The Wild Wood is where you find Dante and Winnie the Pooh. It's where you shelter from the storm and where you're stalked by nameless terror. It's a place for monkish retreat and contemplation, and a place where, according to Vaughan Williams, an amorous Sir John Falstaff can be found prancing around with antlers on his head. Readers Emma Fielding and John Rowe take you into this beguiling and bewildering space, with the musical help of Wagner, Schubert, John Coltrane and Radiohead.
Wild Wood
John Rowe (reader)
Emma Fielding (reader)
What could be more unsettling than the darkness seeping like sump oil from beneath the branches of a pine forest? What's more likely to give imagination wings than a big wind catching at the green sails of a huge chestnut grove? The Wild Wood bewitches as it bewilders.
This was the starting point for me when I began to think about this evening's edition of Words and Music. I wanted to give a sense of both. I also wanted to suggest how the wild wood is with us from the very beginning, from the time when we listen, rapt, to a bed time story such as Wind in the Willows to that moment in anxious adulthood when, like Dante, we look back and wonder how we came to be lost in the dark wood of our lives.
The programme is a kind of journey, beginning with Mole's first encounter with untamed nature and ending with his rescue. The way in which his youthful confidence gives way to speculation and inquiry is reflected in the path the programme takes - where and how did the woods come into being, what gives them their power.
I have included part of the Gaelic poet, Sorley Maclean's wonderful elegy to the woods of Raasay, the island of his birth, as well as Boris Pasternak's perfect lyric on pine trees. The terror of the forest is also there in Messaien's piano portrait of the tawny owl just as the forest's sense of carnival and riot is there in the Wild Rumpus scene from Oliver Knussen's Where the Wild Things Are.
As you would expect there are many moods in between, Sylvia Plath reading her poem about the insidious, spooky power of mushrooms, the hushed flowering of Gyorgy Kurtag's miniatures next to Edward Thomas's meditations on mortality, as well as Vaughan Williams' portrait of the amorous Falstaff stumbling about in Windsor Forest. Something for everyone, I hope.
Zahid Warley - producer
Details of music and readings
Timings are from the beginning of the programme
00:00:00
IGOR STRAVINSKY
Le Sacre de Printemps
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Simon Rattle
EMI CDC7496362
00:01:15
KENNETH GRAHAME
Wind in the Willows
The Wild Wood
John Rowe(reader)
00:8:18
WENDELL BERRY
How Long Does It Take To Make The Woods
Emma Fielding (reader)
00:09:56
STEVE REICH
The Four Sections - Section 2
Steve Reich and musicians
Elektra Nonesuch 7559792202
00:10:26
ROBERT MACFARLANE
The Wild Places
Granta
Emma Fielding(reader)
00:12:38
WAGNER
Forest Murmurs from "Siegried"
Philharmonia Orchestra
Francesco D'Avalos
ASV CDDCA995
00:22:16
SORLEY MACLEAN
The Woods of Raasay
Carcanet
John Rowe(reader)
00:25:38
FAIRPORT CONVENTION
Liege and Lief
Reynardine
IMCD 291/586 929-2
00:30:08
BORIS PASTERNAK
Pine Trees
Selected poems
Penguin
Emma Fielding(reader)
00:32:08
ENGLEBERT HUMPERDINCK
Hansel and Gretel
Philharmonia Orchestra and New London children's Choir
Sir Charles Mackerras
Chandos CHAN31432
00:36:03
DON PATERSON
Landing Light
The Forest of the Suicides
Inferno, Canto XIII
Emma Fielding (reader)
00:37:39
RADIOHEAD
Pyramid Song
Parlophone CDFHEIT45102
00:42:27
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Travels with a Donkey
Emma Fielding(reader)
00:44:10
OLIVIER MESSIAEN
Catalogue d'Oiseaux
Roger Muraro
La Chouette hulotte
ACCORD 4657682
00:51:34
HENRY THOREAU
Walden
Emma Fielding (reader)
00:52:24
GYORGY KURTAG
Marta and Gyorgy Kurtag
Jatekok
Track 1
ECM 4535112
00:52:52
EDWARD THOMAS
Dark is the forest and deep
John Rowe (reader)
00:53:31
GYORGY KURTAG
Marta and Gyorgy Kurtag
Jatekok
Track 10
ECM 4535112
00:54:10
PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR
Between the Woods and the Water
Emma Fielding (reader)
00:55:26
SCHUBERT
Goethe Lieder
Fischer-Dieskau, Demus, Moore.
Track 2 - Uber allen Gipfeln
Deutsche Grammophon 4577472
00:57:59
SYLVIA PLATH
Mushrooms
BBC Archive
Sylvia Plath (reader)
00:59:00
OLIVER KNUSSEN
Where the Wild Things Are
The Wild Rumpus
London Sinfonietta
Oliver Knussen
Deutsche Grammophon 4695562
01:04:15
CAROL ANN DUFFY
Little Red Cap
The World's Wife
Emma Fielding (reader)
01:07:43
JOHN COLTRANE
The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings
Greensleeves
Disc 3
Track 2
IMPD4 -232
01:09:13
A.A. MILNE
Winnie the Pooh
Alan Bennet (reader)
BBC Archive
01:10:59
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Sir John in Love
Herne the Hunter
The Sinfonia Chorus
Northern Sinfonia
Richard Hetherington
Richard Hickox
CHANDOS CHAN9928
01:16:50
KENNETH GRAHAME
Wind in the Willows
The Wild Wood
John Rowe (reader)
