More by accident than intention, I listened to two episodes of the BBC Radio 4 programme "Soul Music" this week. Each programme in a series of "Soul Music" takes a piece of music and allows the contributors to give an account of the impact that that piece of music has had on their lives. It also usually offers some insight into the music itself. There have now been some 31 series
The first programme I listened to was devoted to John Denver's Take Me Home, Country Roads. You can listen to the programme here (I think it will be available for some time after my posting), and it can be downloaded from that page as an .mp3 file. It is particularly moving to listen to Alison Wells speaking about her sister Elizabeth, who lived with Downs Syndrome, and about how her mother cared for Elizabeth. This section occurs at 09:25 - 13.44 in the programme. Elizabeth died in January, after contracting COVID-19.
I caught the second programme on BBC Radio 4 Extra, which presents programmes from the (sometimes distant) past. This programme, dedicated to Beethoven's violin concerto, is from a series first broadcast in 2012. You can listen to it here; it appears to be permanently available, and there is an option to download it as an .mp3 file. I recommend to you the first section, up to 07:24, where Robert Gupta describes how the violin concerto played apart in a key moment of his friendship with Nathanial Ayers, who suffered from mental illness. You could also listen to the final section, starting at 17:44, in which Joe Quigley describes how a recording of the concerto came to be played in his monastery and explains the impact it had on him.
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