St George's Day
Sunday 23 April 2006 12:00-13:00 (Radio 3)
For St George's Day, Private Passions presents a selection of past guests who have chosen pieces by English composers.
Playwright Arnold Wesker explores the quintessential Englishness of Elgar, while Tom Wright, now Bishop of Durham, remembers his student days at Oxford to the accompaniment of Vaughan Williams, whose music is also the choice of novelist Alan Hollinghurst. Writer Philip Pullman finds an almost pagan sensibility in Tippett's Concerto for Double String Orchestra; while poet Ruth Fainlight chooses a traditional folksong and an extract from Harrison Birtwistle's Pulse Shadows. Stephen Fry finds Britten's War Requiem unbearably poignant, while poet Geoffrey Hill recalls the wartime destruction of Coventry. Byrd's Mass for five voices is the choice of writer and psychoanalyst Salley Vickers.
Playlist
M Berkeley
The Wakeful Poet (Music from Chaucer) (pub OUP)
Beaux-Arts Brass Quintet
BBQ BBQ 003 T10
Elgar
Sabbath Morning at Sea (from Sea Pictures, Op.37)
Dame Janet Baker (mezzo)/LSO/Sir John Barbirolli
EMI CDC 556219 2 T7
Vaughan Williams
Symphony No.5 in D (Opening of 1st movt)
Philharmonia Orchestra/Sir John Barbirolli
EMI CDM 565110 2 T2
Tippett
Concerto for Double String Orchestra (3rd mvt - Allegro molto)
BBC SO/Sir Andrew Davis
Teldec 4509-94542-2 T3
Trad The Cuckoo
Shirley Collins
Topic TSCD 815 T8
Birtwistle
Tenebrae (from Pulse Shadows)
Christine Whittlesea (soprano)/Ensemble Intercontemperain/Pierre Boulez
DG 439 910-2 T12
Britten
So Abram rose, and clave the wood (from War Requiem, Op.66)
Peter Pears (tenor)/Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone)/Highgate School Choir/Bach Choir/ London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra/Benjamin Britten
Decca 414 383-2 CD1 T13
Anon
Coventry Carol
Choir of Coventry Cathedral (rec. 1940)
BBC Archive T 2823 Disc 1 (excerpt)
Byrd Mass for five voices: Credo
Tallis Scholars/Peter Phillips
GIMELL CDGIM 345 T3
Vaughan Williams
Minuet of the Sons of Job and Their Wives (from Job, A Masque for Dancing Scene 3)
London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Adrian Boult
EMI CDM 769 710 2 T3
