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Adam Foulds

Michael Berkeley talks to novelist Adam Foulds. His selections include Schoenberg's Op 24 Serenade, plus Debussy, Oliver Knussen, Janacek, Nicholas Ludford and Neutral Milk Hotel.

Michael Berkeley's guest is Adam Foulds, one of the most exciting young British writers to have emerged in the past decade. He read English at Oxford and graduated with an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in 2001. His first novel, 'The Truth About These Strange Times', won a Betty Trask Award in 2007, while his 2008 verse novella 'The Broken Word' won the poetry prize in the Costa Book Awards. In 2009 his second novel, 'The Quickening Maze', was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Adam Foulds is passionate about all kinds of music, but his selection today focuses on 20th-century music - Schoenberg's Op.24 Serenade, Debussy's Sonata for flute, viola and harp, songs by Ligeti and Stravinsky, two short pieces by Oliver Knussen, and the Vixen's Dream sequence from Janacek's opera 'The Cunning Little Vixen'. All reveal an absorbing interest in delicate and complex musical textures, as well as a keen ear for sonorities - characteristics he also brings to his own work. The two exceptions are the first piece, an extract from a Mass by the early English composer Nicholas Ludford, which Adam Foulds believes has much in common with the sound of more recent English music; and finally a track from Neutral Milk Hotel's album 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea'.

1 hour

Last on

Sun 5 Dec 2010 12:00

Music Played

  • Nicholas Ludford

    Gloria from the Missa Videte Miraculum

    Performers: The Cardinall's Musick/Andrew Carwood

    • Nicholas Ludford.
    • ASV CD GAU 131.
  • Arnold Schoenberg

    Tanzszene (5th movement from the Serenade, Op 24)

    Performers: London Sinfonietta/David Atherton

    • Schoenberg.
    • DECCA 425 626-2.
  • Reading

    Adam Foulds reads from his poem The Broken Word (Jonathan Cape)

  • James Rhodes

    Sonata for flute, viola and harp (1st movement, Pastorale)

    Performers: Roger Bourdin (flute), Colette Lequien (viola), Annie Challan (harp)

    • Debussy.
    • PHILIPS 422 839-2.
  • Gy枚rgy Ligeti

    Der Sommer

    Performers: Christiane Oelze (soprano), Irina Kataeva (piano)

    • Ligeti.
    • SONY SK 62311 T1103 07.
  • Igor Stravinsky

    Full Fadom Five (from 3 Shakespeare Songs)

    Performers: Emma Kirkby (soprano), Basel Chamber Orchestra/Christopher Hogwood

    • Christopher Hogwood.
    • ARTE NOVA 74321 92650-2.
  • Oliver Knussen

    Two Organa

    Performers: London Sinfonietta/Oliver Knussen

    • Oliver Knussen.
    • DG 449 572-2.
  • Leos Jan谩膷ek

    The vixen dreams she is a young girl (Pantomime 2 from The Cunning Little Vixen, Act I)

    Performers: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Charles Mackerras

    • The Cunning Little Vixen.
    • DECCA 417 129-2.
  • Neutral Milk Hotel

    Ghost (from the album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea)

    • DOMINO REWIGCD 21.

Broadcast

  • Sun 5 Dec 2010 12:00

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