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Supporting Content

• Nine things we learned about… how hypnosis cured Rachmaninov of composer’s block and produced a world masterpiece.

  Georgia Mann tests the claim that hypnotherapy produced Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto.

  

• Breaking the ice

  Seán Williams glides through the centuries to bring us a brief history of lake skating.

  

• A little bird blown off course...

  How one woman immortalised the Gaelic musical folklore of the Hebridean islands.

  

• What was really wrong with Beethoven?

  Georgia Mann and neurosurgeon Henry Marsh explore the puzzle of Beethoven’s poor health.

  

• Why did the US government spy on Leonard Bernstein for 30 years?

  Opening the secret FBI files on classical music's golden boy, Leonard Bernstein.

  

• What composer Gabriel Prokofiev and I found in Putin's Moscow...

  

• Six classic works of literature we wouldn't have read if they hadn't been smuggled...

  

• Photographs by the jazz writer, social historian, acclaimed photographer Val Wilmer.

  

• Lindsay Johns on the South African novelist & anti-apartheid freedom fighter Alex La Guma

  

• 'The voice of the American wilderness...'

  Introducing Henry David Thoreau...

  

  Duration: 1:08

• Marjorie Senechal on life inside America’s first institution for drug rehabilitation.

  

• Seven images inspired by the grid

  

• The field recordings Attenborough of music performances around the world.

  

• Flor Edwards grew up believing the world would end when she was 12. This is her story.

  

• We examine the field recordings he quietly amassed during his journeys across the globe.

  

• A jam session with a Viking Lyre

  Would the Vikings have played their lyres in the style of a Blues guitarist?

  Duration: 0:53

• "My hand did start lifting up, not really with my permission..."

  A sceptical Georgia Mann submits to a session in Dr Stella Nkenke's "hypnotic chair".

  Duration: 3:19

• Cavorting, conversing and dancing...

  Seán Williams heads for the ice to introduce a short history of social skating.

  Duration: 2:38

• Voices of memory

  Fiona J Mackenzie introduces Margaret Fay Shaw and the folksongs she collected.

  Duration: 2:26
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• Music of the Vikings: What were the favourite tracks of the Norsemen?

• Images of Tavistock House

• The Sonic Century: The Microphone

• Succulent & mouthwatering portrait of one of the least talked about organs of the body
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