The Chessboard
Readings from Adjoa Andoh and Henry Goodman. Music from Shostakovich to The Rolling Stones. Authors include Han Kang, Shakespeare, Philip Larkin and Omar Khayyam.
Adjoa Andoh and Henry Goodman read extracts from Han Kang's The White Book, Shakespeare's Othello, Philip Larkin's Sympathy in White Major and the Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam. Our music ranges from Shostakovich to The Rolling Stones Paint it Black, via the piece by Chopin in G Flat major, Op.10, No.5 which is known as the Black Key etude, and performances by Louis Armstrong and Rokia Traore in a programme that zig zags like a knight, soars like a bishop and plods like a pawn. We take in the subject of race in America, the look of snowfall in Alsace, and the bright white magic of an anchovy shoal glimpsed in the pitch dark and described in Herman Melville's novel about the Great White Whale Moby Dick and our journey from white to black and back starts with the topsy-turvy world of Alice Through the Looking Glass.
Producer: Zahid Warley.
Last on
Music Played
Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes
Lewis Carroll
From Alice Through the Looking Glass, read by Adjoa Andoh
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00:00Dmitry Shostakovich
Fugue No.1 in C Major
Performer: Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano).- Decca 4660662.
- Tr2.
Lewis Carroll
From Alice Through the Looking Glass, read by Adjoa Andoh
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00:03Frédéric Chopin
Etude in G Flat major, Op.10, No.5 (Black Key)
Performer: Vladimir Horowitz.- Naxos Historical 8110606.
- Tr11.
The Bible, King James Version
From Genesis, 1, read by Henry Goodman
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00:05Morten Lauridsen
Agnus Dei-Lux Aeterna
Performer: Polyphony with Britten Sinfonia, Stephen Layton (Conductor).- Hyperion A67449.
- Tr5.
Junichiro Tanizaki
From In Praise of Shadows, read by Adjoa Andoh
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00:17Hans Abrahamsen
Canon 4A (minore)
Performer: ensemble recherche.- Winter&Winter 9101592.
- Tr9.
Richard Wilbur
First Snow in Alsace, read by Henry Goodman
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00:22Hans Abrahamsen
Canon 4B (maggiore)
Performer: ensemble recherche.- Winter&Winter 9101592.
- Tr10.
Philip Larkin
Sympathy in White Major, read by Adjoa Andoh
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00:25Waller/Brooks/Razaf
(What did I do to be so) Black and Blue?
Performer: Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra.- JSP CD315.
- Tr4.
Ralph Ellison
From the Prologue to Invisible Man, read by Henry Goodman
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00:32Gil Scott‐Heron
The Revolution will not be Televised
Performer: Gil Scott‐Heron.- BGPD 306.
- Tr1.
Carol Ann Duffy
War Photographer, read by Adjoa Andoh
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00:36Michel Legrand
Le Cinema
Performer: Claude Nougaro.- Philips 0631500.
- Tr1.
Shakespeare
Othellos soliloquy before he murders Desdemona, read by Adjoa Andoh
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00:41Rokia Traoré
MBifo
Performer: Rokia Traoré.- Indigo 2594.
- Tr1.
Han Kang
From The White Book, read by Henry Goodman
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00:48William Grant Still
Moderato Assai
Performer: Fort Smith Symphony.- Naxos 8559174.
- Tr5.
Herman Melville
From Moby Dick, the whiteness of the Whale, read by Henry Goodman
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01:00Jagger/Richard
Paint it Black
Performer: The Rolling Stones.- ABKCO ROLCD 1.
- Tr6.
Ted Hughes
Crow Falls, read by Adjoa Andoh
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01:05Trad.
Amazing Grace
Performer: Soweto Gospel Choir.- Shanachie 66036.
- Tr8.
Omar Khayyam
A couple from The Rubaiyat translated by Robert Fitzgerald, read by Adjoa Andoh and Henry Goodman
Producer's Notes: 'The Chessboard'
Chess is believed to have originated in India or China more than a thousand years ago. It reached Europe with the Moorish conquest of Spain and the pieces were standardized in the 19th century. There are thirty two pieces – 16 black and 16 white and the game is played on a board with sixty four spaces arranged as a square. You probably knew that. But then there’s a reason for telling you this at the outset.
What you’ve just read is my offer – a technical chess term related to another technical chess term – the gambit. In fact I’m wondering whether this isn’t a gambit but I think I can leave this up to you to decide. The point of the offer – as with any offer – is – do you want to accept it? Do you want to play? If you do, you could be letting yourself in for seventy five minutes of pleasure and intellectual stimulation – at least that’s what I’m hoping.
Just to be clear - You won’t be castling, pushing forward a pawn or sending a knight on a zig zag leap – but you will be stepping through a kind of looking glass into a kind of wonderland. The first voice you’ll hear is Lewis Carroll’s Alice and then things will become curiouser and curiouser as you career through time and space with Philip Larkin, Shakespeare, Carol Ann Duffy, Shostakovich, Louis Armstrong and Claude Nougaro amongst others. It’s a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party so there’s no knowing who else might appear. All you really need to hang onto if you want to keep your head is the fact that you’re going to be moving from white to black, from the shade into the light – just as if you were on a chessboard. It may be a bit dizzying at times because you’ll be skating across music composed only of white notes, poetry about playing the white man, prose about being black in white America, a crow’s black heart and the whiteness of Melville’s whale, Moby Dick. Never fear – all pets win prizes and you’ll bump back safely to earth at the end.
Producer: Zahid Warley
Broadcasts
- Sun 17 Jun 201817:30BBC Radio 3
- Wed 29 Dec 202118:15BBC Radio 3
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