Words and Music

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Drama

Music: Classical

A journey of discovery, weaving music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

A weekly journey of discovery, weaving together a range of music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

Words and Music: The Bridge

The Bridge

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, The BridgeClose menu

Readings by Paapa Essiedu and Alice St Clair take us from London to Paris and Istanbul.

Readings by Paapa Essiedu and Alice St Clair take us from London to Paris and Istanbul. Music moves from Mississippi and Manhattan to a recording made inside Tower Bridge.

An exhilarating leap in the dark and a feat of engineering. Bridges shape our world, whether they're constructions thrown across a raging torrent, or synaptic sparks that help us understand each other converting incomprehension into meaning.  

In the year which has seen Tower Bridge across the Thames marking its 125th anniversary this Words and Music features readings by Paapa Essiedu and Alice St Clair. 

We travel from west to east on the Galata Bridge in Istanbul, which links Europe to Asia; move to the fateful Tallahatchie Bridge in Mississippi made famous in Bobby Gentry's song; and brood on the rainbow bridge that inspired Wagner.  Other musical choices range from George Gershwin and Benjamin Britten, to Sonny Rollins, who practised his saxophone alone on the Williamsburg Bridge to Sally Beamish "Bridging the Day".  There’s a bit of loitering under the arch of a railway bridge while W. H. Auden cocks an ear to a lover’s song;  Thomas Hood's influential Victorian poem about a suicide on Waterloo Bridge; and a dizzy descent into the mechanical heart of Tower Bridge where Iain Chambers recorded his musique concrete composition – Bascule Chambers.

Readings:
Geert Mak First sight of the Galata Bridge 3 extracts.
W. H. Auden  As I walked out one Evening
Thomas Hood  The Bridge of Sighs
Seamus Heaney  Scaffolding
Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Leonard Cottrell  Pont du Carrousel
T. S. Eliot   From The Waste Land, The Burial of the Dead
William Wordsworth  Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
R. S. Thomas  Ninetieth Birthday
Octavio Paz translated by Eliot Weinberger  The Bridge
Geert Mak  From The Bridge (Last sight of the Galata Bridge)

Producer: Zahid Warley.


Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Words and Music

The Bridge

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3