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Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert

Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert

13:00 - 14:00

Pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet plays music by Liszt and Debussy at Wigmore Hall, London.

Poems about the music of Bach

Music by Bach

The Aftertaste of Bitterness
If Bach Had Been a Beekeeper
The Silence of the World before Bach
At Ogmore-by-Sea This August Evening

    The Aftertaste of Bitterness

    The roof slopes steeply:
    I am listening to Bach, the St John Passion: I live,
    the pleasures of love enjoying, and thou
    art dying. How the attic space
    has grown luxurious with the music, oboe

    d'amore, a thunder-storm, a dulcet
    rending of the heart in sorrow; and I fill,
    if only for a moment, with
    transcendental energy. Clouds
    through the skylight window shift, reform,

    there falls a huge knocking on the glass
    from the opened sky. Peter's
    ham-fisted attempt at violence, the swung
    sword; then the music of healing, the forgiving
    hand. And what is truth? I'm drawn away

    by mating-shouts of pheasants
    In the high grass outside. Bach's slow chorales
    lift the soul, through time, out
    beyond time, till the music tells how death
    is the perfect state of innocence.

    By John F. Deane
    From The Instruments of Art , Carcanet 2005

    If Bach had been a beekeeper

    If Bach had been a beekeeper
    he would have heard
    all those notes
    suspended above one another
    in the air of his ear
    as the differentiated swarm returning
    to the exact hive
    and place in the hive,
    topping up the cells
    with the honey of C major,
    food for the listening generations,
    key to their comfort
    and solace of their distress
    as they return and return
    to those counterpointed levels
    of hovering wings where
    movement is dance
    and the air itself
    a scented garden

    By Charles Tomlinson
    From Skywriting , Carcanet (2003)

    The Silence of the World before Bach

    There must have been a world before
    the Trio Sonata in D, a world before the A minor Partita,
    but what kind of a world?
    A Europe of vast empty spaces, unresounding,
    everywhere unawakened instruments
    where the Musical Offering, the Well-tempered Clavier
    never passed across the keys.
    Isolated churches
    where the soprano-line of the Passion
    never in helpless love twined round
    the gentler movements of the flute,
    broad soft landscapes
    where nothing breaks the stillness
    but old woodcutters' axes,
    the healthy barking of strong dogs in winter
    and, like a bell, skates biting into fresh ice;
    the swallows whirring through summer air,
    the shell resounding at the child's ear
    and nowhere Bach nowhere Bach
    the world in a skater's silence before Bach.

    By Lars Gustafson

    At Ogmore-by-Sea This August Evening

    I think of one who loved this estuary -
    my father - who, self-taught, scraped upon
    an obstinate violin. Now, in a room
    darker than the darkening evening outside,
    I choose a solemn record, listen to
    a violinist inhabit a Bach partita.
    This violinist and violin are unified

    Such power! The music summons night. What more?
    It's twenty minutes later into August
    before the gaudy sun sinks to Australia
    Now nearer than the promontory paw
    and wincing electric of Porthcawl
    Look! the death-boat, black as anthracite,
    at its spotlit prow a pale familiar.

    Father? Here I am, Father. I see you
    jubilantly lit, an ordered carnival.
    The tide's in. From Nash Point no foghorns howl.
    I'm at your favourite place where once you held
    a bending rod and taught me how to bait
    the ragworm hooks. Here, Father, here, tonight
    we'll catch a bass or two, or dabs, or cod.

    Senseless conjuration! I wipe my smile away
    for now, lit at the prow, not my father
    but his skeleton stands. The spotlight fails,
    the occult boat's a smudge while three far lighthouses
    converse in dotty exclamation marks.
    The ciaccona's over, the record played,
    there's nothing but the tumult of the sea.

    By Danny Abse,
    From New and Collected Poems , (Hutchinson 2003)

    A Bach Christmas Schedule

    16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

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