On Radio
Information about the programming across BBC Radio as part of the BBC Shakespeare Festival.
Published: 19 January 2016
Jeremy Vine
In April, Jeremy Vine (12-2pm) will be celebrating Shakespeare on his show with themed content and special guests.
BBC Radio 2’s 500 WORDS competition
The Radio 2 Breakfast Show writing competition – 500 WORDS – has now launched, and children around the country aged between five and 13 years of age are encouraged to get creative and send in their amazing stories by Thursday 25 February. This year, to tie in with BBC’s celebration of Shakespeare, the final of 500 WORDS will be a live outside broadcast of the Chris Evans Breakfast Show at Shakespeare’s Globe on London’s Bankside.
All the finalists will be invited to come along to The Globe’s amazing surroundings, plus every child who enters the competition will be entered into a ballot for the chance to attend the final as well. The winning entries will be announced and then read out by some very special guests. In 2015, HRH The Duchess of Cornwall hosted the live final in the spectacular surroundings of St James’s Palace, and the readers of the winning entries included Sir Kenneth Branagh, Jeremy Irons and Blue Peter's Barney Harwood.
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 in Stratford-upon-Avon 22 – 24 April
BBC Radio 3’s glass pop-up studio will be taking centre stage for the anniversary weekend marking the death of Shakespeare 400 years ago in 1616, taking up residency in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Other Place theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. From In Tune with Sean Rafferty on Friday afternoon, through to Drama On 3 on Sunday evening, Radio 3 will be welcoming audiences and broadcasting live from the glass box and the RSC’s new theatre.
Musicians, singers, orchestras and actors join Radio 3 to celebrate not just Shakespeare’s plays, but several centuries of beautiful songs, symphonies, film scores, jazz tunes, chamber music, choral work and more beyond, all of which have been inspired by his words. From the madrigals of his own lifetime, to contemporary commissions for this anniversary year, Radio 3 will be broadcasting the musical world of Shakespeare including new commissions from Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and composer Sally Beamish, live performances from Samuel West, BBC Concert Orchestra and Ex Cathedra. Record Review will for the first time review recordings of Shakespeare for its Build a Library slot rather than music. BBC Radio 3 will transport listeners to the heart of the Stratford Shakespeare anniversary festivities.
Highlights of the weekend include:
Breakfast
Radio 3’s Breakfast show will be broadcast live on Saturday and Sunday from beside the River Avon.
Radio 3 In Concert
A special live concert from Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare lies buried. Music ensemble Ex Cathedra join actor Samuel West for a performance of The Garrick Ode, written for the first revival of Shakespeare’s anniversary in 1769, with music from Thomas Arne, combined with a new commissions from composer Sally Beamish and the Poet Laureate Carol Anne Duffy.
Saturday Classics
For a special edition of Saturday Classics, Richard Sisson presents a live show which takes on a witty and humorous condensed guide of the classic music inspired by the Bard.
Sound of Cinema
The BBC Concert Orchestra join presenter Matthew Sweet for a live concert of Radio 3’s film music programme, performing some of the scores from classic film versions of Shakespeare’s works.
Record Review
Building a Library: Radio 3’s review programme will be assessing Verdi’s Falstaff in Building A Library but then in a change to usual practice, Andrew McGregor will turn to speech recordings – assessing works of Shakespeare available as CDs and downloads.
Private Passions
Michael Berkeley’s guest will be Sir Jonathan Bate, Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, Provost of Worcester College, Oxford – leading Shakespeare scholar, biographer and writer of West End play The Man From Stratford.
Radio 3 In Concert: Shakespeare 400 Across Europe
Radio 3 broadcasts an array of musical homages from across the continent, specially recorded as part of the European Broadcasting Union’s Shakespeare’s Day.
The Essay
Five up-and-coming academics take us on a tour of the latest research on Shakespeare’s life and work.
Free Thinking
Radio 3’s arts and ideas programme brings together the Shakespearean scholars and performers who are gathered in Stratford for the anniversary to tackle some of the eternal riddles about Shakespeare’s life and work.
Drama On 3
As part of the BBC Shakespeare Festival, Radio 3 has commissioned a season of new plays inspired by the life and the work of the playwright himself, alongside landmark new productions of some of his late works from the years leading up to 1616.
A Play For The Heart: The Death Of Shakespeare
This new drama is set in April 1616, in the fevered imagination of Shakespeare as he approaches the very end of his life. It’s told through Shakespeare’s encounters with old friends, old enemies, a comparative stranger and a ghost – a play about the human condition and about what life and art might mean.
Award-winning Nick Warburton’s drama is recorded on location in Shakespeare’s home town. In Mary Arden’s farm, a stellar cast will slip into Tudor beds, dress in wool and silk, rifle through Tudor chests, throw the odd goblet and stride across the cobbles to recreate the last day of Shakespeare’s life. The recording will uniquely involve the people of Stratford as Shakespeare’s audience and a schoolboy from King Edward School (which Shakespeare attended) will play Hamnet, Shakespeare’s son.
Producer: Marion Nancarrow
Late Night Sonnet Symphony
Radio 3 has commissioned five writers to re-version five of Shakespeare’s sonnets as a series of contemporary dramas set across a single night in the city – and commissioned five composers to create the music for those sonnets. These pairings offer a unique collaboration to explore the emotional heart of Shakespeare’s sonnets, rediscovering their power and potency today. With original music performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, this will be a sonnet symphony for modern times. Each day, the original sonnet itself will be read by Maxine Peake.
The Writers are Tom Wells, Francesca Martinez, Lee Mattinson, Esther Wilson and Zodwa Nyoni. The composers are Tom Coult, Nina Whiteman, Joy Chou and Aaron Par.
Editor: Sue Roberts
Wolf In The Water
What happened to Jessica, Shylock’s daughter in The Merchant of Venice? Jessica is Shylock's only daughter, who leaves him to convert to Christianity and marry Lorenzo. We are left uncertain about how that marriage is going to work out. It's also implicit that the conversion isn't going to be easy on either party.
Naomi Alderman’s dynamic sequel to The Merchant Of Venice meets an older Jessica in 1615, secretly still practising her Jewish faith in a turbulent Venice that is increasingly hostile to Jews. An old friend in trouble knocking on her door at the dead of night, a murder, and six innocent Jews facing death – Jessica becomes embroiled in a mystery that challenges her apparently settled life and reconnects her with her identity.
Naomi Alderman is an award-winning writer, writing her first BBC Radio 3 drama commission, after establishing herself at the cutting edge of new fiction and audio gaming.
This new drama places modern dilemmas centre stage: What drives one group to persecute another? What shameful deeds are done by those to whom we entrust our money? Can we ever be cosmopolitans - citizens of all nations and none - or will our ethnicity, our religion, even the ineradicable traces of God, always draw us back, perhaps to doom ourselves?
Producer: Polly Thomas, Somethin’ Else
King Lear
When better than Britain in 2016 to make a drama about 'the division of the kingdom'? A new production of what has been called 'the greatest play ever written' with a Scottish cast headed by award-winning actor Ian McDiarmid as Lear.
Lear is a very old king with a dynastic problem: three daughters and no sons. In dividing the kingdom between his children, Lear's reasoning is admirable: he wants to hand over the kingdom to his daughters so that future strife may be prevented now. Settling the inheritance now isn't such a bad idea. Or is it?
Producer: Gaynor MacFarlane
The Winter’s Tale
The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death is a good time to look at one of his last and one of his most enigmatic and best-regarded plays. The Winter's Tale, first performed in 1610/11, is a mature piece of storytelling that embraces tragic drama, poetry, folklore, music and comedy. In doing so it treads new dramatic ground.
When King Leontes of Sicilia unsuccessfully begs his childhood friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia, to extend his visit to Sicilia, Polixenes protests that he has been away from his kingdom for nine months and he is missing his son. But when Leontes' pregnant wife, Hermione, pleads with him he quickly relents and agrees to stay a little longer. Leontes is overcome with wild jealousy - convinced that Polixenes and Hermione are lovers.
The very structure of the play mirrors a more hopeful and optimistic view of humanity towards the end of Shakespeare's life - the first three ‘tragic’ acts take place in a wintry Sicily and the final two acts predominantly in summery Bohemia.
Producer: David Hunter
Opera On 3
Opera has been one of the great interpreters of Shakespeare’s work – with many of his characters now as established in Opera Houses as they are in the theatre. Radio 3’s Opera strands will be bringing audiences a selection of great performances from around the world.
On the 23 April, the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, Radio 3 will be going live to New York to join the Metropolitan Opera House’s production of Verdi’s masterful Otello, with Aleksandrs Antonenko in the title role and Željko Lučić as Iago. Hibla Gerzmava joins the cast as Desdemona and Adam Fischer conducts. Directed by Bartlett Sher, this is a production that the Huffington Post said is “A stark and simple yet often powerful new production of Verdi’s passionate and masterful rendering of one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.”
Afternoon On 3 and Radio 3 In Concert
Throughout the year, Radio 3’s concert strands will be bringing audiences the very best anniversary performances of great orchestral works inspired by Shakespeare’s plays. Highlights include the BBC Symphony Orchestra Chorus, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, performing Berlioz’s Romeo And Juliet (Radio 3 In Concert, 26 January). The London Symphony Orchestra and the Monteverdi Choir, conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner are live from the Barbican with a programme that includes Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night's Dream (Radio 3 in Concert, 16 February). In the week of Shakespeare’s death in April, Afternoon On 3 will feature tone poems and incidental music inspired by Shakespeare, specially recorded by the BBC Orchestras (25-29 April).
Essential Classics
In the week leading to the Shakespeare anniversary in April, the guest on Radio 3’s morning classical music programme will be Adrian Lester OBE, who has been acclaimed for his performances as Henry V and Othello at the National Theatre – winning the Evening Standard Best Actor award for the latter. He’ll talk about Shakespeare, his life as an actor, and choose some fascinating music.
Producer: Sarah Devonald, Somethin’ Else
Lunchtime Concerts
From Tuesday 26 to Friday 29 April, Radio 3 broadcasts four Shakespeare-themed chamber concerts, recorded in January as part of Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert Series at LSO St Luke’s.
Gould Piano Trio
- Schumann: Novelletten, Op 21 (excerpts) (inspired by opening lines of Macbeth)
- Korngold: Suite ‘Much Ado About Nothing’
- Beethoven: Piano Trio in D major, Op 70 No. 1 ‘Ghost’ (inspired by witches in Macbeth)
Iestyn Davies (counter-tenor) and Elizabeth Kenny (lute)
- ‘Shakespeare on my mind’ – Shakespeare-related songs and lute solos by Robert Johnson, John Banister, Thomas Morley and Henry Purcell.
James Gilchrist (tenor) and Anna Tilbrook (piano)
- Arne: Where the Bee sucks; When daisies pied
- Haydn: She never told her love
- Schubert: An Silvia; Ständchen
- Wolf: Bottom's dream (Lied des transferierten Zettel)
- VW: Orpheus with his lute
- Quilter: Fear no more the heat of the sun; Under the Greenwood tree
- Warlock: Take O take those away
- Tippett: Three songs for Ariel
- Dring: The Cuckoo; Take, O take, those lips away; It was a Lover and his Lass
BBC Singers conducted by David Hill
- Kodály: An Ode for Music
- Giles Swayne: Three Shakespeare Songs
- Charles Wood: Full fathom five; It was a lover and his lass
- Jaakko Mäntyjärvi: Four Shakespeare Songs
- Cecilia McDowall: When Time is Broke
- Paul Mealor: Let Fall the Windows of Mine Eyes
- Vaughan Williams: Three Shakespeare Songs
Producer: Lindsey Kemp
BBC Performing Groups
BBC Proms
Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary will be referenced in the 2016 BBC Proms. Full details of the 2016 BBC Proms will be revealed on Wednesday 13 April 2016.
BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus
Friday 22 January, 7:30pm - Barbican, London
Conductor Laureate Sir Andrew Davis leads the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Berlioz’s complete ‘dramatic symphony’, a re-telling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with soloists Michèle Losier, Samuel Boden and David Soar. The symphony became one of Berlioz’s most enduring masterpieces, and he came to view the Love Scene as one of his own favourite compositions. Broadcast as part of Radio 3 In Concert on Tuesday 26 January.
BBC Singers
Thursday 28 January, 1pm - LSO St Luke’s, London
The BBC Singers and Chief Conductor David Hill present a special BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert exploring choral music inspired by Shakespeare’s works. England’s greatest poet-playwright has been an inspiration to many a choral composer, and not just British ones – this concert takes us on a tour of Shakespeare settings by composers including Vaughan Williams, Kodály, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, Paul Mealor, Cecilia McDowall and Giles Swayne.
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Saturday 14 February, 3pm - St. David’s Hall, Cardiff
Depicting one of the all-time greatest love stories on Valentine’s Day, BBC National Orchestra of Wales led by Principal Conductor Thomas Søndergård performs Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The concert explores both Tchaikovsky's and Prokofiev’s responses to the tale of ill-fated romance. Later in the year, the orchestra and conductor Eric Stern perform Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, inspired by Romeo and Juliet, in Swansea (14 April) and Cardiff (15 April).
BBC Concert Orchestra
Monday 4 April, 7:30pm – Royal Festival Hall, London
The BBC Concert Orchestra presents a journey through the emotional narrative – humour, magic, tragedy, introspection and love – of Shakespeare on film. The concert will include Hamlet - A Shakespeare Scenario (Christopher Palmers’ arrangement of Walton’s music for the 1948 film Hamlet), music from Patrick Doyle’s soundtrack to the 1993 film Much Ado About Nothing, and the suite from Stephen Warbeck’s Academy Award-winning soundtrack for the 1998 film Shakespeare In Love, all interspersed with Shakespeare’s poetry and plays.
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Saturday 23 April, 7-8pm – University of Glasgow, Bute Hall and Cloisters
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, The Glasgow School of Art, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the University of Glasgow, are coming together for the first time to create New Dreams, an ambitious, multi-arts experience spanning several months, combining performances, screenings, music and exhibitions, and involving hundreds of students, designers, and academics. A wide range of new work will be created for the ambitious and ground-breaking project, all of it inspired by themes in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The project will culminate in a final performance titled Dream On! led by Artistic Director Graham McLaren, who has recently been appointed joint director of Dublin's Abbey Theatre. Dream On! takes place on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Broadcast live on BBC Arts Online 7-8pm.
BBC Philharmonic
Saturday 23 April, 7:30pm – The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. Pre-concert discussion at 6.30pm
The BBC Philharmonic raises the curtain on its celebration of the Bard with a pre-concert discussion on the place of music in Shakespeare’s plays, hosted by poet Michael Symmons Roberts. The concert is conducted by Andrew Gourlay and will premiere BBC commissions from the new generation of Manchester school composers. Each piece is inspired by a sonnet, with young composers Chiu-Yu Chou, Tom Coult, Nina Whiteman, Aaron Parker and Daniel Kidane all contributing. The programme is completed by excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.
BBC Radio 4
Julius Caesar
A new production of Julius Caesar in three parts over three weekday afternoons. Directed by Marc Beeby, starring Tim Piggott-Smith as Caesar and Robert Glenister as Brutus, this brand new interpretation of Shakespeare’s play explores the psychological drama of the struggle between honour, patriotism and political expediency.
Shakespeare And The American Dream
Robert McCrum goes in search of Shakespeare in a country that has taken his work to its very heart. And it’s not England. Soon after the Founding Fathers set foot on the shores of America, Shakespeare too arrived in the newly formed colonies and his plays took root. His work expressed the hopes, fears and dreams of those early Americans and is still hugely relevant today in Obama’s America, allowing its citizens to address the issues that unite and divide them from race to politics.
Robert visits different parts of the US to hear how Shakespeare fits in today’s America, including New York, Nashville and Washington, and hears why great artists such as Stephen Sondheim and Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin think William Shakespeare is so important to their country.
Home Front
Home Front, Radio 4’s daily drama set in First World War Britain, will be making a playful contribution to the Shakespeare Season. One phrase of Shakespeare’s will be concealed in every episode between 1 January and 31 December. Over the course of 2016, this will add up to a treasure hunt of 126 Shakespearean idioms – a beautiful and persuasive demonstration of how his poetry has permeated the English language.
Shakespeare's Restless World
Neil MacGregor of the British Museum uses objects of the time to explore what life was like in the turbulent world of William Shakespeare. (First broadcast in 2012.)
Hamlet
Another chance to hear this five-part production of Hamlet, first broadcast in 2014.
The Castle of Elsinore in Denmark - the court is uneasy. The King of Denmark has recently died and the throne has been claimed by the King's brother, Claudius. Prince Hamlet, still in mourning for his father, distrusts Claudius and believes that what has happened at the court 'cannot come to good'. Hamlet is played by Jamie Parker, Horatio by David Seddon, Claudius by Paul Hilton, Gertrude by Anastasia Hille, Polonus by James Laurenson, Laertes by Tom Mison, Ophelia by Lizzie Watts, the Ghost by Robert Blythe, Macellus by Ben Croew, Barnardo by Michael Shelford and Omnes by Will Howard and Nicholas Murchie. Directed by Marc Beeby with original music composed and realised by Roger Goula.
