The Magical Forest

Enter the magical musical world of the forest. It's charming, mysterious, beautiful and scary. Tom Service is your guide as he explores the magical role of the forest in music, from the Romantic charms of Schubert songs to the nightmarish spirits of Weber's Freischütz opera, and beyond to the symbolic psychological forests of Schoenberg's Erwartung and Sibelius's Tapiola. He also talks to sound artist Jez Riley French about his close-up recordings of forests, which bring us the truly wild sounds of un-romanticised nature.