#BBC Radio 3

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

phia singing in bbc radio 3 drama “christabel.”

[morsesnotes]

For anyone not able to listen on the BBC or who'd just like to listen to the sections where Shaun Evans was reading, here you go!

Magi Gibson - Strange Fish

EM Forster - A Room with a View (excerpt)

Stevie Smith - Not Waving but Drowning

Seamus Heaney - Death of a Naturalist

Marriott Edgar - The Channel Swimmer

Part 2

You can listen to the whole broadcast here.

[clarasteam]

Ncuti Gatwa as Gatsby, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Daisy, Malachi Kirby as Nick - starting 12 January!

[shaun-evans-fanblog]

Shaun will be doing readings.

[blake-ritson-love]

BBC Radio 3 - The Dance of Death, new audio drama starring Blake Ritson, Hattie Morahan & Robert Glenister. The drama is available for online listening till Dec 10.

[nonesuchrecords]

"He's someone who has the gift to turn complex music and ideas into dazzlingly communicative performances and prose," BBC Radio 3's Saturday Morning host Tom Service says of his guest, Jeremy Denk, "in his fascinating memoir, Every Good Boy Does Fine ... and above all in his approach to all the music he plays, from Bach partitas to Mozart concertos to Charles Ives." You can hear their conversation as well as music from his 2021 album of Mozart piano concertos with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra—"fantastic embodiments of his freedom as a performer"—and an exclusive first play from his upcoming Ives album from 39 minutes in here.

[helmstone]

BBC to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's First Folio

BBC to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's First Folio

The BBC has revealed a host of programmes across TV and radio to mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio. Published seven years after his death, it’s the reason his name and works are still so well known so long after his passing. Highlights from the BBC include: Major three part boxset for BBC Two and iPlayer – Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius with an A-list…

[mann-walter]

When We Dead Awaken

By accident (“accident” as in scrolling through Twitter), I found BBC Radio 3’s 31 March broadcast of Ibsen’s “When We Dead Awaken” a couple days ago. It became a study session soundtrack in an instant.

It was my first ever experience of Ibsen’s work (or an adaptation of it), and I liked it although I think the ideas represented in the drama are no novelty for us living in this century (I haven’t been able to get my hands on the Michael Meyer translation so I can’t speak for the text itself). I like the symbolism, especially the mountain-climbing and seeing the glories of the world bit. I think it’s an obvious metaphor for living your life to the fullest.

Putting the climax in that context, I see Maia and Ulfheim representing people who take the chance to do so immediately as it comes and make the most of it, while Rubek and Irena are of another camp that finally comes to the conclusion but is far too late. They catch up with the former, yes, but when the time calls them to climb down, to settle with life I suppose, they still frantically try to go up and get killed because of it.

I haven’t decided what the “nun” (who’s actually a “deaconess”) is supposed to represent. The shadow of a consuming death of the spirit? Maybe that’s why she tails Irena in a symbolic sense.

PS: The audio format is great in conveying the implicit messages. My mind can immediately jump to where it needs to thus making interpretation easier for me.

[ceevee5]

Losing “Freeness” and especially “J-to-Z” is a wrench. But it’s five hours of weekday jazz programming being added. But it’s at 1130pm at night. But do people listen on broadcast or use online/app catch-up nowadays? It was too big. Jazz was too big.

[morsesnotes]

Part 2!

Robin Robinson - Swimming in the Woods

Lord Byron - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (excerpt)

Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty (excerpt)

You can listen to the whole broadcast here.

[clarasteam]

Gershwin & Miss Swift

BBC Radio 3, Sunday 22 December 8pm GMT

Drama on 3

The extraordinary true story of composer Kay Swift and her ten-year love affair with George Gershwin. 

Before Taylor Swift, there was Kay Swift – her distant relative, and another unique game-changing musician. Kay became the first woman to score a hit Broadway musical. When Kay meets George, sparks fly. But Kay is happily married with children, and George is only truly faithful to his creative talent. A psychoanalyst adds fuel to the fire. Kay chooses to forge her own future – in love and music – risking everything along the way.

Written by Andrew McCaldon and recorded live in front of an audience at the Alexandra Palace Theatre, London with Swift and Gershwin’s music performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra with singer Lucy-Anne Daniels and pianist Ben Dawson. The conductor is Keith Lockhart.

Kay Swift ….. Lydia Leonard  George Gershwin ….. Jamie Parker Jimmy Warburg ….. Jacob Fortune-Lloyd  Gregory Zilboorg ….. Joseph May Ellen Swift ….. Tara Ward 

Directed by Tracey Neale

Producers - Tracey Neale and Neil Varley

With special thanks to Katharine Weber, Aaron Gandy, and the Kay Swift Trust.

[juliansummerhayes]

Here now.

[hattie-morahan]

Set in a military outpost off the coast of Sweden, the Captain and his wife Alice embark on a series of spiteful games in an attempt to alleviate the hell they’ve created for themselves. Events take a new and disturbing turn when Kurt, a divisive figure from their past, arrives back on the scene.

The Captain ….. Robert Glenister Alice ….. Hattie Morahan Kurt ….. Blake Ritson

Piano performed by Peter Ringrose Directed by Gemma Jenkins

Written in 1900 Strindberg originally intended to call this dissection of a marriage gone bad, The Vampire. The story twists and turns around the febrile energy given off by this trio of characters as they each feed off the unhappiness of the other.

Broadcast date: 19 March 2023 

This will be uploaded to our Audio Archive once it’s aired.

[thoughtportal]

The Forty Thieves gang, Buffalo Bill, designs chosen by sailors, convicts, lovers: Shahidha Bari looks at the history of tattoos with Matt Lodder, Zoe Alker and Tanya Buxton from the opening of the first commercial parlour in London’s West End in 1889 to the most popular images now and their use to enhance wellbeing.

Zoe Alker has studied over 75,000 tattoos seen on convicts between 1790-1925. She teaches in the criminology department at the University of Liverpool. Matt Lodder is a Senior Lecturer in Art History and Theory, and Director of American Studies at the University of Essex. His research primarily concerns the application of art-historical methods to history of Western tattooing from the 17th century to the present day.

Tanya Buxton is a tattoo artist based in Cheltenham, specialising in medical tattoos.

[nonesuchrecords]

"Inevitably when I practice, I don't say that I'm doing this, but I kind of take the piece apart and ask myself why every part is there," Jeremy Denk tells BBC Radio 3's Music Matters. "You don't want to say you're going into the mind of the composer, but you do a little bit. And then I like to feel that every part is justified, that I can make sense of it for myself." You can hear it here.