead’s Free Thinking Festival (5pm). The piece, commissioned by Radio 3 to mark the centenary of women’s suffrage, has music by Lucy Pankhurst and a text by Helen Pankhurst (above), based on works by her greatgrandmother, the suffragette Emmeline Pankhust.