The Witching Hour

From sunset until sunrise on the solstice, Verity Sharp presents a special dream-like night of radio documentaries from Radio 3's archives, celebrating the imaginative possibilities of radio and accompanied by music for enchantment.

During nine hours of overnight programming, Between the Ears documentaries are interspersed with music that speaks to the theme of the night (midsummer, nighttime, dreams, the forest, enchantment...). Midsummer Dreaming also pays homage to the spirit of the Third Programme, Radio 3’s predecessor, which took to the air 80 years ago in 1946.

As we reach midnight we find ourselves falling into a vivid dreamscape from 1964, before slipping into an unstable new world and a cascade of images emerging from a single line of a poem.

23.58
Inventions for Radio: The Dreams (1964)
By Barry Bermange with Delia Derbyshire
Produced by David Thomson

The first of four Inventions for Radio which musically and imaginatively interwove a cascade of voices exploring their inner landscapes. Interviewees spoke about their experience of the dream state, their imagination of the afterlife, their faith and finally - in the fourth Invention - their experience of ageing bodies. The Dreams appears in five movements - Running, Falling, Land, Sea, and Colour.

00.42
Disequilibrium (2012)
Made by Lisa Gee and Nick Ryan
Produced by Jeremy Mortimer

January 2010. Nick Ryan, award-winning sound designer, composer and binaural maven, wakes dizzy, nauseous, destabilised. Despite medication and his GP's assurances, the feeling persists. 'Disequilibrium' is a meditation on the nature of sound and hearing. It traces Nick's experience of his balance disorder as it morphs his world into a space nearly as alien as the one he's creating.

01.15
The Leaves (2016)
Produced by Jaye Kranz

Australian musician and radio producer Jaye Kranz delves into the therapeutic possibilities of poetry, using the line 'The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees' to tumble down the rabbit hole into a dreamlike space of memories.

Midsummer Dreaming was produced by Alan Hall and Eleanor McDowall
Exec produced by Phil Smith from Reduced Listening
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3