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: Nature of the British Isles

Nature of the British Isles

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Nature of the British Isles

From Orkney, George Mackay Brown and Peter Maxwell Davies to Keats on the Isle of Wight.

From Mendelssohn's Hebridean Fingal's Cave to John Ireland's Guernsey piece Sarnia, and with words from Virginia Woolf to the Orkneyinga Saga read by Georgie Glen and Tom Durham.

Island hopping around Britain, with readings by Georgie Glen and Tom Durham, takes us on our Words and Music journey today to: 

A cavern on the Isle of Staffa which inspired Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave 

Martin Martin, in A Late Voyage to St Kilda, describes life in 1698 in what was the most remote spot in the British Empire 

Far to the south west Angeline Morrison sings, from the perspective of his mother, of the unknown African boy, washed up after wreck of a slave ship and buried on St Martin’s in the Isles of Scilly 

In 1980 Lucy Rendall was the first child to be born at Rackwick in Hoy for 32 years. The chronicler of Orkney life, George Mackay Brown, wrote Lullaby for Lucy in celebration, and Peter Maxwell Davies set it. We learn of Hebridean life centuries earlier in the Orkneyinga Saga 
 
Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, set in Skye, was inspired by Godrevy lighthouse, off St Ives 

Shetland fiddler Aly Bain and squeezebox player Phil Cunningham pay tribute to their pianist friend in Violet Tulloch Queen of Lerwick 

Brenda Chamberlain’s Tide Race is an account of her life on Bardsey – Ynys Enlli, the island in the current, in Welsh. We hear music by the triple harpist of Anglesey, Ynys Mon, Llio Rhydderch, from her album album, Enlli  
 
Wordsworth wrote in praise of Grace Darling, tragic heroine of the Farne Islands, as has, in our time, Michael Longley 

John Keats wrote wonderful letters and poems while staying on the Isle of Wight, where Brits winners Wet Leg are writing interesting words and music today.

Sarnia is the old name for Guernsey, inspiration for a piece of that name by John Ireland 
 
Producer: Julian May

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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