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The Haunting

Texts and music on the theme of haunting, with readings by Emilia Fox and Jamie Glover. With Shakespeare, Hardy, Lawrence, Poe and Tennyson, plus Berlioz and Bax.

Emilia Fox and Jamie Glover read a selection of poetry and prose exploring some of literature's most chilling supernatural hauntings - but also the idea of being haunted by a lover, the past or a place. Berlioz's 'Dies irae' from his 'Symphonie Fantastique' opens the programme - a piece haunted by the composer's vision of female perfection - followed by arguably the most famous haunted character in literary history, Shakespeare's Hamlet, reflecting on the appearance of his father's spirit. Thomas Hardy's 'The Haunter' and D.H Lawrence's 'Silence' capture the melancholy of being haunted by the memory of a loved one, while Shirley Jackson's 'The Haunting of Hill House' and Edgar Allan's Poe's 'The Haunted Palace' provide unsettling examples of haunted house literature. In Thomas Mann's 'Death in Venice', his anti-hero Aschenbach wanders the labyrinthine Venetian streets, haunted by an obsessive sexual impulse; we hear Benjamin Britten's otherworldly musical imagining of the tale. And in Tennyson's poem 'A Spirit Haunts the Year's Last Hours' and Sir Arnold Bax's 'Into the Twilight', we glimpse nature in its haunted state: with the fading autumnal moments of the year, the spectral approach of winter and the growing shadows of the evening.

First broadcast in March 2012.

1 hour, 30 minutes

Last on

Sat 25 Aug 2012 18:00
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 3

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Music Played

Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes

  • 00:00

    Hector Berlioz

    Dies irae from Symphonie fantastique

    Performer: LSO, conducted by Pierre Boulez

    • Sony Classical, SM3K64703.

  • Shakespeare

    Hamlet, act One scene five, Jamie Glover.

  • 00:02

    Johannes Brahms

    Walpurgisnacht

    Performer: Gill Shaham (violin), Jonathan Feldman (piano)

    • DG, 463483-2.
    • 6.
  • 00:04

    Claude Debussy

    Syrinx

    Performer: Philippa Davies (flute)

    • Virgin Classics, VC791148-2.
    • 7.

  • Thomas Hardy

    The Haunter, Emilia Fox.

  • Shirley Jackson

    Extract from The Haunting of Hill House, Jamie Glover.

  • 00:08

    StanisΕ‚aw Moniuszko

    The Haunted Manor, overture

    Performer: Orchestra of the Polish National Opera Warsaw

    • EMI Classics, 5574892.

  • Toni Morison

    Extract from Beloved, Emilia Fox.

  • 00:13

    N/A

    Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child

    Performer: Barbara Hendricks (soprano), Dimitri Alexeev (piano)

    • EMI, 7470262.
    • 1.

  • D.H Lawrence

    Silence, Jamie Glover.

  • 00:17

    Aaron Copland

    Quiet City

    Performer: New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein

    • DG, 419170-2.
    • 5.

  • Leontia Flynn

    Excorcism, Emilia Fox.

  • 00:24

    Neil Hannon

    Songs of Love (theme from Father Ted)

    Performer: The Divine Comedy

    • Setanta, SETCD025.
    • 6.

  • Susan Hill

    Extract from The Woman in Black, Jamie Glover.

  • 00:31

    Felix Mendelssohn

    Lieder ohne Worte, Op. 53 No. 4 Adagio in F 'Sadness of Soul'

    Performer: Daniel Barenboim (piano)

    • DG, 453061-2.
  • 00:33

    Benjamin Britten

    Death in Venice, act two, scene thirteen.

    Performer: James Bowman (Apollo), John Shirley-Quirk (Dionysus), Peter Pears (Aschenbach)

    • London, 425669-2.

  • Emily Dickinson

    Time and Eternity, Emilia Fox.

  • 00:37

    Ludwig van Beethoven

    Trio No. 5 in D major, Op. 70 No. 1, 'Ghost', second mvt.

    Performer: The Borodin Trio

    • Chandos, CHAN9296.
    • 2.
  • 00:48

    Maurice Ravel

    Oiseaux tristes from Miroirs

    Performer: Louis Lortie (piano)

    • Chandos, CHAN8647.
    • 10.

  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    Haunted Houses

  • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

    A Spirit Haunts the Year’s Last Hours, Emilia Fox.

  • 00:53

    Arnold Bax

    Into the Twilight

    Performer: Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Philharmonic, conducted by Vernon Handley

    • Chandos.

  • Thom Gunn

    To Isherwood Dying, Jamie Glover.

  • 00:58

    John Kander

    So What? From Cabaret

    Performer: Lotte Lenya, Harold Hastings and Orchestra

    • Sony Classical, MHK60647.
    • 17.
  • 01:01

    Charlie Parker's Reboppers

    He Loved Him Madly

    Performer: Miles David

    • Columbia, CK67909.
    • 4.

  • Allen Ginsberg

    Haunting Poe’s Baltimore, Jamie Glover.

  • Edgar Allan Poe

    The Haunted Palace, Emilia Fox.

  • 01:06

    Hector Berlioz

    Un bal from Symphonie fantastique

    Performer: LSO, conducted by Pierre Boulez

    • Sony Classical, SM3K64703.

Broadcasts

  • Sun 11 Mar 2012 18:30
    Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 3
  • Sat 25 Aug 2012 18:00
    Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 3

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