Highlights of BBC Radio 3’s special programmes to mark the WW1 centenary. Classical music, art, literature, film, popular songs and cultural life inspired by the war.
Highlights of BBC Radio 3’s special programmes to mark the WW1 centenary. Classical music, art, literature, film, popular songs and cultural life inspired by the war.
David Owen Norris looks at why Bechstein Hall was forced to change it's name
Maria Margaronis explores the legacy of Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb whose shots sparked the Great War. His deeds, memory and legacy remain contested in the Balkans and beyond.
Emma Jane Kirby considers the idea of London presenting to both the wider world and Britons themselves in 1914. And she assesses how far these attitudes still resonate today.
Tom Service takes a litmus test of the classical music goings-on in London in 1914 and finds Modernist Moments by native composers thin on the ground. Two songs by Frank Bridge, Where She Lies Asleep, and Love Went a-riding, written that year, tell the story.
Jonathan Pryce reads a fictional postcard from London just before WW1, where Vaughan Williams seems to have caught the imagination of the city. Written by Dr Kate Kennedy
Charles Emmerson on London, Elgar's Nimrod and the seeds of decline just beofre WW1.
Historian Charles Emmerson St. Petersburg and the power of the Romanov Tsars.
Historian Charles Emmerson on how Berlin was exciting and modern before the great catastrophe about to happen.
Historian Charles Emmerson on how Paris before WW1 might have felt and on Beethoven being the most performed composer.
Historian Charles Emmerson on how high tradition and modernity collide just before WW1.
Professor Roy Foster, the journalist and author Nick Cohen, Baroness Shirley Williams, Duncan Brack of the Liberal Democrat Party History Group and the author Bea Campbell join Philip Dodd to discuss a Landmark book which explores the collapse of Liberal values in Britain. And does 'The Strange Death of Liberal England' written by George Dangerfield in 1934 have a message for political debate and the wider culture now?
The BBC's Moscow correspondent, Steve Rosenberg, finds a revealing connection between the St. Petersburg of 1914 and its counterpart of today.
Tom Service uncovers a world of startling sounds and heightened feeling in Alexander Scriabin’s final composition, the Five Preludes Op.74. Written in 1914 in St Petersburg, months before Scriabin died, here is music riddled with the ambiguities of the time.
Jonathan Pryce reads a fictional postcard set in the St. Petersburg Conservatoire just before The Great War broke out, looking at the music of the time, particularly Prokofiev. Written by David Nice
Margaret Drabble and William Boyd take part in a Landmark discussion about Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities.
Novelist AS Byatt, the film expert Neil Brand and the cultural historians Alexandra Harris and Philipp Blom choose artworks form the period.
Stephen Evans, the BBC's Berlin Correspondent, reminds us that the German capital on the eve of war was the world's most innovative technological centre. Einstein was here, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics from 1914. Mark Twain called Berlin the "German Chicago" because of its dizzying sense of modernity and progress.
Tom Service introduces Ferrucio Busoni’s Zwei Tanzstűcke Op.30a (Two Dance Studies), a piano work that captures the vibe of Berlin in early 1914. Tom also takes a glance at the frenetic music scene of the city of the time.
Jonathan Pryce reads a fictional postcard from Berlin charting the music landscape of the city. Written by Dr Mark Berry
Foreign Correspondent Hugh Schofield reimagines the French capital of Maurice Ravel, the Ballets Russes and Henri Matisse - but which politically suffered continuing angst over its neighbour across the Rhine: Germany.