Words and Music

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

BBC Radio 3

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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: Sisters

Sisters

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Sisters

Dorothy Wordsworth, Fanny Mendelssohn, Hildegard of Bingen, the Labeques and Unthanks.

Pippa Nixon and Sarah Amankwah read from Brit Bennett, Daisy Johnson, Colm Tóibín and CS Lewis. Music includes Angelique Kidjo, Fanny Mendelssohn and the Boulangers.

For there is no friend like a sister, and in this International Women’s Day edition of Words and Music, Pippa Nixon and Sarah Amankwah explore the complex relationships between sisters. From delighting in each other’s company with readings of Wordsworth and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, to seething with jealousy in extracts from Arifa Akbar’s Consumed and CS Lewis’s Narnia, to sadness at parting in Diana Hendry’s Parting and Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half. There are many types of sisters: not just blood relatives, but friends, loved ones, and those rallying together to change the world. Emily Dickinson celebrates a sister-in-law, and Rupi Kaur celebrates sisters-in-heart, while we turn to Magi Gibson makes a call to arms for sisters in her poem ‘Wild Women of a Certain Age’. We also hear about musical sisters, Nanerl Mozart and Fanny Mendelssohn.

Musically, we hear figures twisting around one another like sisters in Bach’s Double Concerto and Brahms’s Concerto for Violin and Cello. Our soundtrack also includes piano duets played by the Labeque Sisters. As well as Fanny Mendelssohn, there’s music from sisters Nadia and Lili Boulanger. We explore jealousy and sadness in songs from Hamilton and by the Unthank Sisters, and celebrate sisterhood with Angelique Kidjo.

Readers: Sarah Amankwah and Pippa Nixon.

Producer: Sofie Vilcins

Image: Susannah Harker (L) and Jennifer Ehle (R) as sisters Jane and Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC's 1996 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice

You might also be interested in the Free Thinking episode on International Women's Day March 8th in which Shahidha Bari talks to the Unthank Sisters and to the authors Oyinkan Braithwaite and Lucy Holland and feminist historian Professor Sally Alexander.

READINGS: 
Christina Rossetti  Goblin Market
William Wordsworth  To My Sister
Spike Milligan  My Sister Laura
Jane Austen  Pride and Prejudice
Brit Bennett  The Vanishing Half
Rupi Kaur  It isn’t blood
Emily Dickinson  One Sister Have I In Our House
Colm Tóibín  Brooklyn
Daisy Johnson  Sisters
Diana Hendry  Parting
Vicki Feaver  The Witches
Louisa May Alcott  Little Women
Arifa Akbar  Consumed
CS Lewis  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart  Letter
Anna Beer  Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music
Cicely Hamilton  Marriage as a Trade
Magi Gibson  Wild Women of a Certain Age
Charlotte Mew  The Peddler

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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