Words and Music - Wild Wood

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 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. Zahid Warley - producer Readers: John Rowe (JR) and Emma Fielding (EF) IGOR STRAVINSKY Le Sacre de Printemps City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Simon Rattle EMI CDC7496362 KENNETH GRAHAME Wind in the Willows The Wild Wood JR(reader) WENDELL BERRY How Long Does It Take To Make The Woods EF (reader) STEVE REICH The Four Sections - Section 2 Steve Reich and musicians Elektra Nonesuch 7559792202 ROBERT MACFARLANE The Wild Places Granta EF(reader) WAGNER Forest Murmurs from "Siegried" Philharmonia Orchestra Francesco D'Avalos ASV CDDCA995 SORLEY MACLEAN The Woods of Raasay Carcanet JR(reader) FAIRPORT CONVENTION Liege and Lief Reynardine IMCD 291/586 929-2 BORIS PASTERNAK Pine Trees Selected poems Penguin EF(reader) ENGLEBERT HUMPERDINCK Hansel and Gretel Philharmonia Orchestra and New London children's Choir Sir Charles Mackerras Chandos CHAN31432 DON PATERSON Landing Light The Forest of the Suicides Inferno, Canto XIII EF (reader) RADIOHEAD Pyramid Song Parlophone CDFHEIT45102 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Travels with a Donkey EF(reader) OLIVIER MESSIAEN Catalogue d'Oiseaux Roger Muraro La Chouette hulotte ACCORD 4657682 HENRY THOREAU Walden EF (reader) GYORGY KURTAG Marta and Gyorgy Kurtag Jatekok Track 1 ECM 4535112 SYLVIA PLATH Mushrooms BBC Archive Sylvia Plath (reader) OLIVER KNUSSEN Where the Wild Things Are The Wild Rumpus London Sinfonietta Oliver Knussen Deutsche Grammophon 4695562 CAROL ANN DUFFY Little Red Cap The World's Wife EF (reader) JOHN COLTRANE The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings Greensleeves Disc 3 Track 2 IMPD4 -232 A.A. MILNE Winnie the Pooh Alan Bennet (reader) BBC Archive VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Sir John in Love Herne the Hunter The Sinfonia Chorus Northern Sinfonia Richard Hetherington Richard Hickox CHANDOS CHAN9928 KENNETH GRAHAME Wind in the Willows The Wild Wood JR (reader)