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The Mighty Oak

Readings by Sian Phillips and Joseph Mydell. Music from Wuthering Heights, Bernard Herrmann's only opera, Butterworth's English Idyll No 1, and The Teddy Bears' Picnic.

From Pooh Bear to John Clare - if you go down to the woods today you will hear readings by Sian Phillips and Joseph Mydell and music by Berlioz, Beethoven and Butterworth. We begin with Verdi and Smetana's operatic versions of Macbeth and a description of an American staging of Macbeth described in the novel by Richard Powers, The Overstory, which won him the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Winnie-the-Pooh comes unstuck looking for honey in an oak tree, while Aesop’s fable contrasts the unbending oak with the more flexible reeds. Rhapsodic oak-themed poems come from Emily Dickinson, Lord Tennyson and Joseph Enright, and one tinged with wistful sadness from John Clare. We hear about oak wood furniture described in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, about coffins in a poem by W. Harrison Ainsworth and a passage from Samantha Harvey's novel set in the 15th century called The Western Wind where a man is woken from his sleep in an oak confession booth by news of a dead body. And as a metaphor for the end of things, the Scottish poet William Soutar’s bleak vision of the cruel death of an oak under the axeman’s gleam was set to music by Benjamin Britten in his song cycle for tenor and piano Who Are These Children? and ends our programme.

READINGS:
Shakespeare: Macbeth
Richard Powers: The Overstory
Anne Enright: The Acorn
James Frazer: The Golden Bough
Aesop: The Oak and the Reeds
Emily Dickinson: I Robbed the Woods
Alfred Tennyson: The Oak
AA Milne: Winnie the Pooh
John Clare: The Road Oak
Edmund Burke: Reflections on the French Revolution
Samantha Harvey: The Western Wind
Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights
W Harrison Ainsworth: The Old Oak Coffin
Thomas Carlyle: The French Revolution

1 hour, 15 minutes

Last on

Sun 22 Oct 2023 17:30
Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3

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Music Played

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

  • 00:00

    Giuseppe Verdi

    Macbeth

    Performer: Philharmonia Orchestra, Riccardo Muti.
    • EMI CDC7479542.
    • tr1.

  • Shakespeare

    Macbeth, read by Sian Phillips

  • Shakespeare

    Macbeth, read by Joseph Mydell

  • 00:00

    Bedrich Smetana

    Macbeth and the Witches

    Performer: Radoslav Kvapil.
    • Unicorn-Kanchana.
    • tr1.

  • Powers

    The Overstory, read by Sian Phillips

  • 00:00

    Bedrich Smetana

    Macbeth and the Witches

    Performer: Radoslav Kvapil.
    • Unicorn-Kanchana.
    • tr1.

  • Enright

    The Acorn, read by Sian Phillips

  • 00:00

    Butterworth

    English Idyll no.1

    Performer: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, John Wilson.
    • Avie AV2194.
    • tr1.

  • Frazer

    The Golden Bough, read by Joseph Mydell

  • 00:00

    Hector Berlioz

    Royal Hunt and Storm from The Trojans

    Performer: LSO, Colin Davis.
    • LSO Live LSO0010.
    • tr1.

  • Aesop

    The Oak and the Reeds

  • 00:00

    Beethoven

    Symphony no.6 ‘Pastoral

    Performer: Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vanska.
    • BIS SACD182526.
    • tr5.

  • Dickinson

    I robbed the woods, read by Sian Phillips

  • Tennyson

    The Oak, read by Sian Phillips

  • Milne

    Winnie The Pooh, read by Sian Phillips

  • 00:00

    Murray

    The Teddy BearsÂ’ Picnic

    Performer: Val Rosing.
    • Columbia DB955.
    • tr1.

  • Clare

    The Round Oak, read by Sian Phillips

  • 00:00

    Franz Schubert

    Die schone Mullerin

    Performer: Jonas Kaufmann, Helmut Deutsch.
    • Decca 4781528.
    • tr16.

  • Burke

    Reflections on the Revolution in France, read by Joseph Mydell

  • 00:00

    Ralph Vaughan Williams

    Entracte no.2 from The Wasps

    Performer: RLPO, James Judd.
    • Naxos 8572304.
    • tr4.

  • Harvey

    The Western Wind, read by Joseph Mydell

  • 00:00

    Herrmann

    Introduction from Wuthering Heights

    Performer: Pro Arte Orchestra, Bernard Herrmann.
    • Unicorn-Kanchana UKCD20505152.
    • tr1.

  • Bronte

    Wuthering Heights, read by Joseph Mydell

  • 00:01

    Burgon

    Farwell to Narnia

    Performer: Philharmonia, Geoffrey Burgon.
    • Silva Screen FILMCD117.
    • tr24.

  • Ainsworth

    The Old Oak Coffin, read by Joseph Mydell

  • 00:01

    Arnold Schoenberg

    Verklarte Nacht

    Performer: Juilliard Quartet, Walter Trampler, Yo Yo Ma.
    • Sony Classical SMK62019.
    • tr4.

  • Carlyle

    The French Revolution, read by Sian Phillips

  • 00:01

    Benjamin Britten

    Who are these children?

    Performer: Peter Pears, Benjamin Britten.
    • Decca 4768492.
    • tr28.

Words and Music: The Might Oak

Producer’s note:

As Radio 3 ventures Into The Forest, Words and Music focusses on the mighty oak.  We start with Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the witches, illustrated with music by Verdi and Smetana; a more contemporary American production described in Richard Powers’ The Overstory.

Winnie-the-Pooh comes unstuck looking for honey in an oak tree, while Aesop’s fable contrasts the unbending oak with the more flexible reeds.  Rhapsodic oak-themed poems come from Emily Dickinson, Lord Tennyson and Joseph Enright, one more tinged with wistful sadness from John Clare.

Our uses for oak wood for furniture feature in selections from Emily Bronte and Samantha Harvey, and for coffins from W. Harrison Ainsworth.

And as a metaphor for the end of things, William Soutar’s bleak vision of the cruel death of an oak under the axeman’s gleam comes from Benjamin Britten.

Broadcasts

  • Sun 24 Jun 2018 17:30
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3
  • Sun 22 Oct 2023 17:30
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 3

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