The Music of the Surrey Hills

04/16/20 • 24 min

Ian Marchant meets musicians inspired by the landscape of the Surrey Hills, including concert pianist Wu Qian, who found it terrifying when she first arrived from China aged 12. She soon learned to love the place and co-founded an international music festival which incorporates into its programme inspiring country walks in this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Ian meets Julia and Henry Pearson, who help to run the festival and live in the picturesque village of Shere, with its thatched cottages and 'terminally cute' setting. They are music lovers and keen walkers, so the festival is a perfect fit. Since the programme was recorded in early March, the festival has been cancelled, but imagining the concerts in the 'cathedral in the woods' at Ranmore Church, is still a piece of 'enchantment'.

Ian was born in this area and remembers being told that the view from Newland's Corner was the best in England. It was, in fact, what England should look like, according to his father. Ian now knows this isn't quite true, but it is how people all over the world picture the English countryside: rolling hills, woods, clear, babbling streams and a vista that extends to the English channel.

Ian meets sound artist Graham Downall who has created music/soundscapes to reflect the locations of five sculptures which have been placed in the landscape, and he discovers that the tipple of choice at this festival isn't to be found in the Worker's Beer Tent, but in the sparkling white wine which is produced from the chalky slopes of Denbies Vineyard near Dorking.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery

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Small Fish - Big Project

How a little known fish, rare and remarkable, is driving a huge project on the River Severn.

Weirs may look dramatic and sound wonderful but, for fish, they are nothing more than a barrier, preventing progress upstream. That's why you'll see anglers, both human and heron, hanging around weirs for an easy-ish catch. One fish in particular, previously found in healthy numbers on the Severn, has suffered. It's the Twaite Shad, sleek and fast, but not fond of leaping. However, a project called Unlocking the Severn is well underway to install gigantic fish-passes at four weirs. These will allow the Twaite Shad to swim through and reach their spawning grounds in significant numbers for the first time since the Victorians installed weirs to improve navigation during the industrial revolution.

Because of Covid19, the sound-quality of this programme will be a little different: all the interviewees recorded themselves, on their phone voice-recorders, in their own homes... many thanks to each of them for persevering! See the 'related links' box below for more info on the entire Unlocking the Severn project.

Producer/Presenter: Karen Gregor

Next Episode

Birmingham Tree City of the World

Birmingham is one of only fifty-nine cities around the globe to be awarded the status of 'Tree City of the World'. This is an international framework for a healthy, sustainable urban forestry programme, an award that's all down to the passion of Birmingham's citizens for trees.

Helen Mark meets tree planters young and old from near and far; tree wardens, who are kind of like traffic wardens, but for trees (and just as fierce: really, don't mess with their trees); an academic who runs the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (he really loves trees) and an arboriculturalist who gets to work at 6.30 every morning in his mission to extend Birmingham's canopy cover. Helen finds out why the city's tree-focussed ambitions go well beyond just planting trees. All these people know you have to take care of trees for their whole life, not just plonk them in the ground. They also know that urban trees suffer more than those planted in the countryside, so they need extra tenderness.

Helen also finds herself in a once-famous garden that has re-wilded itself. Once the immaculate BBC show garden of TV gardener Percy Thrower, this patch of tree-laden wilderness-heaven is in a secret corner of Birmingham's Botanical Gardens. She thinks on the whole, he'd approve of the trees. Although maybe not the weeds.

Recorded in early March.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery