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.

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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: Prague and Kafka

Prague and Kafka

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Prague and Kafka

Colin Tierney and Jo Herbert with readings including Kafka, Holub, Else Lasker-Schueller.

Music by Mahler, Mozart and the rhythms of Erwin Schulhoff and Josef Kainar alongside readings from works by Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakami, Miroslav Holub and Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Franz Kafka created in his novels and short stories, worlds that are fantastical yet seemingly also realistic. Kafka, who died in June 1924, was a native of Prague, a city that for centuries had been a magnet for conjurers, astronomers, inventors, visionary rabbis, social reformers, and for numerous invaders too. Its mosaic of different subcultures inspired symphonies by Mozart and Mahler and piano music by Philip Glass and it also gave rise to the syncopated rhythms of Kafka's contemporary Erwin Schulhoff and the blues of Josef Kainar.  
We start our visit to Kafka's Prague with Schulhoff's Hot Sonate and a reminiscence of the writer’s friend Johannes Urzidil.  Kafka's own words are followed by vivid retellings of his celebrated story of a salesman who becomes an insect, Metamorphosis, by Philip Roth and by Haruki Murakami. 20th-century Czech poets including Miroslav Holub, Vitezslav Nezval and former president Václav Havel then paint their vignettes of the city while English-speaking visitors, including Jerome Klapka Jerome and  Patrick Leigh Fermor, surrender to the charm of the Czech capital.  

The readers are Jo Herbert and Colin Tierney.

Producer: Radek Boschetty

Readings: 
There goes Kafka by Johannes Urzidil (trans. Harold Basilius)
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (trans. Willa and Edwin Muir)
The Prague Orgy by Philip Roth
A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Samsa in Love by Haruki Murakami (trans. Ted Goossen)
Zito, the magician by Miroslav Holub (trans. George Theiner)
Chronica boemorum by Kosmas
To the Castle and Back by Vaclav Havel (trans. Paul Wilson)
Defenestrate by Renee Branum
Three Men On The Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
Prague Pictures by Joseph Banville
Mozart in Prague by Jaroslav Seifert
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Prague With Fingers Of Rain by Vitezslav Nezval (trans. Ewald Osers)
Franz Werfel by Else Lasker-Schueller (trans. Audri Durchslag-Litt and Jeanette Litman-Demeestere)
The Spirit of Prague by Ivan Klima (trans. Paul Wilson)
Prague Spring by Simon Mawer
Everyone has their reasons by Simona Bohata (trans. Alzbeta Bolanova)

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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