With warm weather announced for the weekend, it would appear that Spring has, at last, sprung. And, to mark the season, BBC Radio 3 has announced a new series of birdsong-inspired programmes.
‘We know our audience has a love for the natural world and that birdsong is an enduring British interest,’ says Alan Davey, controller of BBC Radio 3. ‘We hope these new birdsong-inspired features… will offer our audiences a chance to reflect and catch-up.’
Breakfast Birdsong, clips of birdsong paired with a piece of music, will be broadcast on Radio 3’s Weekend Breakfast show. This new programme began last Sunday with an extended clip of a dawn chorus to mark International Dawn Chorus Day.
Singer and folksong collector Sam Lee will present a new programme exploring the Nightingale’s influence on music. In collaboration with Late Junction and World on 3, Lee and collaborators will create new nightingale-inspired compositions.
And a complete performance of Messiaen’s birdsong-inspired Catalogue d’Oiseaux will be broadcast from the Aldeburgh Festival on 19 June. The piece will be arranged to reflect the times of day that the various birds depicted might really be heard, and performed in locations around Aldeburgh near to where the birds live, including an outdoor stage on the RSPB Minsmere nature reserve.
For more information visit the BBC Radio 3 website.
