Spring Journey
First broadcast in 2004

The Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, presented a four-part series on Sunday afternoons on Radio 3, on the four Sundays leading up to Easter Day.

Taking as a backdrop Schubert's bleak song-cycle `Winterreise' (Winter Journey), Tom Wright took us on a spiritual journey in the opposite direction, from winter into spring.

The four programmes have as their themes `Forgiveness', `Welcome', `Healing' and `Hope', and each is a reflection in words and music on the problems and challenges which confront society today, and the ways in which composers have addressed such issues.

Dr Tom Wright
Is one of Britain 's leading theologians. Formerly Tutor and Chaplain at Worcester College , Oxford , then Dean of Lichfield and Canon at Westminster Abbey, he was enthroned as Bishop of Durham in October 2003. He has also held visiting professorships in Canada, the USA, New Zealand, Rome and Jerusalem .

His many books include `The New Testament and the People of God' (1988), `Who Was Jesus?' (1992), `Jesus and the Victory of God' (1996), and most recently `The Resurrection of the Son of God' (2003).

An experienced broadcaster on radio and TV, he is presenting a Channel 4 programme on the Resurrection on Easter Monday 2004.

1 Forgiveness (Sunday 21 March)
The musical starting point here is that sublime moment towards the end of Mozart's opera `The Marriage of Figaro' when the wronged Countess rises to a matchless nobility of spirit, and forgives the errant husband who has caused her so much pain. When you meet forgiveness, says Tom Wright, it's like a sudden breath of spring air invading a winter landscape. People must face up to the existence of evil in the world, and set about the hard task of forgiveness.

One of the most startling examples of this in recent times has been the extraordinary work of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu in South Africa , and Tom Wright illustrates his point with an excerpt from a piece called `Clouds Clearing', by the Afrikaans composer Hans Roosenschoon, which, he says, catches exactly this mood of a sudden and unexpected spring.

Music used:
Mozart Le nozze di Figaro (Act 4)
Alfred Poell (The Count), Lisa Della Casa (The Countess), Vienna PO/Erich Kleiber
DECCA 466 369-2

Schubert Gute Nacht (from Winterreise , D911)
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Gerald Moore (piano)
EMI 7243 5 67927-2

Brahms Intermezzo (No 2 from 4 Pieces, Op 119)
Julius Katchen (piano)
DECCA 455 252-2

Hans Roosenschoon Clouds Clearing
National Youth Orchestra of South Africa/Omri Hadari
SABC recording, Cape Town City Hall on 16 July 1994

Mozart Agnus Dei (from the Coronation Mass, K317)
Emma Kirkby (soprano), Winchester Cathedral Choir, AAM/Christopher Hogwood
OISEAU LYRE 436 585-2

2 Welcome (Sunday 28 March)
Tom Wright has recently been re-reading Homer's `Odyssey', and says he is struck by the way in which, as in almost all other ancient societies, the Greeks took it for granted that when strangers arrived they should be welcomed and entertained. He says: “There is a lovely mutual vulnerability about this rule of welcome, a sense of fresh and spring-like possibility, which I find captured in the tender and delicate second movement of Sibelius's suite `Rakastava'”. But according to Tom Wright, the gift of welcome remains fragile. Nowadays, when strangers in the form of asylum seekers come knocking on the door, our immediate reaction is suspicion and rejection. `We desperately need to re-learn the lesson of spring and welcome, the gentle art of the open door and the accepting hearth'. These sentiments are aptly summed up in Vaughan Williams' settings of Stevenson's poem `The Roadside Fire', and of `Love bade me welcome', from the 5 Mystical Songs.

We have, says Dr Wright, become a very self-righteous, moralistic society once more, prey to ideologies which set up a new moral standard and insist that everyone must obey them. But what matters, he says, is not `isms' but people, and we have to learn once more to welcome and be welcomed by one another as fellow humans.

Music used:
Sibelius The Way of the Lover ( Rakastava Suite, Op.14, second movement)
The Halle Orchestra/Sir John Barbirolli
EMI 7243 5 67299-2

Vaughan Williams The Roadside Fire (from Songs of Travel )
Bryn Terfel (baritone), Malcolm Martineau (piano)
DG 445 946-2

Brahms Intermezzo, Op 117/1
Helene Grimaud (piano) ERATO 0630-14350-2

Vaughan Williams Love bade me welcome (from 5 Mystical Songs )
Thomas Allen, Corydon Singers, ECO/Matthew Best
HYPERION CDA20420-2

Mussorgsky The Great Gate of Kiev (from Pictures from an Exhibition )
Chicago SO/Fritz Reiner
RCA 09026 61401-2

3 Healing (Sunday 4 April)
The starting point here is the need to remember past horrors such as the Holocaust, and learn from them, rather than wallow in them, in order to build a new world in which such things might become impossible. Healing is an essential part of the spring journey. `If we let ourselves, as individuals or communities, be defined by past evil or pain, however bad it was, we allow the evil to carry on dominating us, instead of winning the victory over it and being released from it'.

Tom Wright draws on music by Beethoven and Brahms to illustrate ` a kind of grieving which goes right through the heart of sorrow and comes out the other side'. He goes on to suggest that perhaps the central task of our time is `not the reorganisation of the nations, but their healing; the healing of the memories and imaginations which keep people locked quite literally behind high walls and barbed wire'. He suggests that when individuals, groups or societies resist healing, preferring to live by hate and fear and depression, perhaps the only way to a breakthrough might be through the imagination, fuelled by art. To illustrate his point, he draws on music by Bernstein (the Chichester Psalms), and Richard Strauss (the final trio from `Der Rosenkavalier', in which the three soprano voices, once divided by jealousy and suspicion, meld together in glorious harmony).

Music used:
Beethoven Piano Trio in B flat, Op 97 (The Archduke )
The Florestan Trio
HYPERION CDA67369-2

Brahms Selig sind, die da Leid tragen (from A German Requiem )
Schütz Choir of London, London Classical Players/Roger Norrington
EMI 0777 7 54658-2

Vaughan Williams Symphony No 5 ( Romanza )
LPO/Adrian Boult DECCA 473 241-2 CD3 T7 03 58

Bernstein Chichester Psalms (second movement)
John Bogart (alto), Camerata Singers, NYPO/Leonard Bernstein
SONY SMK 60595

Strauss The final trio from Der Rosenkavalier Act 3
Christa Ludwig (Octavian), Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (The Marschallin) Teresa Stich-Randall (Sophie), Philharmonia Orchestra/Herbert Von Karajan
EMI 7243 5 67605-2

4 Hope (Sunday 11 April)
Tom Wright begins this programme with the opening of Sibelius's Third Symphony, which, he says, `opens up like a spring day, full of surprise and freshness and hope'. The virtue of hope, he says, is underpinned within the Christian tradition, by two beliefs shared with Judaism and Islam, and one specific to Christianity. The shared beliefs are the goodness of God's creation and God's justice. `God cares passionately about the whole creation and will put it to rights. The unique Christian belief is that this process has already begun with the decisive event of Jesus' resurrection'.

He concludes: `The Spring Journey of renewal and hope takes place between the first great statement of the Easter theme, the resurrection of Jesus, and the final one when all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well'.

Music used:
Sibelius Symphony No 3 (First movement: Allegro moderato)
CBSO/Simon Rattle
EMI CDM 7 64120-2

Vaughan Williams Easter (from 5 Mystical Songs )
Thomas Allen (baritone), Corydon Singers, ECO/Matthew Best
HYPERION CDA20420-2

Howells Saraband for the Morning of Easter (from 6 Pieces for organ)
Graham Barber (organ)
PRIORY PRCD524

Schumann Fantasy in C, Op 17
Sviatoslav Richter (piano)
EMI 5 75233 2