In a series of three shows, Nora celebrates what the voice can do with a fabulously diverse playlist of tracks from around the world and across the centuries.

She listens to raw and passionate Bulgarian and Scandinavian singing alongside the profound warmth of Russian basses. She compares the ethereal angst of the voice of the last castrato to the effect of the longest high tenor C in classical music. And she sets the twisting ornamental lines of an 18th-century Handel opera aria next to the runs perfected by Whitney Houston and Beyoncé.

The growls and fluty noises of Tuvan throat singing, the acrobatics necessary to perform Rossini’s opera arias, and the purity of the countertenor voice are all celebrated in this second episode of Nora Fischer’s series. There are stratospheric sounds created by Jeff Buckley and Cleo Laine as well as the rumbling of a deep Rachmaninov bass line. Nora also finds how the voice box can imitate instruments like the Indian tabla and how a group of singers can even recreate the complexities of a Charlie Parker jazz classic.

A Tandem Production for BBC Radio 3 Show less