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Wide Open Spaces

Texts and music exploring feelings about open spaces, with readers Alexandra Gilbreath and Steve Toussaint. With Emily Bronte and Eduardo Galeano, plus Haydn, Sibelius and Tallis.

Alexandra Gilbreath and Steve Toussaint read poetry and prose which explores our feelings about wide open spaces, the yen to explore but also the fear of what we'll find. From meadows to mountain tops, down rivers and out to sea, across city roof tops and down harrowing migrant trails and the final frontier, what may lie deep inside our imagination? With readings from Emily Bronte to Eduardo Galeano, from Langston Hughes to Jackie Kay and Robert Louis Stevenson and the music of Hadyn, Herbie Hancock, Sibelius and Tallis.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

1 hour, 15 minutes

Last on

Sun 30 Aug 2015 17:45
大象传媒 Radio 3

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Music Played

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

  • 00:00

    Joseph Haydn

    Recitative: Im Anfange schuf Gott Himmel und erde

    Performer: Gwynne Howell (soloist), Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik (conductor).
    • ORFEO C150852.
    • CD1 Tr2.

  • James Weldon Johnson

    The Creation, read by Steve Toussaint

  • 00:01

    Ludovico Einaudi

    Still So Early in the World

    Performer: Czech National Symphony Orchestra, Ludovico Einaudi (conductor).
    • UCJ 4728022.
    • Tr8.

  • Kenneth Graham

    Wind in the Willows, read by Alexandra Gilbreath

  • 00:06

    Joseph Haydn

    Recitative: Und Gott sprach: Es Bringe die Erde Gras Hervor

    Performer: Margaret Marshall (soloist), Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rafael Kubelik (conductor).
    • ORFEO C150852.
    • CD1 Tr8.
  • 00:06

    Herbie Hancock

    Maiden Voyage

    Performer: Herbie Hancock.
    • Blue Note ?聳 CDP-592468.
    • Tr7.

  • Langston Hughes

    Poem 'A Negro Speaks of Rivers', read by Steve Toussaint

  • Langston Hughes

    Poem 'A Negro Speaks of Rivers', read by Steve Toussaint

  • Langston Hughes

    Poem 'A Negro Speaks of Rivers', read by Steve Toussaint

  • Langston Hughes

    Poem 'A Negro Speaks of Rivers', read by Steve Toussaint

  • 00:11

    Thomas Tallis

    Spem in Alium

    Performer: Tallis Scholars.
    • GIMELL CDGIM207.
    • Tr1.

  • Jackie Kay

    Poem No. 115 from 聭The Thing That Mattered Most', read by Alexandra Gilbreath

  • 00:17

    Gerry Goffin and Carole King

    Up on The Roof

    Performer: Laura Nyro.
    • Elite ELITE015CD.
    • Tr13.
  • 00:20

    Richard Strauss

    Dangerous Moments

    Performer: Staatskapelle Weimar, Antoni Wit (conductor).
    • NAXOS 8557811.
    • Tr12.

  • Geoffrey Winthrop-Young

    Wall and Roof Climbing, read by Alexandra Gilbreath

  • 00:21

    Richard Strauss

    On the Summit

    Performer: Staatskapelle Weimar, Antoni Wit (conductor).
    • NAXOS 8557811.
    • Tr13.

  • Edward Lear

    The Dong with the Luminous Nose, read by Steve Toussaint

  • 00:26

    Gustav Holst

    Neptune

    Performer: London Philharmonic Orchestra, Bernard Haitink (conductor), John Alldis Choir.
    • PHILIPS 4208932.
    • Tr7.

  • Norman MacCaig

    Poem 'By Graveyard, Luskentyre', read by Alexandra Gilbreath

  • 00:32

    Streiff/Zehnder

    Wududu

    Performer: Stimmhorn.
    • UNKNOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY UP17.
    • Tr7.
  • 00:37

    Arthur Butterworth

    The Green Wind, Op. 22

    Performer: Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Arthur Butterworth (conductor).
    • DUTTON EPOCH CDLX7253.
    • Tr8.

  • Emily Bronte

    Poem 'Often Rebuked Yet Always Back Returning', read by Alexandra Gilbreath

  • 00:43

    Masekela/Irving

    Stimela (the coal train)

    Performer: Hugh Masekela.
    • TRILOKA 3202032.
    • Tr12.
  • 00:49

    Aaron Copland

    Appalachian Spring (Opening)

    Performer: St Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin (conductor).
    • HMV Classics 568484.
    • CD1 Tr7.

  • Mary Oliver

    Poem 'Wild Geese', read by Alexandra Gilbreath

  • Navajo Nightway Ceremonial Chant

    quoted in Tony Hillerman, The Great Taos Bank Robbery and Other Indian Country Affairs, read by Steve Toussaint

  • 00:56

    Olivier Messiaen

    Plusieurs Oiseaux Des Arbres de Vie

    Performer: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle (conductor).
    • EMI 5577882.
    • Tr9.

  • Robert Louis Stevenson

    Poem 'Land of Counterpane', read by Steve Toussaint

  • 00:59

    Johann Sebastian Bach

    Suite for solo cello No. 1 in G major (Prelude)

    Performer: Pau Casals.
    • EMI Music Distribution 68805.
    • Tr5.
  • 01:00

    Sibelius

    The Oceanides, Op 73

    Performer: Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Leif Segerstam (conductor).
    • ONDINE ODE9142.
    • Tr1.

  • Langston Hughes

    Poem 'Sea Calm', read by Steve Toussaint

  • Eduardo Galeano translated by Cedric Belfrage

    The Sun Route to the Indies from Genesis, read by Alexandra Gilbreath

  • Sir Thomas Browne

    Urne Burial, read by Steve Toussaint

  • 01:09

    Pavel Grigorievich Chesnokov

    We Praise Thee

    Performer: Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Baritone), Nikolai Korniev (conductor), St Petersburg Chamber Choir.
    • Philips 4460892.
    • Tr13.

Producer's Notes - Wide Open Spaces

These are personal wide open spaces, beginning with a moment like The Creation when, at the end of the blackest of black nights, there is a sigh, a shiver and then the Sun rises.聽 Form returns.聽 For a minute, for several minutes perhaps, it is as though the World is being born again.聽 And then those days; the perfect days of moving through and over land and water, settling to their rhythm, wading through tall grass and clouds of insects to join the river鈥檚 voice with your own, heading up onto hill and moor and combing back down to the shoreline.聽 These are the times to sit and dream at the very edge of things.聽

It is all lodged inside my head now; during long illness or exile I go where I choose and smell the thyme and pungent kelp, hear the raven and gull and curlew, blackbird and robin and thrush, water lapping and running, a breeze rustling through the hazel wood.聽 Nor do I forget the wide open spaces of the city.聽 They are up high and ideally reached through a skylight.聽 Scrabble and scrooge your way through it, like Kenneth Graham鈥檚 Mole, and tumble forward into the great urban wilderness of tiles and chimneys and concrete cliffs bedecked with the detritus of old electric cabling and defunct television aerials.聽 There is the suddenly huge sky, which now turns threatening.聽 Purple vertiginous cloud castles roil and twist and strange lights glimmer over there, out on Lear鈥檚 Great Gromboolian Plain鈥�.

For wide open spaces can be dangerous. They have been endlessly contested; every blade of grass and drop of water has been fought for and fought over.聽 For migrants, willing or otherwise, they are obstacles as well as opportunities.聽 We may know the World is round but it is still a fearful place. So for this traveller Robert Louis Stevenson鈥檚 Land of Counterpane remains her favourite space.聽 Mountains will be climbed, storms survived, myths encountered and souls will soar for in the words of the great Sir Thomas Browne, 鈥渢he world that I regard is myself鈥�.聽聽

Broadcast

  • Sun 30 Aug 2015 17:45
    大象传媒 Radio 3

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