Tuning Up

Available for over a year

Aidan is our poetic guide through this crucial but blink-and-you-miss-it prologue to art, sport, nature. This metaphor for so many other things: the anticipation of something. Of imminence, excitement, nerves. But it's also about ritual: an orchestra tuning up or boxers crossing themselves before a fight are rites of passage, almost superstition - the moment is confirming. This programme unfolds with one of the BBC orchestras on stage tuning up, where we return at regular intervals to hear from musicians about the importance of this moment. Alongside them are cricketers, sprinters, restaurateurs, surfers, singers. All of them know the progress from ordinary life to another life under the spotlight, and they all have ways of coping. Aidan listens to their inner voices, their mantras, the rituals that make the transition seem controllable. He explores the way time shifts, accelerating and slowing, and why the final silence is at once terrifying and magical. Producer: Tom Alban