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Sister Teresa Keswick

Sister Teresa Keswick, a former London lawyer who became an enclosed nun, shares her life story and the music she loves with Michael Berkeley.

Some 40 years ago, Teresa Keswick exchanged her career as a London lawyer for life as a nun in an enclosed and largely silent Carmelite monastery in Norfolk. She’s devoted her life to prayer and work and has become a highly skilled embroiderer. Since 2014 she’s written a regular column for The Oldie magazine.

In a special programme, originally broadcast on Easter Day 2021, Sister Teresa shares her fascinating life story and the music she loves with Michael Berkeley.

Teresa tells Michael about her initial reluctance to accept her vocation and leave her busy social life in London for a remote monastery in the Norfolk countryside and the contentment she eventually found in the strict daily routine of prayer and work.

She chooses pieces by Handel and by Beethoven that reflect her life before she became a nun, and two pieces of plainchant that play a central role in the life of her community. She describes her ongoing love of 1960s pop music and we hear a song by Simon and Garfunkel that she still plays when she has a day off from work, once a month. And she appreciates the importance of having fun – in life and in music – choosing the party scene from the opening of La traviata, which recalls a wonderful evening at the opera when she lived in London.

Teresa describes how her community celebrates Easter Day and chooses music from Bach’s Mass in B Minor; she says this music is the only thing that comes close to describing Christ’s resurrection.

Producer: Jane Greenwood
A Loftus Media production for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 3

Available now

42 minutes

Last on

Sun 10 Apr 2022 12:00

Music Played

  • Plainchant

    Salve Mater Misericordiae

    Choir: Schola Cantorum of Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School. Conductor: Scott Price.
  • Ludwig van Beethoven

    Bagatelle in A minor - Fur Elise

    Performer: Paul Lewis.
  • George Frideric Handel

    Dead March (Saul)

    Orchestra: Orchestra of The Sixteen. Conductor: Harry Christophers.
  • Clement Jacob

    Au milieu de silence (Psalm 18)

    Choir: Monks of l'Abbaye d'en Calcat.
  • Simon & Garfunkel

    The Sound of Silence

  • Giuseppe Verdi

    Libiamo (Traviata, Act 1)

    Singer: Ileana Cotrubaș. Singer: Plácido Domingo. Orchestra: Bavarian State Opera Orchestra. Conductor: Carlos Kleiber.
  • Johann Strauss II

    Blue Danube - Waltz

    Orchestra: Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Conductor: Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
  • Johann Sebastian Bach

    Et Resurrexit (Mass in B minor)

    Ensemble: Concerto Copenhagen. Conductor: Lars Ulrik Mortensen.

Broadcasts

  • Sun 4 Apr 2021 12:00
  • Sun 10 Apr 2022 12:00

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