Songs Your Godmother Should Know

The Times classical music critic Hilary Finch

co-presents with her god-daughter Tamasin a feature that tests Hilary's 'innocent ear' with Tamasin's pop music collection. 

It was Hilary Finch in Rhapsody in Bohemia who memorably said, "frankly, I was underwhelmed", on first hearing Queen's pop classic.

Here, Tamasin introduces her godmother to Radiohead and The Prodigy, Minnie Ripperton and Michael Jackson and together they examine just what one needs to appreciate the perenially adolescent rebel yell of pop. 

Contributors include the gifted lyricist

Chris Difford, formerly of Squeeze, 16 year-old Wilf Petherbridge, frontman with

Charly Brown, and 6 Music host and singer-songwriter, Tom Robinson.

Broadcast Friday 1 June 2007 at 11am

Mirror, Mirror

Following the success of her first 'composed feature' for Falling Tree and Radio 4, Good Timing, Nina Perry explores the intimate relationship we have with our own reflections in Mirror, Mirror, with the thoughts of a submariner, a dentist, a mirror maze designer and an art curator. 

Broadcast Friday 6 July at 11am

City Limits

A two-part series examining life at the edge of the city's urban sprawl as the rural environment takes over. 

Including interviews with archaeological historian Janet Clayton about the estate at Scadbury in south London, Danish architect Peder Boas Jensen about Copenhagen's Finger Plan, human geographer and folk singer Georgina Boyes, Irish town planners Michael Grace and Sheena McCambley and Robert Bruegmann, author of Sprawl: a Compact History.

"...a quick hooray for a different type of documentary altogether ... about the frankly ridiculous topic of where suburbia hits the countryside.  Not a 'proper' documentary subject, but the programme was beautifully put together... The speakers didn't introduce themselves until the very end. They weren't famous, their lives weren't 'great' , but they were, in their own way, still great."

Miranda Sawyer,

The Observer 19 August 2007

Broadcast 14 & 21 August 2007 at 11am

An American Legend

Blake Morrison presents an edition of the Radio 3 Sunday Feature that considers the life and work of poet, journalist and screenwriter James Agee - Pullitzer Prize winning author of A Death in the Family, collaborator with photographer Walker Evans on the seminal study of sharecroppers during the Depression, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and script writer on The African Queen and Night of the Hunter.

With Agee's son Joel, Hugh Davis of the University of Tennessee, biographer Dwight Garner, Steve Cotham of the East Tennessee Historical Society, Caroline Blinder of Goldsmiths College, Knoxville artist

RB Morris, Phil and Jed Burroughs (relatives of the 'Gudgers' in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men) and rare archive of Agee himself.

Broadcast Sunday 16 September 2007

Something Understood

Three new voices present Radio 4's Something Understood:

On Sunday 7 October, actress Felicity Finch, perhaps better known to radio listeners as 'Ruth' in The Archers, reflects movingly on 'The Dance of Life', with readings from Isadora Duncan, Louis Macneice and Gunter Grass and an interview with priest and dancer Colin MacLean.

On Sunday 28 October, ethnomusicologist

Katy Radford considers the journey from victim to survivor, with contributions from her mother, Inge, and the poet Paul Muldoon (Sunday 28 October).  And Katy returns on Sunday 3 February to explore our ambigous relationship with mirrors, including a testimony from a sufferer of anorexia and music from Ravel's piano suite Miroirs, Denys Baptise and the  Velvet Underground.

On Sunday 13 January American writer and broadcaster Dmae Roberts presents an edition about the appeal of secret places, the excitment of a secret shared and the line that divides the secret from the private.  With readings from Frances Hodgsen Burnett, Syliva Plath and music by Philip Glass. 

For details of the music and the extracts read by Emma Fielding and Jonathan Keeble

visit the BBC Something Understood website

Rock's DNA

Freeze the opening of Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze and, amid the heavy octaves and feedback, you can isolate an iconic sound, a chord consisting of E, G#, D and G natural - a chord at odds with conventional laws of harmony - a chord that underpins the whole of the blues, rock and jazz. 

The 'Jimi chord'- contains Rock's DNA ...

With music by Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Bobbie Gentry and Dungen and contributions from Steve Howe (Yes), Reine Fiske (Dungen), Steph Paynes (Lez Zeppelin), Bernie Marsden (ex-Whitesnake), Asa (Rainbow Bridge), Franklin Dawson (Shiva) and John Campbell (Are You Experienced), Alan Hall devises a musical analysis of the harmonic posture of rock.

Broadcast in Between the Ears

on Saturday 10 November 2007

Dreaming of Osama

Danish poet and radio producer

Pejk Malinovski devises a sequence from people's real dreams about Osama Bin Laden to reveal the impact on the collective unconscious of the 'war on terror'.

"Pejk Malinovski's programme sought not to explain the phenomenon so much as to weave these surreal stories into a beautiful fabric of anecdote and commentary that was dreamlike in its presentation."

Edward Wickham, Church Times

(30 xi 2007)

Broadcast in Between the Ears

on Saturday 24 November 2007.

The Sound and the Fury

Tom Robinson considers why it is that every new musical development is greeted by a seemingly inevitable fury, with archive of the arrival of rock 'n' roll, bebop, Dylan going electric, punk and rap and a new interview recorded at the piano with Julian Joseph.

Broadcast in BBC Radio 4's The Archive Hour on Saturday 27 October 2007 at 8pm.

At the Piano

Petroc Trelawney presents a second series in which he interviews celebrated pianists of today about the pianists they most admire.  This time, we hear from Steven Osbourne, Anne Queffelec, Leif Ove Andsnes, Kathryn Stott and Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

Broadcast in each day at 5pm from Monday 31 December.

Snowy Streets of St Petersburg

Martin Sixsmith explores the connection artistic exiles from the Soviet Bloc felt for their homeland as the political situation changed in the late Twentieth Century.  Including archive interviews with Milan Kundera, Vladimir Nabokov and Isiah Berlin.

Broadcast in BBC Radio 4's The Archive Hour

on Saturday 12 January 2008.

Internet Sleuths

Sara Parker's investigation in to the phenomenon of the Internet Sleuths, amateur detectives - such as Todd Matthews of the Doe Network - who use the web to solve 'cold cases' and help police identify missing persons.

"a gripping if sometimes gruelling listen"

The Radio Times

Broadcast Tuesday 24 April 2007 at 11am

Enter the Garden:

A Portrait of Toru Takemitsu

... a garden never spurns those who enter it ...

For the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, gardens provided both a source of inspiration and a metaphor for his music ... I can imagine a garden superimposed over the image of an orchestra.  A garden is composed of various different elements and sophisticated details that converge to form a harmonious whole.  Each element does not exert its individuality, but achieves a state of anonymity - and that is the kind of music that I would like to create.

This portrait of the great Japanese composer combines the words of friends, family and admirers - including his daughter Maki, the conductors Oliver Knussen and Marin Alsop, the composers Dai Fujikura and Joji Yuasa, the pop musician David Sylvian, the film director Masahiro Shinoda and the Tokyo gardener Ryutaro Takahara - with sounds from Takemitsu's favourite Kyoto gardens and examples from his concert music, film scores and a specially recorded performance of his arrangement of Yesterday by the guitarist Daisuke Suzuki.

"What emerged from Alan Hall's hypnotically calm radio portrait of the composer was a short life lived along dizzingly intellectual principles but also studded with fun."

Elisabeth Mahoney, The Guardian 23 iv

"Takemitsu's music  was interwoven with the voices of his daughter and friends and sounds from nature, creating a beautiful composition - a radio garden."

Ciar Byrne, The Independent 26 iv 07

Broadcast in Radio 3's The Sunday Feature

on 22 April 2007 at 10pm (BST).

The Archive Hour:

Light at the End of the Chunnel

Sean Street presents an edition of The Archive Hour tracing the history of the Channel Tunnel metaphorically, politically and as an act of imagination.

With an archive cast that includes Prime Ministers Gladstone, Churchill, Thatcher and Jim Hacker, as well as Queen Victoria, the French poet Jacques Darras, the political commentator Anthony Howard and the Anglo-French musician Rebecca Brown.

"this is an example of The Archive Hour slot working at its best"

The Radio Times

Broadcast Saturday 7 April 2007 at 8pm (BST)

The Wonder of Wunderlich

Tom Robinson presents a radio portrait of one of the finest singers of the Twentieth Century, the tenor Fritz Wunderlich.  Having risen from humble origins in Freiburg, he found success first singing Mozart and then in a range of roles from Bach to Mahler until his untimely death at the age 35 in 1966.

Tom talks to the tenors Ian Partridge and John Mark Ainsley and the pianist Iain Burnside and includes a range of recordings including Wunderlich's Granada - still, arguably, the finest version ever committed to vinyl!

Broadcast 24 February 2007 to launch

Radio 3's new Saturday music feature slot.

Please Stand

Presented by Tommy Pearson

An examination of the National Anthem,

asking whether the words and music are 'fit for purpose' in modern Britain.

With Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner), poetry anthologiser Daisy Goodwin, songwriter

Phil Coulter, composer Carl Davis and

Brian May of Queen.

Broadcast Tuesday 9 January 2007

at 1.30pm (rpt. Sat 13 Jan at 3.30pm)

Red Nostalgia

Louise Puck Hansen will be producing a documentary examining the growing nostalgia for communist fashion, myths and symbols in Eastern Europe and asking what this indicates about the state of the new Europe.

Louise has been a producer for Danish Radio since 1997 and has presented and produced several programmes on European culture, including Generation Wartburg - The Young German Ostalgians.

Broadcast Monday 1 January 2007 at 8pm

At the Piano

Petroc Trelawny presents a series of five programmes in which pianists of our age talk about the pianists they most admire - with Imogen Cooper, Stephen Kovacevich,

Leon McCawley, Stephen Hough and

Joanna MacGregor.

For broadcast between 5-6.30pm each day from Monday 1 January 2007.

William Thompson IV's War

Third generation southern jazz musician

Will Thompson joined the Louisiana National Guard to fund his way through studies at the University of New Orleans.  Then, in April 2004, instead of graduating, he found himself deployed to Iraq. 

During his tour of duty Will documented his experiences in recordings of the sound of calls to prayer, radio bulletins, the nightly 'music' of mortar attacks and the gentle conversation of his comrades on the rooftop of the US Military compound.  Before his tour of duty was over, he released this collection of music and found sound, calling it his Baghdad Music Journal. 

Shortly before returning to New Orleans hurricane Katarina struck.  He's now back, staying in a FEMA trailer park and completing his studies at Ellis Marsalis' jazz department. 

This is the story of a musician and reluctant soldier.

Broadcast Thursday 21 December 2006

at 8pm in It's My Story.

Something Understood

The series that examines some of the larger questions of life by taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry.

The guest presenters who've delivered editions of Something Understood in Falling Tree's allocation of the series so far are:

Geoffrey Smith, Hope Against Hope (29.10.06)

Tom Robinson, Surface Noise (1.10.06)

and Possessions & Limitations (28.1.07)

Piers Plowright, I Got Rhythm (31.12.06).

Marguerite Patten, Dust Yourself Off (4.3.07)

Chris Brookes, Spools of Time (1.4.07)

The food writer Marguerite Patten, who's now in her nineties looks back on a lifetime of love and loss, reflecting on her wartime experiences as a home economist, the deaths of her parents, her marriage of over five decades and her abiding passion for nature.  (Produced by Sara Parker)

The distinguished Canadian broadcaster Chris Brookes offers the first in what's hoped to be a series of programmes originated abroad, in which he draws upon the time capsules on his tape shelves and also upon the writers and musicians of his native land.

For details of previous editions visit:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/religion/

somethingunderstood.shtml

Return To Mother's Mountain

Following the Tullis family - daughter Lindsay, son Chris and his wife Julie and their children Matthew and Stephanie - as they undertake a memorial trek to K2 on the twentieth anniversary of Julie Tullis' death on the mountain.

Broadcast on Friday 27 October 2006

Producer Sara Parker

Three and The Third

As part of Radio 3's celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Third Programme (on 29 September 1946),

Alan Hall was asked to produce a special documentary feature that imaginatively explores the extraordinary archive of the Radio 3 and 'The Third'. 

"sublime and original ... a work of genius"

Jane Anderson, Radio Times

Framed by one of Radio 3's more famous pauses - when announcer John Holmstrom had to 'fill' for half an hour during a Prom in 1985 - this irreverent but affectionate feature is crammed full of highlights and hic-coughs, familiar characters and flaming controversies.  Concerns about cultural elitism, patronage of the arts and 'accessibility' have resounded through the decades - though never quite like this.

"... a splendid collage ... a send-up and celebration.  The windy elitism of the past now seems unbelievable but all the more enjoyable for that.  'The new meaning of highbrow' was discussed and whether a person might be described as having a 'Third Programme mind'..."

Kate Kellaway, The Observer

(Sunday 8 Oct 2006)

We would like to dedicate this broadcast to the memory of Sir John Drummond, Controller of BBC Radio 3, who died in September 2006.

what i didn't expect is how much the piece is about class and art... it was passionate in the best ways, an argument and a love affair…

Broadcast 30 September 2006 at 10.15pm

(rpt'd 30 December 2006 at 10.30pm).

Sixty Years On

Also, to mark the anniversary, Radio 3 commissioned from Falling Tree a series of 'drop-ins' - reflections on Radio 3 and the Third Programme from artists and cultural figures: Mitsuko Uchida, Bernard Haitink,

Patricia Hughes, Tasmin Little, Peter Donohoe, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Michael Zev Gordon, Mike Westbrook, Judith Bingham,

Cormac Rigby, Michael Collins, Ian Gordon (born 29 September 1946)

and 92 year old Doris Licence.

Broadcast in Radio 3's drive-time shows during the week of September 25th.

It's My Story: Mother's Mountain

At the end of 2004. a cassette recorded by climber Julie Tullis documenting her 1982 expedition on K2 was discovered on the Baltoro Glacier.  In 1986, Tullis became only the second Briton to climb K2, though she was killed on the descent.  Her body remains buried in snow on the mountain.

Challenging the Silence

Martin Sixsmith looks at the relationship between the Soviet Union and its writers, poets and composers from the Revolution through to the death of Stalin and beyond. He examines how the state sought to control artists like Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich and how each responded to their own artistic responsibilities.

He also looks at the role of the regime's enforcers - individuals such as Tikhon Khrennikov, head of the Composer's Union and persecutor of Shostakovich - men who "sold out" their integrity for personal gain.

Featuring new interviews with Shostakovich's widow Irina, Pasternak's son Yevgeny, Prokofiev's son Sviatoslav and Stalin's appointee Tikhon Khrennikov.

Broadcast Monday at 8pm on 31 July, 7 & 14 August (rpt'd 3, 10 & 17 December 2006)

Produced by Alan Hall

A BBC Wales production

Something Understood

Fergal Keane reflects on ideas of compassion and the phenomenon of 'conspicuous compassion', with reference to writings by Philip Roth, Elizabeth Jennings and Marilynne Robinson and music by Brahms and Benjamin Britten, Mahalia Jackson and Leonard Cohen.

A Unique Broadcasting production

Broadcast Sunday 23 July 2006

Once Around Joby Talbot

ABC Radio National in Sydney has commissioned a musical profile of composer Joby Talbot for Into the Music. Joby, of course, is well-known as a member of The Divine Comedy and for his film and tv music, including The League of Gentlemen and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Produced by Alan Hall, this fifty minute programme, named after his 2005 solo album, was broadcast in Australia on Saturday

10 June at 5pm (rpt. Monday 12 June at 1pm).

The Frisco Quake

Sean Street marks the centenary of the 1906  San Francisco earthquake and fire by relating the story of the disaster through eyewitness accounts - such as those written by the 30 year old businessman Charles Kendrick, the opera singer Enrico Caruso, the novelist Jack London and his wife Charmian - as well as through the recollections of survivors.  Herbert  Hamrol, who was three years of age at the time, has one clear memory of the earthquake and other stories that were passed on through the family.  Anita Caruso (nee Oldelehr), who was born in 1904, also handed stories of April 1906 down to family members, like her great-niece Kris Wiley. 

Sadly, since Sean interviewed Anita in early February, she has died, aged 102.  We'd like to dedicate the broadcast to Anita's memory.

Others taking part are Gladys Hansen, who has spent a lifetime researching the real death toll, James Dalessandro, author of '1906, A Novel', the San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carl Nolte, historian Stephen Becker, photographer Philip Adam and Kathryn Kendrick MacNeil, who reads her father's account and recalls her own experience of the 1989 earthquake. 

"a poignant picture of an urban disaster that has real resonance"

Jane Anderson, Radio Times

Broadcast Wednesday 12 April 2006

at 1100 (BST) on BBC Radio 4

with San Francisco airings on KALW

Sunday 16 April at 3.30pm

and Wednesday 19 at 7pm

Producer Alan Hall

For more information on the centenary http://1906centennial.org/