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: All Fingers and Thumbs

All Fingers and Thumbs

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, All Fingers and Thumbs

Trilling, sucking, spinning, plucking – fingers, and thumbs, do the talking.

With readings from Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Sarah Waters by Clare Perkins and Sean Barrett and music by performers including Martha Argerich and Anoushka Shankar.

Fingers and thumbs define us – they can signify our identity and family heritage. One of the first things a baby does is suck its thumb, until Struwwelpeter’s great tall tailor comes to cut it clean off. 

Sylvia Plath contemplates her bleeding thumb stump, while Ted Hughes remembers her fingers leaping and somersaulting across the keyboard. There are magic fingers, hitchhiking thumbs, spin bowling experts and light-fingered thieves, with readings from Roald Dahl, Sarah Waters, Ian McEwan and Lorna Goodson – brought to life by Clare Perkins and Sean Barrett. 

Musically, dextrous fingers predominate as players – from Martha Argerich to Anoushka Shankar – ply them with great skill. The piano, harp, drums and the thumb piano, the mbira are all on show with works from Rachmaninov, Sally Beamish and Thomas Ades.

Producer: Katy Hickman

READINGS:
Omar Khayyám – ‘The Moving Finger Writes’  
Sinead Morrissey – Genetics 
H. Frith and E.H. Allen – Chiromancy, Or the Science of Palmistry 
Sylvia Plath – Cut 
Ted Hughes – Fingers 
Lorna Goodson – I Am Becoming My Mother
Darian Leader – Hands, What We Do With Them 
Dr Heinrich Hoffmann – The Story of Little Suck-A-Thumb 
Roald Dahl – The Magic Finger
Ian McEwan – Lessons
Emily Dickinson – I Held A Jewel In My Fingers 
Sir Thomas Wyatt – Of his love that pricked her Finger with a Needle 
Thomas Hood – Song of the Shirt 
Stephanie Norgate – Variations On A Plain Theme 
E.T.A Hoffman, translated by Martyn Clarke – Musical Writings
F.N.S. Creek – Teach Yourself Cricket 
Sarah Waters – Fingersmith
Hadara Bar-Nadav – Thumb 
Tom Robbins – Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

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

All Fingers and Thumbs

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