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| BBC RADIO 2 Thursday 28 August 2008 |
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Theme Time Radio Hour With Bob Dylan
Thursday 28 August
11.00pm-12.00midnight BBC RADIO 2
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Age shall not wither our Theme Time presenter, nor custom stale his infinite variety.
Bob Dylan pontificates on the themes of young and old. The brilliantly eclectic mix of tracks featured this evening includes Young Man's Blues by Mose Allison; I Don't Want To Grow Up by The Ramones; Enjoy Yourself by Prince Buster; We Live A Long Time To Get Old by Jimmy Murphy; and Aged And Mellow by Esther Phillips.
Presenter/Bob Dylan, BBC Series Producer/Phil Hughes
BBC Radio 2 Publicity
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| BBC RADIO 3 Thursday 28 August 2008 |
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Composer
Of The Week – Vaughan Williams
Bank Holiday Monday 25 to Friday 29 August
12.00-1.00pm BBC RADIO 3
Feature
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Donald Macleod continues his survey of the stage works of Ralph Vaughan Williams with an examination of Riders To The Sea, an astonishingly bleak and intense one-act opera based on a play by JM Synge, and The Poisoned Kiss, a less successful "romantic extravaganza".
The tragic one-act opera Riders To The Sea, a setting of Synge's play, is set in a tight-knit fishing community in Ireland where the women are left to grieve when all their men-folk have been taken by the sea. As perhaps the most successful of all Vaughan Williams's operas, it has been called the "English Pelléas et Mélisande".
The Poisoned Kiss is a complicated fairy tale. After more than nine years of wrangling over the libretto with Evelyn Sharp, Vaughan Williams still wasn't happy with it – significantly it's one of the few works in progress that the composer wouldn't show to his great friend, Holst.
Presenter/Donald Macleod, Producer/Megan Jones
BBC Radio 3 Publicity
In the first of its two Proms concerts, the New York Philharmonic unveils a joint commission with the BBC by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steven Stucky. "Rhapsodies," Stucky writes, features "successive waves of ecstatic, extravagant expression that ripple outward from a single soloist until they involve whole sections of the orchestra. In this way it celebrates the brilliance of the New York Philharmonic musicians, both singly and collectively."
Proms regular Jean-Yves Thibaudet is the soloist in Gershwin's Piano Concerto – every bit as toe-tapping and scintillating as his Rhapsody In Blue, completed the previous year. Lorin Maazel also conducts Stravinsky's great ballet score The Rite Of Spring, an exploration of primeval Russian ritual – as shocking now as it was nearly a century ago at its riotous Paris première.
Presenter/Andrew McGregor, Producer/Brian Jackson
BBC Radio 3 Publicity
The Essay
Ep
3/3
Thursday 28 August
11.00-11.15pm BBC RADIO 3
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Continuing Radio 3's celebration of Ralph Vaughan Williams to mark the 50th anniversary of his death, The Essay broadcasts three talks by the composer from the BBC Archives.
Concluding the series, Vaughan Williams speaks about one of his teachers, Sir Hubert Parry, in an extract of a talk recorded in 1955 in front of an audience at The Composers' Concourse in London and broadcast the following year.
Vaughan Williams had read Parry's book The Lives Of The Great Composers and went to him for lessons at the age of 17. "It appals me to think how ignorant I was of music when I first went to Parry," he says. He talks about Parry's espousal of Wagner and Ibsen, the former "before Bernard Shaw and his satellites" claimed to have discovered him, the latter despite the derision of the playwright in the English press. Clearly Vaughan Williams respected his teacher greatly but is honest enough to say of Parry that he never reached his true potential as a composer, although he believed that Parry's Blest Pair Of Sirens was "the finest music ever to come out of these islands".
Producer/Tony Cheevers
BBC Radio 3 Publicity
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| BBC RADIO 4 Thursday 28 August 2008 |
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Crossing Continents – Roma Education
Thursday 28 August
11.00-11.30am BBC RADIO 4
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Crossing Continents returns to the Czech Republic following a landmark judgement last November, when the European Court of Justice ruled that the Czech Government was systematically discriminating against Roma (gypsy) children.
It has been estimated that around 75 per cent of Roma children in the Czech Republic have been educated in "special schools" with a curriculum designed for children with learning disabilities. The Court of Justice ruling has ordered that the 18 families who brought the case should be paid compensation.
Ray Furlong travels to Ostrava in the east of the country to meet Berta Cervenakova, whom he first interviewed eight years ago at the beginning of her long fight with the Czech authorities, and asks her if she feels that that her struggle was worthwhile.
She recalls that: "The school gave me something to sign saying my daughter Nikola was mentally retarded. I didn't even know what mentally retarded meant, so I signed it. Now I know what it means." He also speaks with Nikola, who was 10 when her mother and other families started their action, and who is now aged 18, to find out how the experience has affected her life.
Ray also meets the head teacher of a former "special school" and discovers that almost all the students are Roma. The head attempts to justify the fact that he is still teaching the alphabet to 14-year-olds by saying his pupils cannot remember anything and need to have the basics continually repeated to them.
Radek Bhanga, a gypsy rapper, provides a different perspective as he discusses the "poverty of aspiration" within the Roma community, and the fact that Roma parents are often unwilling to send their children to school for fear that they will become "white".
Presenter/Ray Furlong, Producer/Anna Raphael
BBC News Publicity
The Ancient Novel
Thursday 28 August
11.30am-12.00noon BBC RADIO 4
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Tibor Fischer goes in search of ancient novels and discovers they aren't as dusty as the manuscripts on which they're written.
Two thousand years before Hollywood, Greek and Latin novelists were writing stories that read like film scripts, Mills and Boon romances and religious mystery texts worthy of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. They incorporate the twists of a soap opera, bawdy humour and magical episodes in a way that is strikingly modern, and their influence on world literature is vast – as Cervantes, Goethe, Shakespeare and Racine, among others, testify.
At the International Conference on the Ancient Novel, in Lisbon, Tibor Fischer speaks to leading academics about an area of fiction very few people know about. He finds love, happiness and tragedy and shows that although the names have changed, human nature has remained the same.
Presenter/Tibor Fischer, Producer/Gavin Heard
BBC Radio 4 Publicity
Jon Ronson On... Ep 1/5
Thursday 28 August
11.00-11.30pm BBC RADIO 4
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Jon Ronson takes a look at how people react to bad news as he returns for a fourth series of his fascinating, funny, poignant and often philosophical journey through the human experience.
Upon being told he had terminal cancer, John Brandrick set about spending the last six months of his life living the high life – eating out every day, throwing lavish parties for his friends and spending all his money. He even threw out all his clothes, except the ones he stood up in and the suit he was going to be buried in. But the bad news in John's case was that he got better and was given the all-clear and a normal life expectancy. In his words he was "livid" and left in terrible circumstances.
Other bad news stories in the programme include the LA Times religious correspondent who found so many bad news stories on his beat that he lost his belief in God.
Contributors include Charlie Brooker.
Presenter/Jon Ronson, Producers/Laura Parfitt and Simon Jacobs
BBC Radio 4 Publicity
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| BBC 6 MUSIC Thursday 28 August 2008 |
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Rob Hughes
Thursday 28 August
7.00-9.00pm BBC 6 MUSIC
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In anticipation of the release of his seventh album, Devon-based musician Peter Bruntnell joins Rob Hughes in the studio.
Peter plays tracks from his new album Peter And The Murder Of Crows, which is released shortly. The album was recorded mainly in his home studio in Devon. It was co-written with writing partner Bill Ritchie, who is based in Canada. They swap lyrics and melodies over the telephone.
Presenter/Rob Hughes, Producer/Michelle Choudhry
BBC 6 Music Publicity
Gary Crowley
Thursday 28 August
9.00pm-12.00midnight BBC 6 MUSIC
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Gary Crowley unveils a live performance
from Sonic Youth, who took centre stage at the Royal Festival Hall
as part of John Peel's Meltdown in 1998. They are followed by a
session from Yellow Magic Orchestra recorded in 1980.
Presenter/Gary Crowley, Producer/Lisa Kenlock
BBC 6 Music Publicity
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