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: Razor Sharp

Razor Sharp

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From clam shells to barbers, sharp words to sharp notes.

OT Fagbenle and Clare Corbett read from Graham Greene, Jane Austen, Malcolm X and Sandra Cisneros. Music includes Korngold's Symphony in F sharp and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.

From barbers to seashells, sharp notes to cutting remarks. With readings by Clare Corbett and OT Fagbenle, today's programme plays with the phrase ‘razor sharp’, revelling in the drama and disruption inherent in these two short words. We'll hear the writing of Jane Austen, Dorothy Parker and Sandra Cisneros, and an example of the wonderful one-upmanship of Ethel Merman singing Anything You Can Do.  Robert Graves looks at the unshaven ‘Face in the Mirror’ and Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd compete to showcase their particular wares.  Gangs of youths from the music of West Side Story to the TV series Peaky Blinders to Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock emanate menace, razors glinting in the sunshine, or tucked neatly into caps.  Dizzee Rascal might be looking sharp, but it’s the words of Malcolm X which cut through. You can hear how he moves from sharp-suited youth to the civil rights activist whose racially charged words challenge white Americans in the 1960s.  Musically, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and JS Bach play with sharp keys, while Handel’s music floats across the water as the 18th-century pleasure barge organised by the Sharp family glides down the Thames.
 
Producer: Katy Hickman

BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting a reading of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock at 10.45 each weekday evening across this fortnight. 

READINGS
The Razor Shell - Vernon Watkins 
Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells - Helen Scales 
The Good Sharps - Hester Grant 
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville 
The Face In The Mirror - Robert Graves 
The Massacre - Walter De la Mare  
Tired - Langston Hughes 
Brighton Rock - Graham Greene 
Miscast I - Amy Lowell  
The Autobiography - Malcolm X 
Loose Woman - Sandra Cisneros
Emma - Jane Austen  
Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare 
Interview - Dorothy Parker

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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