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The number 10

Including Tchaikovsky's Mozartiana, Liszt's Dante symphony, Ravel's Bolero performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra with readings by Christopher Eccleston and Julie Hesmondhalgh.

The BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival has been celebrating poetry and the written word for ten years, so this Words and Music, recorded with an audience in Salford, features a range of readings performed by Christopher Eccleston and Julie Hesmondhalgh all linked by the number 10.

Lewis Carroll's lesson plan for the Mock Turtle starts with ten hours and lessens each day, whilst Candice Carty-Williams' Queenie feels she is carrying and dropping ten balls of wool. Poet Billy Collins reflects on turning ten, and Dickens' Mr Bounderby from Hard Times remembers his tenth birthday; we hear William Shakespeare's Sonnet No 10 and ‘The Story of Patient Griselda’ from the tenth day of Boccaccio's Decameron. And we reflect on why, for Pythagoras, ten was a mystical number.

Music includes Bach's Prelude and Fugue No 10, Chopin's Études Op. 10, Mozart's Symphony No. 10 and ten orchestral variations by Tchaikovsky performed by the BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Geoffrey Paterson; with solo piano items performed by William Bracken. The programme also gives an orchestral nod to some of the various ‘counting songs’ with the help of pupils from St. Andrew's C of E Junior School in Hadfield, North Derbyshire.

Produced in Salford by Chris Wines

Readings:
Billy Collins - On Turning Ten
Charles Dickens - Hard Times
Mervyn Peake – Gormenghast
Dante - 10th Canto of Inferno
Zadie Smith - Grand Union
William Shakespeare - Sonnet 10
Kapilar – ‘Pathuppāttu’ (The Ten Lays) tr Vaidehi Herbert
Lang Leav – Rouge Planets
Boccaccio - Day X Story 10 – The Story of Patient Griselda from The Decameron, tr John Payne
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Neil deGrasse Tyson – Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
George Sand - Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand
Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret tr John Oxenford
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust, and the Urfaust
Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie - the Pythagorean Sourcebook: The Tetraktys
BJ Murphy - Moore's Law
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Candice Carty-Williams – Queenie
Erich Maria Remarque – All Quiet on the Western Front
Seamus Heaney - Mid-Term Break
Su Shi – Song of River City
Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace
Laurence Sterne - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.

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1 hour, 14 minutes

Last on

Yesterday19:45
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

    Igor Stravinsky

    Greeting Prelude

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:02

    Pyotr Tchaikovsky

    Orchestral Suite No 4, 'Mozartiana' (Theme and Variations)

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:05

    Pyotr Tchaikovsky

    Orchestral Suite No 4, 'Mozartiana' (Theme and Variations)

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:10

    Franz Liszt

    Dante Symphony (Inferno)

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:16

    Percy Grainger

    Now, O Now, I Needs Must Part

    Composer: John Dowland. Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:22

    Maurice Ravel

    Boléro

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:26

    Antonio Vivaldi

    Griselda: Sinfonia

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:31

    Anton Webern

    Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op 10 (1st mvt: Sehr ruhig und zart)

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:32

    Johann Sebastian Bach

    Prelude No 10 in E minor, BWV 855

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:35

    Frédéric Chopin

    Étude in E major, Op 10 No 3

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:40

    Pyotr Tchaikovsky

    Orchestral Suite No 4, 'Mozartiana' (Theme and Variations)

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:43

    Hector Berlioz

    Hungarian March (Damnation of Faust)

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:48

    Béla Bartók

    Music for strings, percussion and celesta (1st mvt)

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:51

    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

    Symphony No 10 in G major, K74 (1st & 2nd mvts)

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 00:55

    Trad.

    Children's Counting Songs

    Choir: St Andrew's Junior School, Hadfield.
  • 00:59

    Pyotr Tchaikovsky

    Orchestral Suite No 4 - 'Mozartiana', Op. 64 - IV. Theme and Variations

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 01:01

    Pyotr Tchaikovsky

    Orchestral Suite No 4 - 'Mozartiana',Variation 7

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 01:04

    Xian Xinghai

    The Yellow River Concerto - III. The Yellow River in Wrath

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 01:09

    Pyotr Tchaikovsky

    Orchestral Suite No 4 - 'Mozartiana',Variation 8

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.
  • 01:11

    Pyotr Tchaikovsky

    Orchestral Suite No 4 - 'Mozartiana',Variation 10

    Orchestra: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Geoffrey Paterson.

Broadcast

  • Yesterday19:45
    BBC Radio 3

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