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: Coming of Age

Coming of Age

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Coming of Age

Josh O'Connor and Lydia Wilson with readings from Shakespeare to a bar mitzvah poem.

From Romeo and Juliet to Naoise Dolan and Harry Potter. Also the debut book from comedian Tez Ilyas, a performance by George the Poet and a winner of the Foyle Young Poets prize.

Josh O'Connor and Lydia Wilson with readings inspired by youthful experiences. Fresh from his role as Romeo for the National Theatre – a classic ‘coming of age’ story – The Crown’s Josh O'Connor reads Shakespeare, James Joyce and Harry Potter. Lydia Wilson, star of the thriller Requiem, offers contemporary fiction from Naoise Dolan and Emma Cline, along with Dickens’ bildungsroman David Copperfield, and a poem by Libby Russell, a past winner of the Foyle Young Poets Award run by the Poetry Society. Ted Hughes recites his own translation of Ovid in archive audio and Tez Ilyas reads from his Secret Diary of a British Muslim Aged 13 ¾. 

The music includes Stravinsky's adolescent girls dancing the Rite of Spring, a Marian hymn from Palestrina, and Ravel's mythical young lovers, Daphnis et Chloé. Herbie Hancock, Rebecca Clarke and Felix Mendelssohn come of age as composers, while Patrick Doyle's film music shows Prince Hal turn into noble Henry V. The programme closes with Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier: the Marschallin bids farewell to her lost youth, and wishes her lover happiness with his new young bride.

Producer: Hannah Sander

Readings:
Charles Dickens – David Copperfield
Mishnah 5:21
Tez Ilyas – The Secret Diary of a British Muslim Aged 13 ¾
CS Lewis – Prince Caspian
James Joyce – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Libby Russell – ‘gaff’
Françoise Sagan – Bonjour Tristesse
Socrates (Plato) – ‘The children now love luxury’
Margaret Mead – Coming of Age in Samoa
Evelyn Waugh – Brideshead Revisited
Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet
Ted Hughes – ‘Echo and Narcissus’
Naoise Dolan – Exciting Times
Thomas Morris – ‘All the Boys’
JK Rowling – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Emma Cline – The Girls
Claude McKay – ‘Adolescence’

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.

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Words and Music

Coming of Age

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