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Producer’s Note – Ode to Autumn

To celebrate the first day of autumn this week’s Words and Music is devoted to what Keats called ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’. Autumn in the countryside is celebrated too in John Clare’s ‘Autumn’ and Percy Grainger’s ‘Harvest Hymn’. For Ted Hughes it is a more mysterious time of year - the frost on an ‘October Dawn’ leads to a premonition of an ice age where ‘mammoth and sabre-tooth celebrate reunion’. A harsher and more mystic season is also evoked in ‘The name of it is autumn’ by a poet much admired by Hughes, Emily Dickinson. And, for another American poet, Robert Frost, the ripe apples unharvested and falling from the tree leads him to a plea for man to resist ‘managing’ nature and to cherish the unknown and unexpected in life. Apples too In Patrick Kavanagh’s beautiful poem ‘The Long Garden’ in which the memory of a garden full of golden apples takes him back to his Irish childhood ‘where the sun was always setting on the play’. But, for Yeats, the sight of the wild swans at Coole as he walks through the woods with the trees in ‘their autumn beauty’ reminds him of the passing of time as he reaches the end of his life

The music in ‘Ode to Autumn’ takes us from the Italy of Vivaldi’s ‘L’Autumno’ to the tango of Piazzolla’s Buenos Aires autumn in ‘Otono Porteno’ and the Russian baccanale in Glazunov’s ‘L’Automne’. The programme ends with Mahler’s masterpiece ‘Der Einsame im Herbst’, written after the death of his daughter, a lament for the passing of beauty and the loneliness of the individual in the face of death.

Producer: Fiona McLean
Readers: Rachel Atkins and Nicholas Farrell.

Details of Readings and Music

ADELAIDE CRAPSEY
November Night
Rachel Atkins (reader)

ALEXANDER GLAZUNOV
L’Automne – Petit Adagio
The Seasons
Oscar Shumsky – violin
The Scottish National Orchestra
Neeme Jarvi – conductor
CHANDOS CHAN8596

JOHN CLARE
Autumn
Nicholas Farrell (reader)

PERCY GRAINGER
Harvest Hymn
´óÏó´«Ã½ Philharmonic
Richard Hickox – conductor
CHANDOS CHAN9493

TED HUGHES
October Dawn
Nicholas Farrell (reader)

EMILY DICKINSON
The Name of It
Rachel Atkins (reader)

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA
Maria de Buenos Aires
Otono Porteno
BELLA MUSICA BMCD317033

PATRICK KAVANAGH
The Long Garden
Rachel Atkins (reader)

PYOTR TCHAIKOVSKY
November – Troika
The Seasons
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Neeme Jarvi – conductor
CHANDOS CHAN9514

ROBERT FROST
Unharvested
Rachel Atkins (reader)

FRANZ SCHUBERT
Herbst
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau – baritone
Alfred Brendel – piano
PHILIPS 4114212

ROBERT FROST
Gathering Leaves
Nicholas Farrell (reader)

GERALD FINZI
Shortening Days
Who are these children and other songs
Mark Padmore – tenor
Roger Vignoles – piano
HYPERION CDA67459

JOHN KEATS
Ode to Autumn
Rachel Atkins (reader)

ANTONIO VIVALDI
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The Four Seasons
Nigel Kennedy – violin
Berliner Philharmoniker
EMI 5576660

WALLACE STEVENS
Autumn Refrain
Rachel Atkins (reader)

LUIS TINOCO
Autumn Wind – moderato
Music for Wind Quintet
Galliard Ensemble
MERIDIAN CDE84429

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
The Vagabond
Songs of Travel
Benjamin Luxon – baritone
David Willison – piano
CHANDOS CHAN8475

W.B. YEATS
The Wild Swans at Coole
Nicholas Farrell (reader)

PYOTR TCHAIKOVSKY
October – Autumn Song
The Seasons
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Neeme Jarvi – conductor
CHANDOS CHAN9514

MARY OLIVER
Fall Song
Rachel Atkins (reader)

FRANZ HAYDN
Der Herbst
The Seasons
Leipziger Kammerorchester
NAXOS 8557600001

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
Rachel Atkins (reader)

ROGER QUILTER
Autumn Evening
Songs by Roger Quilter
John Mark Ainsley – tenor
Malcolm Martineau – piano
HYPERION CDA66878

SEAMUS HEANEY
Exposure
Nicholas Farrell (reader)

MAX RICHTER
November
Memory House
´óÏó´«Ã½LJ30022

PHILIP LARKIN
And now the leaves suddenly lose strength
Nicholas Farrell (reader)

GUSTAV MAHLER
Der Einsame im Herbst
Brigitte Fassbaender –mezzosoprano
Francisco Araiza – tenor
Wiener Philharmoniker
Carlo Maria Guilini – conductor
ORFEO C654052B

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