Words and Music - The Ring Cycle

Most of us have opinions about marriage. Gandhi claimed that he first learned the concepts of non-violence from his and Katharine Hepburn maintained that marriage was the way to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of just one. You don’t have to have been a wife or a husband of course. We’ve all been children and we’ve seen our parents or other adults experimenting day to day with the notion that two individual squares can and should be turned into a single, smooth, gilded circle of domestic bliss. This edition of Words and Music traces that impulse from the spark of desire to its flaring in the conjugal hearth; from its collapse into ash and embers to its occasional, miraculous re-kindling. So forget Das Rheingold and think instead about the double dream of matrimony. You’ll be in good company, the actors Jane Lapotaire and Ralf Little will be lending their voices to Tolstoy, Saul Bellow, Elizabeth Bishop and Anne Carson amongst others to conjure up this vision and the music will be provided by the Words and Music jukebox – a machine that can produce Mozart’s sounds and sweet airs, the slinkiness of Billie Holiday, Anouar Brahem’s feline oud playing and the cybernetic funk of Grace Jones. What else would you expect from an attempt to describe “the triumph of hope over experience”? Zahid Warley – Producer. Philharmonia Orchestra and chorus – Herbert von Karajan Overture from Cosi van tutte Mozart EMI CMS5670642 CD 1 Track 1 Anne Carson Tango VI From The Beauty of the Husband Reader: Ralf Little Leopoldo Federico y Orquesta Sueno de Tango Leopoldo Federico and Nicolas Ledesma Café de Los Maestros WRASS 226 Track on CD: CD2 Track 1 Jane Austen Opening chapter of Pride and Prejudice Reader: Jane Lapotaire Rudolf Barshai and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra The Waters in Winter -Second Ritual Dance from The Midsummer Marriage Tippett Ritual Dances from The Midsummer Marriage EMI 5865872 Track 16 Andre Breton Free Union New Faber Book of 20th Century French Poems Translator: Stephen Romer Reader: Ralf Little Abdullah Ibrahim The Wedding Water from an Ancient Well TIP 8888122 Track 6 Carol Ann Duffy White Writing Feminine Gospels Reader: Jane Lapotaire The Hilliard Ensemble De souspirant cuer Guillaume de Machaut Motets ECM 4724022 Track 1 David Harsent We are naked Marriage…section III Reader: Ralf Little Anouar Brahem Conte de l’incroyable amour Anouar Brahem ECM 1457 511959-2 Track 5 Elizabeth Bishop It’s marvellous The New Faber Book of Love Poems Reader: Jane Lapotaire Kocani Orkestar Siki, Siki Baba Nestor Cok Rakia From Alone At My Wedding CRAW 25 EFA 80271 3075192 WAG 330 Track 1 David Harsent Going In Marriage section XII Reader: Ralf Little Billie Holiday Body and Soul Heyman – Sour-Eyton - Green Billie Holiday 1939-40 CLASSICS 601 Track 16 Douglas Dunn Thirteen Steps and the Thirteenth of March Elegies Reader: Ralf Little Anne Sofie von Otter and Monteverdi Choir – John Eliot Gardiner J’ai perdu mon Eurydice Gluck Orphee et Eurydice EMI 7243 5 568872 9 CD 2, Track 14 Sylvia Plath Morning Song Penguin’s Poems for Life Reader: Jane Lapotaire Gabrieli Quartet String Quartet Number 1 Janacek and Smetana Quartets DECCA 430 295 -2 Track 1 Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina Reader: Ralf Little Grace Jones Private Life Chrissie Hynde Grace Jones Private Life: Compass Point Years ISLAND 5245012 Tracks 1 and 2 Katherine Mansfield Marriage a la Mode The Garden Party Reader: Jane Lapotaire Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg cond. Gerd Albrecht Prelude to Act 3 Der Konig Kandaules Zemlinsky Symphonische Gesange. Drei Balletstucke. Der Konig Kandaules CAPRICCIO 10448 Track 11 Saul Bellow Opening Chapter of Herzog Reader: Jane Lapotaire Helen Jahren Six Metamorphoses after Ovid - Narcissus Benjamin Britten Oboe Music by Britten , Dorati and Krenek BIS CD737 Track 14 Joseph Brodsky Six Years Later A Part of Speech Translator: Richard Wilbur Reader: Jane Lapotaire Kronos Quartet Lyric Suite – Adagio Appassionato Alban Berg Lyric Suite NONESUCH 7559796962 Track 4 Margaret Atwood Extract from The Penelopiad Reader: Ralf Little Jeanne Moreau Le Tourbillon Georges Delerue to words by Bassiak La Nouvelle Vague MILAN 887825 Track 11 Andrew Sean Greer The Story of a Marriage Reader: Jane Lapotaire Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus cond. Karl Bohm Fortunato l’uom che prende from Cosi fan tutte Mozart Cosi fan tutte EMI CDM 769332 2 Track 14