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Pippa Nixon and Sarah Amankwah read from authors including Brit Bennett, Daisy Johnson, Colm Tóibín, CS Lewis. Music includes Angelique Kidjo, Fanny Mendelssohn and the Boulangers.

For there is no friend like a sister, and in this International Women’s Day edition of Words and Music, readings performed by Pippa Nixon and Sarah Amankwah explore the complex relationships between sisters.

From delighting in each other’s company in a poem by Wordsworth to his sister Dorothy and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; to seething with jealousy in extracts from Arifa Akbar’s Consumed and CS Lewis’s Narnia; to sadness at parting in Diana Hendry’s Parting and Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half. There are many types of sisters: not just blood relatives, but friends, loved ones, and those rallying together to change the world. Emily Dickinson celebrates a sister-in-law, and Rupi Kaur celebrates sisters-in-heart, while Magi Gibson makes a call to arms for sisters in her poem ‘Wild Women of a Certain Age’.

We also hear about musical sisters Nannerl Mozart and Fanny Mendelssohn, and there are musical figures twisting around one another like sisters in Bach’s Double Concerto and Brahms’s Concerto for Violin and Cello. Our soundtrack also includes piano duets played by the Labeque Sisters, and music from sisters Nadia and Lili Boulanger. We explore jealousy and sadness in songs from Hamilton and by the Unthank Sisters, and celebrate sisterhood with Angelique Kidjo.

Producer: Sofie Vilcins
Image: Susannah Harker (L) and Jennifer Ehle (R) as sisters Jane and Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC's 1996 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice

READINGS:
Christina Rossetti - Goblin Market
William Wordsworth - To My Sister
Spike Milligan - My Sister Laura
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Brit Bennett - The Vanishing Half
Rupi Kaur - It isn’t blood
Emily Dickinson - One Sister Have I In Our House
Colm Tóibín - Brooklyn
Daisy Johnson - Sisters
Diane Hendy - Parting
Vicki Feaver - The Witches
Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
Arifa Akbar - Consumed
CS Lewis - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Letter
Anna Beer - Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music
Cecily Hamilton - Marriage as a Trade
Magi Gibson - Wild Women of a Certain Age
Charlotte Mew - The Peddlar

6 days left to listen

1 hour, 14 minutes

Last on

Sun 8 Mar 202618:00
BBC Radio 3

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Music Played

Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes

  • 00:01

    Rosemary Clooney

    Sisters

  • 00:03

    Richard Strauss

    Duett-concertino (3rd mvt: Allegro ma non troppo)

    Performer: Ernst Ottensamer. Performer: Stepan Turnovsky. Orchestra: Academy of London. Conductor: Richard Stamp.
  • 00:09

    Scott Joplin

    Maple Leaf Rag

    Ensemble: Katia & Marielle Labèque.
  • 00:11

    Carl Davis

    Pride and Prejudice - Main Titles

    Performer: Melvyn Tan. Orchestra: Orchestra. Conductor: Carl Davis.
  • 00:15

    Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

    Eugene Onegin (Act 1 duet)

    Singer: Olga Guryakova. Singer: Marina Domashenko. Orchestra: Philharmonia of Russia. Conductor: Constantine Orbelian.
  • 00:19

    Johann Sebastian Bach

    Concerto for 2 violins in D minor, BWV.1043 (1st mvt: Vivace)

    Performer: Rachel Podger. Performer: Andrew Manze. Orchestra: Academy of Ancient Music.
  • 00:22

    Angélique Kidjo

    Eva

  • 00:26

    Richard Wagner

    Das Rheingold (Scene 1)

    Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic. Conductor: Georg Solti.
  • 00:29

    Maurice Ravel

    Rapsodie Espagnole

    Ensemble: Katia & Marielle Labèque.
  • 00:38

    The Unthanks

    I Remember

  • 00:43

    Johannes Brahms

    Concerto in A minor for violin, cello and orchestra (3rd mvt: Vivace non troppo)

    Performer: Julia Fischer. Performer: Daniel Müller‐Schott. Orchestra: Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest. Conductor: Yakov Kreizberg.
  • 00:46

    Hildegard von Bingen

    Columba aspexit

    Singer: Emma Kirkby. Choir: Gothic Voices. Conductor: Christopher Page.
  • 00:52

    Lin‐Manuel Miranda

    Satisfied (Hamilton)

    Performer: Renée Elise Goldsberry.
  • 00:55

    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

    Variations on "Ah! Vous dirais-je, Maman", K.265

    Performer: Myung-Whun Chung.
  • 00:58

    Fanny Mendelssohn

    String Quartet in E flat major (3rd mvt: Romanze)

    Ensemble: Quatuor Ébène.
  • 01:01

    Errollyn Wallen

    Concerto Grosso (3rd mvt)

    Orchestra: Chineke! Orchestra. Conductor: Anthony Parnther.
  • 01:04

    Ethel Smyth

    March of the Women

    Singer: Eiddwen Harrhy. Orchestra: Orchestra of the Plymouth Music Series. Conductor: Philip Brunelle.
  • 01:07

    Nadia Boulanger

    C'etait en Juin (Les heures claires)

    Performer: Angela Gassenhuber. Singer: Melinda Paulsen.
  • 01:09

    Lili Boulanger

    D'un matin de Printemps

    Orchestra: Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Mark Stringer.

Broadcasts

  • Sun 6 Mar 202217:30
    BBC Radio 3
  • Sun 8 Mar 202618:00
    BBC Radio 3

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