Sunday Feature: Riding the Waves

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Riding the Waves

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, Riding the Waves

Artists dive deep beneath the waves of Virginia Woolf's inspirational novel.

Musicians and writers immerse themselves in the writing of Virginia Woolf, notably her musically modernist novel The Waves.

Literary style, the novelist Virginia Woolf wrote, is “all rhythm … Now, this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far, far deeper than words.”

Woolf's musically 'modernist' novel, The Waves, was first publsihed in 1931.  This Sunday Feature evokes a sense of what Woolf meant by literature's "allegiance" to music and how the rhythm of her writing might carry the reader beyond the word towards "the thing that lies beneath the semblance of the thing".  

The novelist Amy Sackville, watching the sea from a Kent beach, meditates on Woolf's interest in 'rhythm over narrative'; the musician Steve Harley recalls the precise moment this most beloved novel inspired his song Riding the Waves; the dramaturg Uzma Hameed traces the translation of Woolf's language from the page to the stage in Wayne McGregor's acclaimed ballet Woolf Works; the pianist Lana Bode (of the Virginia Woolf & Music project) reflects on the musicality of Woolf's language and the composer Jeremy Thurlow reveals both how Woolf was inspired by music, by Bach and Beethoven, and how her work has inspired his own music.

Music:
Max Richter: Three Worlds, music from Woolf Works: The Waves
Beethoven: String Quartet No.13 in B flat, Op. 130 (Alban Berg Quartett)
Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel: Riding the Waves
Laura Veirs: Rapture
Dominick Argento: From the Diary of Virginia Woolf (Marta Fontanals-Simmons, mezzo-soprano, and Lana Bode, piano)
Jeremy Thurlow: I See a Ring (specially recorded by King Henry's Eight)

With readings by Emma Fielding
Produced by Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio Three

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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