Description
The rural landscapes of Gloucestershire have inspired many classical composers - including Herbert Howells, Gerald Finzi, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Ivor Gurney, to name just a few. In this programme, Rose Ferraby finds out about the links between landscape and music and learns about the extraordinary cluster of composers who were associated with Gloucester Cathedral in the early part of the 20th century. She talks to academics and musicians about how a love of the Gloucestershire countryside influenced composers of the time and visits some of the beauty spots which inspired them - including Chosen Hill, believed to be the only hill to have a piano quartet dedicated to it. At Gloucester Cathedral, she hears the choristers sing the Gloucester Service, a setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis by Herbert Howells, and meets the cathedral's director of music - who was himself taught by Howells at the Royal College of Music.
Produced by Emma Campbell
Helen Mark visits 50 square miles that were neither England nor Scotland. The Debatable Lands, between Carlisle and Gretna, were home to untameable crime families that petrified the most powerful of Lords and Kings. For hundreds of years governments in London and Edinburgh left the region to its...
Published 10/03/24
Martha Kearney follows the River Ouse, from the High Weald to the Sussex coast and - finally - into the sea itself. Along the way, she discovers how one of the UK's largest nature recovery projects is taking root.
The project is called 'Weald to Waves' - it's a wildlife corridor that has been...
Published 09/26/24