Private Passions
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04-Jan-2026
Private Passions - Alison Weir
Michael Berkeley's guest is the best-selling writer of historical fiction, Alison Weir.
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21-Dec-2025
Private Passions - Pam Ayres
Michael Berkeley's guest is the poet Pam Ayres.
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07-Dec-2025
Private Passions - Chris Beardshaw
Michael Berkeley's guest is the garden and landscape designer Chris Beardshaw.
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23-Nov-2025
Private Passions - Louise Penny
Michael Berkeley's guest is the crime fiction writer Louise Penny.
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16-Nov-2025
Private Passions - Lea Ypi
Michael Berkeley's guest is the writer and professor of political theory at LSE, Lea Ypi.
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09-Nov-2025
Private Passions - Hugh Bonneville
Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor and writer Hugh Bonneville.
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02-Nov-2025
Private Passions - Annabel Croft
Michael Berkeley's guest is the former tennis player Annabel Croft, now a broadcaster.
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26-Oct-2025
Private Passions - The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer
Michael Berkeley’s guest is the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer.
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19-Oct-2025
Private Passions - Hollie McNish
Michael Berkeley's guest is the poet Hollie McNish.
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12-Oct-2025
Private Passions - Martin Sherman
Michael Berkeley's guest is the playwright Martin Sherman.
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05-Oct-2025
Private Passions - Shobana Jeyasingh
Michael Berkeley's guest is the choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh.
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28-Sep-2025
Private Passions - Richard Armitage
Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor and writer Richard Armitage.
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21-Sep-2025
Private Passions - Deborah Prentice
Michael Berkeley's guest is the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, Deborah Prentice.
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14-Sep-2025
Private Passions - Mark Kermode
Michael Berkeley's guest is the film critic Mark Kermode.
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10-Aug-2025
Private Passions - Alfred Brendel
Michael Berkeley's guest is pianist Alfred Brendel.
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27-Jul-2025
Private Passions - Kathleen Marshall
Michael Berkeley's guest is the American director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall.
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13-Jul-2025
Private Passions - Dame Rachel de Souza
Michael Berkeley's guest is Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children's Commissioner for England.
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06-Jul-2025
Private Passions - Daniel Katz
Michael Berkeley's guest is the art dealer and collector Daniel Katz.
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29-Jun-2025
Private Passions - Jay Griffiths
Michael Berkeley's guest is the writer Jay Griffiths.
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22-Jun-2025
Private Passions - Gabriel Zuchtriegel
Michael Berkeley's guest is archaeologist Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii.
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15-Jun-2025
Private Passions - Suzanne Vega
Michael Berkeley's guest is the American singer songwriter Suzanne Vega.
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08-Jun-2025
Private Passions - Hilary Cottam
Michael Berkeley's guest is the writer, innovator and social entrepreneur Hilary Cottam.
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01-Jun-2025
Private Passions - Neil Hannon
Michael Berkeley's guest is the singer and songwriter Neil Hannon.
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25-May-2025
Private Passions - Adam Buxton
Michael Berkeley's guest is the comedian, writer and podcaster Adam Buxton.
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18-May-2025
Private Passions - Philip Hoare
Michael Berkeley's guest is the writer and biographer Philip Hoare.
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11-May-2025
Private Passions - Emma Rice
Michael Berkeley's guest is the theatre director Emma Rice.
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07-May-2025
Private Passions - Jonathan Sumption
Michael Berkeley's guest is the lawyer and historian Lord Sumption
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27-Apr-2025
Private Passions - Colum McCann
Michael Berkeley's guest is the writer Colum McCann.
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20-Apr-2025
Private Passions - Romola Garai
Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor and director Romola Garai.
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13-Apr-2025
Private Passions - Terry Gilliam
Michael Berkeley's guest is the film director and former Python Terry Gilliam
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08-Apr-2025
Private Passions - Monica Feria-Tinta
Michael Berkeley's guest is the barrister Monica Feria-Tinta
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30-Mar-2025
Private Passions - Boulez at 100: Gerard McBurney
Michael Berkeley's guest is the composer and musicologist Gerard McBurney.
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23-Mar-2025
Private Passions - Bob Crowley
Michael Berkeley's guest is the set and costume designer Bob Crowley.
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09-Mar-2025
Private Passions - Dr Sian Williams
Michael Berkeley's guest is the presenter and psychologist Dr Sian Williams.
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23-Feb-2025
Private Passions - Daniel Levitin
Michael Berkeley's guest is the psychologist and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin.
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09-Feb-2025
Private Passions - Ursula Jones
Michael Berkeley's guest is the co-founder of the English Chamber Orchestra Ursula Jones.
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02-Feb-2025
Private Passions - Professor Anthony Kessel
Michael Berkeley's guest is National Deputy Medical Director NHS England, Anthony Kessel.
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19-Jan-2025
Private Passions - Dava Sobel
Michael Berkeley's guest is the best-selling author Dava Sobel.
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12-Jan-2025
Private Passions - Sir Paul Collier
Michael Berkeley's guest is the economist Sir Paul Collier.
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05-Jan-2025
Private Passions - Miranda Hart
Michael Berkeley's guest is the award-winning comedian and writer Miranda Hart.
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29-Dec-2024
Private Passions - Sister Mary Joy Langdon
Michael Berkeley's guest is Sister Mary Joy Langdon.
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22-Dec-2024
Private Passions - Christmas Collection
Michael Berkeley shares festive music choices from Private Passions over the years.
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08-Dec-2024
Private Passions - Nick Mohammed
Michael Berkeley's guest is the comedian and writer Nick Mohammed.
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24-Nov-2024
Private Passions - Lola Young, Baroness Young of Hornsey
Michael Berkeley's guest is Lola Young, Baroness Young of Hornsey.
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17-Nov-2024
Private Passions - Rupert Everett
Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor and writer Rupert Everett.
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10-Nov-2024
Private Passions - Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock
Michael Berkeley's guest is the space scientist Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock.
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03-Nov-2024
Private Passions - Bryan Ferry
Michael Berkeley's guest is the singer and songwriter Bryan Ferry.
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20-Oct-2024
Private Passions - Garth Greenwell
Michael Berkeley's guest is the acclaimed American writer Garth Greenwell.
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13-Oct-2024
Private Passions - Sarah Ogilvie
Michael Berkeley's guest is the lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie.
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06-Oct-2024
Private Passions - Jenny Beavan
Michael Berkeley's guest is the Academy Award-winning costume designer Jenny Beavan.
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29-Sep-2024
Private Passions - Lucian Msamati
Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor Lucian Msamati.
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22-Sep-2024
Private Passions - Jay Rayner
Michael Berkeley's guest is the restaurant critic, writer and broadcaster Jay Rayner.
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15-Sep-2024
Private Passions - Ann Cleeves
Michael Berkeley's guest is the best-selling crime writer Ann Cleeves.
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25-Aug-2024
Private Passions - Thomas Adès
Michael Berkeley discovers the musical passions of composer Thomas Adès.
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14-Jul-2024
Private Passions - Clio Barnard
Michael Berkeley's guest is the film director and writer Clio Barnard.
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07-Jul-2024
Private Passions - Richard Thompson
Michael Berkeley's guest is the singer, songwriter and guitarist Richard Thompson.
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30-Jun-2024
Private Passions - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Michael Berkeley's guest is the food writer and campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
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23-Jun-2024
Private Passions - Olivia Laing
Michael Berkeley's guest is the writer Olivia Laing.
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16-Jun-2024
Private Passions - Frank Gardner
Michael Berkeley's guest is the BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner.
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09-Jun-2024
Private Passions - Brian Cox
Michael Berkeley's guest is the physicist and broadcaster Brian Cox.
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02-Jun-2024
Private Passions - Dorothy Byrne
Michael Berkeley's guest is Dorothy Byrne, head of news at Channel 4 from 2003 to 2020.
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26-May-2024
Private Passions - Imtiaz Dharker
Michael Berkeley's guest is the poet Imtiaz Dharker.
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19-May-2024
Private Passions - Harry Cliff
Michael Berkeley's guest is the physicist Harry Cliff.
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12-May-2024
Private Passions - Alison Owen
Michael Berkeley's guest is the film producer Alison Owen.
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05-May-2024
Private Passions - Percival Everett
Michael Berkeley's guest is the American writer Percival Everett.
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29-Apr-2024
Private Passions - Edith Hall
Michael Berkeley's guest is the classicist Edith Hall.
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21-Apr-2024
Private Passions - Sathnam Sanghera
Michael Berkeley's guest is the writer Sathnam Sanghera.
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14-Apr-2024
Private Passions - Professor Sue Black
Michael Berkeley's guest is the forensic scientist Professor Sue Black.
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07-Apr-2024
Private Passions - David Mitchell
Michael Berkeley's guest is the writer David Mitchell.
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31-Mar-2024
Private Passions - John Krebs
Michael Berkeley's guest is the zoologist John Krebs.
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24-Mar-2024
Private Passions - Katherine Parkinson
Michael Berkeley’s guest is actress Katherine Parkinson.
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17-Mar-2024
Private Passions - Helena Newman
Michael Berkeley's guest is the chairman of Sotheby's, Helena Newman.
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10-Mar-2024
Private Passions - Mark Cousins - Sound of Cinema Sunday
Michael Berkeley’s guest is the film-maker, producer and writer Mark Cousins.
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25-Feb-2024
Private Passions - Michael Winterbottom
Michael Berkeley's guest is the film director Michael Winterbottom.
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18-Feb-2024
Private Passions - Ray Cooper
Michael Berkeley's guest is the percussionist Ray Cooper.
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11-Feb-2024
Private Passions - Raymond Blanc
Michael Berkeley's guest is chef Raymond Blanc.
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04-Feb-2024
Private Passions - Louise Welsh
Michael Berkeley's guest is writer Louise Welsh.
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28-Jan-2024
Private Passions - Neil Hannon
Michael Berkeley's guest is singer-songwriter Neil Hannon, frontman of The Divine Comedy.
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21-Jan-2024
Private Passions - Lorna Dawson
Michael Berkeley's guest is the forensic soil scientist Lorna Dawson.
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14-Jan-2024
Private Passions - Merlin Sheldrake
Michael Berkeley meets the fungi expert Merlin Sheldrake.
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07-Jan-2024
Private Passions - Nina Stibbe
Michael Berkeley's guest is the writer Nina Stibbe.
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31-Dec-2023
Private Passions - Johnny Flynn
Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor and musician Johnny Flynn.
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10-Dec-2023
Private Passions - Dame Ottoline Leyser
Michael Berkeley's guest is botanist Dame Ottoline Leyser.
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03-Dec-2023
Private Passions - Walter Murch
Michael Berkeley's guest is the film editor and sound designer Walter Murch.
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26-Nov-2023
Private Passions - Kevin O'Hare
Michael Berkeley's guest is the director of the Royal Ballet Kevin O'Hare.
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19-Nov-2023
Private Passions - Daniel Handler
Michael Berkeley's guest is author Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket.
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12-Nov-2023
Private Passions - Mali Morris
Michael Berkeley's guest is abstract painter Mali Morris.
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05-Nov-2023
Private Passions - Abdulrazak Gurnah
Michael Berkeley's guest is winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah.
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29-Oct-2023
Private Passions - Chris Addison
Michael Berkeley's guest is comedian, actor and director Chris Addison.
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22-Oct-2023
Private Passions - Black History Month
Michael Berkeley and guests celebrate the lives and music of black women.
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15-Oct-2023
Private Passions - Brian Cox
Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor Brian Cox.
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09-Oct-2023
Private Passions - Fay Dowker
Michael Berkeley's guest is the theoretical physicist Fay Dowker.
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01-Oct-2023
Private Passions - Olivia Harrison
Michael Berkeley's guest is the prizewinning film producer and writer Olivia Harrison.
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24-Sep-2023
Private Passions - Peter Frankopan
Michael Berkeley's guest is historian Peter Frankopan.
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17-Sep-2023
Private Passions - Rhiannon Giddens
Michael Berkeley's guest is singer, fiddler and banjo player Rhiannon Giddens.
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10-Sep-2023
Private Passions - Jeremy Deller
Michael Berkeley's guest is artist Jeremy Deller.
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20-Aug-2023
Private Passions - György Ligeti
Michael Berkeley speaks to composer György Ligeti in a programme first broadcast in 1997.
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09-Jul-2023
Private Passions - Isabella Tree
Michael Berkeley's guest is author and travel writer Isabella Tree.
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02-Jul-2023
Private Passions - Alexander Polzin
Michael Berkeley's guest is sculptor, painter and set designer Alexander Polzin.
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25-Jun-2023
Private Passions - Raynor Winn
Michael Berkeley's guest is writer Raynor Winn.
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18-Jun-2023
Private Passions - Naomi Alderman
Michael Berkeley's guest is writer Naomi Alderman.
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14-Jun-2023
Private Passions - Beccy Speight
Michael Berkeley's guest is the CEO of the RSPB, Beccy Speight.
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04-Jun-2023
Private Passions - Kit de Waal
Michael Berkeley's guest is writer Kit de Waal.
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28-May-2023
Private Passions - Sarah Lee
Michael Berkeley's guest is photographer Sarah Lee.
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21-May-2023
Private Passions - Norman Ackroyd
Michael Berkeley's guest is artist and printmaker Norman Ackroyd.
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14-May-2023
Private Passions - Mary-Ann Ochota
Michael’s Berkeley’s guest is anthropologist Mary-Ann Ochota.
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07-May-2023
Private Passions - Ben Watt
Michael Berkeley's guest is musician and writer Ben Watt.
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30-Apr-2023
Private Passions - Isabel Wilkerson
Michael Berkeley's guest is Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Isabel Wilkerson.
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16-Apr-2023
Private Passions - Libby Jackson
Michael Berkeley's guest is Libby Jackson from the UK Space Agency.
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09-Apr-2023
Private Passions - Steve Rosenberg
Michael’s Berkeley’s guest is the BBC’s Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg.
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26-Mar-2023
Private Passions - Robert Powell
Michael Berkeley’s guest is actor Robert Powell.
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19-Mar-2023
Private Passions - Helena Kennedy
Michael Berkeley’s guest is lawyer and campaigner Helena Kennedy.
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12-Mar-2023
Private Passions - Peter J Conradi
Michael Berkeley’s guest is biographer Peter J Conradi.
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26-Feb-2023
Private Passions - Wayne Sleep
Michael Berkeley’s guest is dancer Wayne Sleep.
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19-Feb-2023
Private Passions - Susie Boyt
Michael Berkeley’s guest is novelist and journalist Susie Boyt.
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12-Feb-2023
Private Passions - Simon Thurley
Michael Berkeley’s guest is architectural historian Simon Thurley.
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05-Feb-2023
Private Passions - Kaffe Fassett
Michael Berkeley’s guest is textile designer Kaffe Fassett.
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29-Jan-2023
Private Passions - Joanna Scanlan
Michael Berkeley’s guest is actress Joanna Scanlan.
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22-Jan-2023
Private Passions - Hugh Brody
Michael Berkeley’s guest is anthropologist Hugh Brody.
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15-Jan-2023
Private Passions - Diana Melly
Michael Berkeley’s guest is author Diana Melly.
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08-Jan-2023
Private Passions - Todd Field
Michael Berkeley’s guest is the American film director Todd Field.
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12-Dec-2022
Private Passions - Jonathan Romain
Michael Berkeley’s guest is Rabbi Jonathan Romain.
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04-Dec-2022
Private Passions - Roma Agrawal
Michael Berkeley’s guest is structural engineer and author Roma Agrawal.
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27-Nov-2022
Private Passions - Adam Rutherford
Michael Berkeley’s guest is geneticist and broadcaster Adam Rutherford.
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20-Nov-2022
Private Passions - Simon Warrack
Michael Berkeley’s guest is stonemason Simon Warrack.
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13-Nov-2022
Private Passions - Julia Blackburn
Michael Berkeley’s guest is writer Julia Blackburn.
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06-Nov-2022
Private Passions - Stuart MacBride
Michael Berkeley’s guest is the Scottish crime writer Stuart MacBride.
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23-Oct-2022
Private Passions - William Kentridge
Michael Berkeley’s guest is South African artist William Kentridge.
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19-Oct-2022
Private Passions - Arifa Akbar
Michael Berkeley’s guest is writer and theatre critic Arifa Akbar.
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09-Oct-2022
Private Passions - Ronnie Archer-Morgan
Michael Berkeley’s guest is the Antiques Roadshow expert Ronnie Archer-Morgan.
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02-Oct-2022
Private Passions - Jules Montague
Michael Berkeley’s guest is Jules Montague, writer and neurologist.
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25-Sep-2022
Private Passions - Gwen Adshead
Michael Berkeley’s guest is the Broadmoor psychotherapist Dr Gwen Adshead.
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18-Sep-2022
Private Passions - James Runcie
Michael Berkeley’s guest is writer James Runcie.
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07-Aug-2022
Private Passions - David Nutt
Michael Berkeley’s guest is scientist David Nutt.
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24-Jul-2022
Private Passions - Hayley Mills
Hayley Mills tells Michael Berkeley about her life as a child star.
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18-Jul-2022
Private Passions - Christopher de Bellaigue
Michael Berkeley’s guest is journalist and author Christopher de Bellaigue.
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10-Jul-2022
Private Passions - Katherine Rundell
Michael Berkeley’s guest is writer Katherine Rundell.
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03-Jul-2022
Private Passions - Dame Stephanie Shirley
Michael Berkeley’s guest is philanthropist Dame Stephanie Shirley.
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26-Jun-2022
Private Passions - Robin Shattock
Michael Berkeley’s guest is vaccine scientist Professor Robin Shattock.
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19-Jun-2022
Private Passions - Mark Solms
Michael Berkeley’s guest is neuroscientist Mark Solms.
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12-Jun-2022
Private Passions - Francesca Simon
Michael Berkeley’s guest is the Horrid Henry author, Francesca Simon.
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05-Jun-2022
Private Passions - Anne Glenconner
Michael Berkeley’s guest is Anne Glenconner, author and former lady-in-waiting.
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29-May-2022
Private Passions - Jarvis Cocker
Michael Berkeley’s guest is musician Jarvis Cocker.
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22-May-2022
Private Passions - Kat Arney
Michael Berkeley’s guest is science writer and broadcaster Dr Kat Arney.
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15-May-2022
Private Passions - Waheed Arian
Michael Berkeley’s guest is doctor Waheed Arian.
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08-May-2022
Private Passions - Shirley Hughes
Michael Berkeley is joined by children's author Shirley Hughes.
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01-May-2022
Private Passions - Osman Yousefzada
Michael Berkeley’s guest is the fashion designer and artist Osman Yousefzada.
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24-Apr-2022
Private Passions - Clare Marx
Michael Berkeley's guest is orthopaedic surgeon Dame Clare Marx.
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17-Apr-2022
Private Passions - Tim Birkhead
Michael Berkeley’s guest is world expert on birds, Professor Tim Birkhead.
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12-Apr-2022
Private Passions - Francesco da Mosto
Michael Berkeley’s guest is architect and broadcaster Francesco da Mosto.
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12-Apr-2022
Private Passions - Richard Holloway
Michael Berkeley’s guest is former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway.
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12-Apr-2022
Private Passions - Misan Harriman
Michael Berkeley’s guest is photographer Misan Harriman.
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12-Apr-2022
Private Passions - Sister Teresa Keswick
Michael Berkeley’s Easter guest is Carmelite nun Sister Teresa Keswick.
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16-Mar-2015
Private Passions - Andy McNab
Michael Berkeley's guest is former SAS sergeant Andy McNab.
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09-Mar-2015
Private Passions - Anna Meredith
Michael Berkeley's guest for International Women's Day is composer Anna Meredith.
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23-Feb-2015
Private Passions - Ben Okri
Writer Ben Okri chooses his favourite music and talks to Michael Berkeley about the power of stories and their central place in human life. The author of the Booker Prize-winning The Famished Road, he has written many other acclaimed novels - the latest being The Age of Magic - and he's also published collections of poetry, short stories and essays. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Ben Okri has been awarded an OBE as well as numerous international prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa and the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum. His choices of music include Wagner, Beethoven, Miles Davis, Pachelbel's Canon, and one of his poems set to music by Paul Simon's son Harper. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.
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09-Feb-2015
Private Passions - Nicky Clayton
Nicky Clayton is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Comparative Cognition at Cambridge, and she's done more than any other scientist to transform the way we think about animal intelligence, and particularly the intelligence of birds. She's spent her career observing rooks and jays and other members of the corvid family, watching them as they play tricks on each other, and sing and dance together. Her work has challenged the assumption that only humans have the intelligence to plan for the future and reminisce about the past, that only humans can understand the minds of others. She says that she's spent most of her life wondering what it would be like to be a bird: 'to fly, to see colours in the ultraviolet, and to sing as beautifully as they do'. Alongside her scientific research, Nicky Clayton has a passion for tango, and has collaborated with Ballet Rambert as a scientist in residence. In Private Passions she talks to Michael Berkeley about the creative inspiration she finds in music. Her musical choices include Ravel, Janacek and Bruckner, and Astor Piazzolla's Tango for an Angel; as well as Messiaen's Catalogue of the Birds, and the call of a reed warbler. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
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26-Jan-2015
Private Passions - Henrietta Bowden-Jones
Henrietta Bowden-Jones has spent the last three decades studying the mind. Born in Italy to an English father and an Italian mother, she has dedicated her career to helping people overcome addictions - both in the lab as a researcher in neuroscience, and as a psychiatrist treating everyone from homeless drug addicts to city traders with gambling problems. She shares with Michael Berkeley musical memories of growing up in Milan with an opera-loving nanny; the shock of being sent to an English boarding school as a teenager; her love of art as well as science; and how her pioneering work on addiction has helped thousands of people rebuild their lives. Her music choices include Mozart, Dvorak and Reynaldo Hahn's charming Venetian songs. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
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19-Jan-2015
Private Passions - Paul Cartledge
If you want to know how to wield a Spartan spear, or whether Athens really was the cradle of democracy - or indeed what ancient Greek music might have sounded like, Paul Cartledge is the man to go to. He has probably done more than anyone else in the past three decades to advance knowledge of ancient Greek culture - both in academic circles and in the public arena. He was until very recently the first A G Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge, a chair founded to study a thousand years of Greek cultural achievements and to highlight their lasting influence on society today. Paul talks to Michael Berkeley about why ancient history is relevant to us today; why the myths of the classical world have been such an enduring inspiration for composers; why democracy would work better without political parties; and the pitfalls of being a historical advisor to Hollywood. And Paul shares with Michael his passion for music that stretches back to his childhood, including Brahms, Bach, Rossini, Stravinsky - and Bob Dylan. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
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04-Jan-2015
Private Passions - Kate Gross
On Private Passions Michael Berkeley's guest is the charity CEO and cancer blogger, Kate Gross, who sadly died on Christmas morning, at the age of only 36. Michael Berkeley writes: 'Kate Gross was an unforgettable guest on Private Passions: so bright and charismatic, full of life and curiosity about the world, despite being gravely ill when we met last autumn. And indeed, all through her life she was the kind of person everybody envied. Hugely successful in her career, by only 27, she had risen so quickly up through the civil service that she was briefing Tony Blair before Prime Minister's Questions; by 29 she had left the civil service to set up Blair's African Charity, the Africa Governance Initiative, managing an annual budget of 5 million pounds. But then her life fell apart. On the plane back from America, she collapsed, and went straight to hospital when she landed. It was then that she was diagnosed with Stage 4 bowel cancer: a terminal diagnosis. This was how in 2012 Kate Gross the CEO turned into Kate Gross the cancer blogger. Her blog - which is soon to be a book - chronicled her life in and out of hospital over the last two years. It's very moving, but also sharp and funny. Sadly she died before the book was published. But her family are happy for this programme to be broadcast; Kate knew it would be her memorial.' In Private Passions, Kate talks about the music which has sustained her: Schubert's final Piano Sonata; Mozart's 'The Magic Flute'; Bernstein's 'West Side Story', Dvorak's 'Songs my Mother Taught Me' and Ralph Fiennes reading T.S.Eliot's 'Four Quartets'.
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29-Dec-2014
Private Passions - Roger Moore
James Bond, Simon Templar... Michael Berkeley's guest today can only be Roger Moore. He played Bond for twelve years, in seven films, more than any other actor. And before that he was a much-loved figure throughout the 1960s as The Saint. In fact he's rarely been off the big and small screens since he began his acting career in 1945, working as an extra alongside his idol Stewart Granger in Caesar and Cleopatra. What's less well known about Roger is his passion for music. He counts many musicians among his friends and has chosen music performed by two of them - Julian Rachlin and Janine Jansen, who reflect his passion for strings. His other great love is opera, and he entertains us with stories about music from his heroine Joan Sutherland, as well as La Traviata, a piece of music connected with one of his earlier film roles. And he shares the secret of how, after 86 years of mostly star-studded living, he?s managed to keep his feet on the ground. Producer: Jane Greenwood.
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22-Dec-2014
Private Passions - Vivienne Westwood
Dame Vivienne Westwood needs little introduction; her name and her brand are known across the world. Indeed, in the Far East she's made it into the top ten most recognised global brands, with Coca Cola and Disney. Her fame rests not just on her fashion designs, daring and sexy and original as they are: because Vivienne Westwood is also the co-creator, with Malcolm McLaren, of punk - that revolution of music and fashion that changed Britain back in the mid-70s. What is less well known is her passion for classical music, and for going to concerts - 'it's brilliant, it's only £10, much cheaper than going out to a discotheque'. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about the music which has inspired her creations, and about creating costumes for the opera. She describes the hardship of her early days as a designer, when she was so short of money that she lived in a caravan with her two small sons. She remembers the heady days of punk, and marching up and down King's Road dressed entirely in rubber. ('Rubberwear for the office' was the concept, and it was very comfortable, she claims.) She tells the story of how she met her husband Andreas, who now designs with her, thanks to a cow. And why there is nothing more attractive than a man in a suit. Especially when he's bending over. Her music choices include the climactic orgy from Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe; ballet music by Stravinsky and Milhaud; Bach's St John Passion; Handel's Alcina; Larry Williams; and Musorgsky's Pictures at An Exhibition: 'If there are any punks out there - just listen to this - it will blow your mind!' Produced by Elizabeth Burke.
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15-Dec-2014
Private Passions - Eamon Duffy
Professor of the History of Christianity at Cambridge, Eamon Duffy has changed for ever the way we view the Reformation. His books, including The Stripping of the Altars and The Voices of Morebath, have revealed a picture of late medieval Catholicism as a strong and vital tradition, and have shown that the Reformation, for most ordinary people, represented a violent disruption to a flourishing religious system. Eamon talks about his passion for medieval, Tudor and seventeenth-century music and history, the state of Catholic church music today and the pleasures of playing chamber music. His choices of music include countertenor Alfred Deller singing Purcell, the Beaux Arts Trio playing Haydn and Janet Baker singing Elgar. Eamon's final piece of music is a wonderfully evocative Arab Christian chant for Palm Sunday, sung by a nun from the Melkite order. Producer: Jane Greenwood.
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08-Dec-2014
Private Passions - Jill Paton Walsh
Jill Paton Walsh lives with the ghost of Lord Peter Wimsey - having taken on the mantle of Dorothy L Sayers and continuing, to great acclaim, her hugely successful detective stories. But before Lord Peter Wimsey she was already a highly esteemed writer, and her prolific output spans nearly fifty years of children's books and literary fiction. But despite this her medieval philosophical novel, Knowledge of Angels, was turned down by British publishers, so she and her husband published the book themselves, and it went on to be a bestseller - and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. The winner of many other literary prizes, including the Whitbread and the Smarties Prize, she was awarded a CBE in 1996 for services to literature. Jill talks to Michael Berkeley about what it's like to take on the voice of another author, her love of children's fiction, and how music has sustained her through very sad and difficult times. Her music choices include Bizet, Copland, Britten, Mozart and Haydn. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.
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01-Dec-2014
Private Passions - Anthony Green
Anthony Green, senior Royal Academician, is one of the UK's most eminent and best-loved figurative painters. His career as an artist has now spanned fifty years, and his brightly coloured, irregularly-shaped paintings and sculptures are exhibited across the world, in galleries including the Royal Academy, the Scottish National Gallery, and the Met in New York. Many of them explore autobiographical themes; in painting after painting he's recorded family life, at home, in bed, making love to his wife even. In Private Passions, Anthony Green looks back on his life as an artist; he explains the crucial importance of meeting his wife back when they were both students at the Slade - through her, he found his identity as a painter. He talks about watching fashions come and go in art, and explains why he is determined to explore religious subjects in his work, even though he knows it puts him outside the mainstream. And he confesses to being an incorrigible optimist, who loves this life, and fully expects to enjoy the next. Music choices include Charles Trenet, Bach, Wagner, Noel Coward, Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto, and Eric Idle - 'for the coffee breaks in the studio'. Producer: Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.
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17-Nov-2014
Private Passions - John Harvey
Crime writer John Harvey has no shortage of fans. His prize-winning books have sold over a million copies and have been translated and published all over the world. His Nottingham detective Charlie Resnick is now so well known - after 12 novels, two television adaptations and four radio plays - that he seems like a real person: a brooding solitary sensitive man who has a passion for ... listening to jazz. And this is where the fans come in. Because for years now they have been sending Harvey compilation tapes of the kind of jazz tracks that they think Resnick would enjoy. So no surprise to discover that his creator John Harvey has a lifelong love of jazz, conceived during a misspent youth in London jazz clubs. As part of the jazz season across Radio 2 and 3, with highlights from the London Jazz Festival, John Harvey chooses his favourite jazz tracks. The playlist includes early Billie Holliday, Thelonious Monk, James P. Johnson and Chet Baker. Harvey, who's a fine poet as well as a crime writer, reads a moving poem about Chet Baker's mysterious death. Other music choices include Shostakovich, Mendelssohn's 'Hebrides Overture', and a Tango for corrugated iron by Jocelyn Pook. Harvey reveals that he dislikes how crime fiction has changed during the 25 years he's been writing it: 'There almost seems to be a competition who can have the most disgusting things in their books, and what awful things you can do particularly to female victims.' And he talks about his decision to retire his detective Resnick, leaving him sitting on a park bench, 'hankering after a fresh helping of Thelonious Monk'. Producer: Elizabeth Burke.
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10-Nov-2014
Private Passions - Roger Law
Roger Law was the evil genius behind the mocking caricature puppets of Spitting Image, the award-winning TV series, which ran for over 12 years. No politician escaped: John Major was entirely grey and in underpants; Mrs Thatcher cross-dressed and chomped cigars; Tony Blair's grin was as wide as a shark's. When the show ended, in 1996, Law transported himself to Australia where he bought paint and brushes and - in his words - 'began chasing rainbows'. From there, a growing passion for ceramics took him to China, and for the last 15 years he has been completely immersed in making huge and beautiful ceramic pots, decorated with underwater plants and sea creatures. In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about the creative rebirth he experienced in Australia - where, unlike Britain, there was the freedom to fail. He looks back on Spitting Image and the period when it ended, when he was 'burnt out by alcohol and success'. And he discusses anger and revenge as motivations, and why there is something in Roger Law that Roger himself can't wait to escape. Music includes Mahler's 5th Symphony, Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, Beethoven's Violin Concerto, a song by American satirist Terry Allen, and a pop song Roger Law bought in a Chinese market. He loves it (it's very catchy) without knowing what on earth it is. Private Passions had the sleeve translated - It turns out to be a test CD for a car hi-fi system. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3 To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.
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07-Nov-2014
Private Passions - Kathryn Tickell
As part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival weekend at Sage Gateshead, Michael Berkeley's guest is the Northumbrian musician Kathryn Tickell. Kathryn Tickell is rooted in the remote hill farms of Northumbria; her grandparents were shepherds, and she grew up playing the Northumbrian pipes and fiddle at village dances. By the age of just 16, she was the official piper to the Lord Mayor of Newcastle and had released her first album. 19 more albums have followed; she was the first folk performer at the BBC Proms, was named Musician of the Year at the Radio 2 Folk Awards last year (not for the first time), and holds the Queen's Medal for Music. She's done more than any other musician to preserve the rich musical heritage of the North East of England. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about how she started visiting old musicians, when she was only nine, taking her tape recorder to capture voices and tunes. This was an oral tradition, so recording the tunes was a way of learning them - they weren't written down. What did the musicians think of this young girl turning up to record them' Most of them, she reflects wryly, were related to her anyway. Kathryn Tickell's lifelong enthusiasm for musical discovery leads to a marvellously eclectic playlist for the programme. She introduces Percy Grainger music for Theremin, the Brazilian composer Chiquinha Gonzaga, the Armenian folk-song collector Komitas Vardabet, and John Cage's Sonata No 5 for 'prepared' piano. Plus a comic song from the Tyneside singer Owen Brannigan and a poem in Northumbrian dialect which she warns listeners not even to bother trying to decipher... Producer: Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.
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27-Oct-2014
Private Passions - Kika Markham
Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor Kika Markham, widow of Corin Redgrave. 'Actors by their nature are curious, fickle, insecure people: flirts. They should not live together.' So says Kika Markham; but she didn't follow her own advice; instead she fell in love with the actor Corin Redgrave - they were together for 33 years until his death in 2010. Kika's own career began in the 1960s; she made her name in a series of television films, directed by Ken Loach, Dennis Potter, and then, for the cinema, by Francois Truffaut. Now in her early seventies, Kika Markham is still on television, playing the mother of Mr Selfridge in the successful ITV period drama. In 'Private Passions' she talks to Michael Berkeley about the central role of music in her life. She remembers working with Francois Truffaut, and falling in love with him - against all advice. She chooses music by the French composer who wrote soundtracks for many of Truffaut's films, Georges Delerue. But it's her marriage to Corin Redgrave that forms the heart of the programme. She talks movingly about living with Corin during the final years of his life, after he suffered a brain injury and lost a great deal of memory. There were huge challenges for them both. And one of the losses, at first, was music - he could not bear to listen. But there came a moment when Kika sat at the piano, and Corin responded to her playing. Her choices include Beethoven's 'Spring' Violin Sonata, in which she used to accompany her father, the actor David Markham; a song from 'Guys and Dolls'; and the love duet from Handel's 'Rodelinda'. Producer: Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.
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20-Oct-2014
Private Passions - David Lan
David Lan is a huge force in theatre in Britain, indeed internationally. But how he got there is surprising. Brought up in Cape Town, he began his career as an anthropologist, living for two years in a remote area of Zimbabwe in order to study spirit magic. He went on to become a playwright and documentary director, and he's written the libretto for two operas. One critic recently described Lan as a 'Diaghilev-like figure' because of his flair for bringing artists together. As Artistic Director of the Young Vic, he led the £12.5m theatre rebuild - and has over the last 14 years established a reputation both for spotting new talent, and for persuading directors from all over the world to come to London to direct wildly inventive productions. His latest role, announced this year, is Consulting Artistic Director for the New York Arts Centre, which is still being built, on the site of the 9/11 attacks. In Private Passions, David Lan talks about his upbringing in South Africa, and how he learnt to love music as a young boy in his grandmother's shop, which sold bicycles - and piles of old 78s. He describes his time as an anthropologist in Zimbabwe, living in a remote and dangerous part of the country just after the war of independence. And he pays tribute to the relationship at the heart of his life, with distinguished playwright Nicholas Wright, whom Lan met when he was only 17. Music includes Beethoven, Shostakovich, Paul Simon, Nina Simone, a Bach Prelude played by jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, and the overture to Mozart's Magic Flute - played on marimbas. To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. Produced by Elizabeth Burke.
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13-Oct-2014
Private Passions - Roy Foster
As the first incumbent of the only chair in Irish History in Britain, at Oxford, Roy Foster has devoted his career to bringing Irish history to the forefront of British minds. Unafraid to challenge cherished myths about the past, his scholarship has transformed historical writing. He has also written the only authorised life of W. B. Yeats, a two-volume labour of love that took him 18 years. And his new book Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923 pulls into focus the quarter century leading up to the Irish revolution, by tracing the lives of the men and women at the radical heart of Irish political and cultural life. Michael and Roy discuss Yeats, Joyce, and the pleasures of eating, drinking and sharing music with friends. Roy's music includes an aria from one of his favourite operas, and Irish music from singers John McCormack, Harry Plunket Greene and Ann Murray. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.
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29-Sep-2014
Private Passions - Charles Spencer
Charles Spencer, the 9th Earl Spencer, is probably best known as the younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, and is remembered above all for the moving eulogy he gave at Diana's funeral. But he's also had a successful career as a television reporter and presenter, and since Diana's death has turned to history; his latest book is a study of regicide, with the title 'Killers of the King'. The King in question is Charles I, and the book follows the fortunes of those who were responsible for his execution. According to Earl Spencer, they deserve to be remembered with 'respect and gratitude'. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Earl Spencer talks about his life, and about his growing passion for history. He chooses music to recall his very challenging childhood, talking movingly about travelling back and forth on the train between his mother and father, with his older sister Diana. 'I remember in the eulogy to Diana I did talk about not only the train journeys but her looking after me. She had a very strong maternal streak and she was very loving, and I used to be terrified of the dark and she used to say it used to break her heart to hear me crying down the corridor. And I think she was a very reassuring female presence in my early life.' Musical choices include Beethoven, Sibelius's Finlandia, Fauré's Requiem, Mozart's The Magic Flute and Edith Piaf's La Vie en Rose. One surprising choice is the news archive of Martin Luther King's death, and Robert F Kennedy's moving speech after the assassination. Wisdom, says Kennedy, comes through suffering. Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.
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22-Sep-2014
Private Passions - Sir Timothy Gowers
Timothy Gowers is the son of a composer, the brother of a violinist, and a keen jazz pianist. But that's not how he makes a living. In fact, Sir Timothy Gowers is one the country's most distinguished mathematicians. He's a Fellow of the Royal Society, was awarded the prestigious Fields medal, and was knighted two years ago for services to mathematics. In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about his musical upbringing, and early dreams of becoming a composer. He confesses that it's hard to spend your life doing something which so few people round you understand - which is even difficult to talk about to your wife at home. He reveals how he used mathematical calculations of risk when faced with a life-or-death decision of his own: whether to go ahead with a risky heart operation. And he talks about how he's brought mathematicians together, so that they've been able collectively to solve problems which have defeated them for decades - using a blog which he created: http://gowers.wordpress.com. Music includes Bach's St Matthew Passion, a Tudor anthem by Robert Parsons, Michael Tippett's 3rd Piano Sonata, Ravel, Oscar Peterson, and an organ toccata composed by his father, Patrick Gowers, and played by his son Richard, who is 19.
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08-Sep-2014
Private Passions - Sophie Hannah
Sophie Hannah is a prize-winning poet, whose work is studied in schools and universities across the country, and the author of nine dark psychological thrillers. Alongside the thrillers - one a year - she's edited an anthology of poems about sex, composed love lyrics for contemporary composers, and has been writer in residence at Trinity College Cambridge. Her latest project is to write a new Poirot mystery; she was chosen by the Christie Estate to fill in one of the great detective's missing years. Her Poirot mystery is published in early September. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about her fascination with crime, especially crimes of passion. She talks about being in love as a pathological state of mind, and she chooses songs which celebrate and dissect this peculiar state: from Schumann and Schubert, through Carmen, to Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, and Edith Piaf. Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.
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01-Sep-2014
Private Passions - Mark Miodownik
From concrete to chocolate and teacups to tennis racquets, it's the everyday stuff of life that fascinates Mark Miodownik. He's Professor of Materials and Society at University College London where he is also Director of the Institute of Making, a research hub for scientists, designers, engineers, artists, architects ? and musicians. A passionate communicator about the vital role of science in society, he's written a bestselling book Stuff Matters; he's the scientist in residence on Dara O'Briain's Science Club on BBC2; and he's listed by The Times as one of the 100 most influential scientists in the UK. Marks is fascinated by how materials influence the way music sounds, and talks to Michael Berkeley about brass bands, tuning forks and how love can bloom over playing the saw. He choices of music include Bach, film music by Morricone, Scott Joplin and a little known piece for brass band by Holst.
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25-Aug-2014
Private Passions - Helen Ghosh
National Trust Director General Helen Ghosh takes Michael Berkeley on a tour of Leith Hill Place, now a National Trust property but once the childhood home of Ralph Vaughan Williams. She chooses his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, as well as music by Britten, Mozart and Schubert. And her choice of Ravel reveals the alternative career she almost had - as a ballet dancer.
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11-Aug-2014
Private Passions - Miles Jupp
Miles Jupp burst onto the comedy scene when he won the 'So You Think You're Funny' contest at the Edinburgh Festival at the age of just twenty-one. He'd already, as an undergraduate, won the part of Archie the Inventor in the hugely popular children's television show Balamory, but he eventually tired of wearing a pink kilt. Since then he has established himself on the comedy circuit, and on radio and television in panel shows including Have I Got News for You, and comedies such as The Thick of It and Rev, where he plays Nigel, the disapproving lay reader, who thinks he should be running the church. He is usually to be found sending himself up as a tweedy, middle class young fogey. As he joked on a chatshow: "I'm privileged. Not just to be here but in general." Miles talks to Michael Berkeley about the joys of cricket, the pleasures of belting out a good tune and the legacy of an intensely musical childhood, reflected in his choices of music by Geoffrey Burgon, Chopin and Verdi. Produced by Jane Greenwood. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.
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04-Aug-2014
Private Passions - Stephen Grosz
Stephen Grosz waited until he was 60 to publish his first book, 'The Examined Life'. It was a huge overnight success - a best-seller here in Britain and translated into more than 20 languages across the world. It's a distillation of the lifetime he has spent as a psychoanalyst, tens of thousands of hours listening to people in hospitals, forensic clinics and in private practice. It reads like a collection of short stories, full of vignettes of memorable characters: the man who faked his own death, the pathological liar, the lovesick middle-aged woman who meets a man at a party - and turns up at his house the next week with a removals van to move in with him. In Private Passions, in conversation with Michael Berkeley, Stephen Grosz tells his own story: his childhood in Chicago, the son of immigrants who ran a grocery store; student days in radical Berkeley; and now, settled in Britain, how he's facing the challenges of fatherhood and ageing. Music has played an important part right from the beginning, and Grosz admits that his choice of music is very psychologically revealing. His musical choices include Scarlatti, Aaron Copland, Brahms's 3rd Symphony, gospel singer Bessie Jones, Schubert's Piano Sonata no 20, Bob Dylan - and a hilarious Alberta Hunter song about sex, My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More. Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3. To hear previous episodes of Private Passions, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3pp/all.
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28-Jul-2014
Private Passions - Phyllida Law
Phyllida Law burst onto the stage in the mid 1950s and since then her career has spanned everything from the first British production of The Crucible, to musicals such as La Cage aux Folles and television including Dixon of Dock Green and Rumpole, not to mention a list of films as long as your arm, The Time Machine and The Winter Guest being just two. Alongside all that she's somehow managed to fit in bringing up her two highly successful daughters Emma and Sophie Thompson, both of whom have followed in her footsteps. Recently she's turned her hand to writing, and she talks to Michael Berkeley about her moving and funny memoirs of the years she spent looking after her mother and mother-in-law in their old age. Her music choices include Glenn Gould playing Bach, Schubert's Fantasia in F Minor and a joyous Malinese song introduced to her by her grandson which always gets her up and dancing.
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14-Jul-2014
Private Passions - Richard Holmes
Biographer Richard Holmes shares his musical passions with Michael Berkeley, and his fascination with opium dreams, telescopes and balloons. Best known for his biographies of the Romantics - most notably Shelley and Coleridge - Richard Holmes has won just about every literary prize going. In recent years he has moved towards the history of science with his book The Age of Wonder, which was hailed widely as 'the non-fiction book of the year'. And his most recent book, Falling Upwards, all about the daring and frequently terrifying adventures of the pioneers of hot air ballooning, is just coming out in paperback. Richard's musical choices range from 13th century Gregorian chant and French pastoral songs to Bernstein by way of composer and astronomer William Herschel. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
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30-Jun-2014
Private Passions - Music in the Great War: John Keane
As part of Radio 3's 'Music in the Great War' season, Michael Berkeley's guest is John Keane, who was appointed the official British War Artist during the first Gulf War. The job involved travelling with the British forces - a task he approached with enthusiasm, but also considerable apprehension. The paintings that came out of that conflict are now part of the permanent collection at the Imperial War Museum, along with an array of paintings from The First World War by artists including Paul Nash and Christopher R. W Nevinson. John talks to Michael about the role of the war artist and how it has changed since The First World War. He describes his experience of working on conflict zones, not just in The Middle East, but in Northern Ireland, Nicaragua and Angola too. What is it that a war artist can communicate that we can't see in photographs? His music choices include Bach, Beethoven and Britten, and the famous rendition of Star Spangled Banner by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock in 1969, which uses amplifier feedback to convey the sounds of war. John also chooses 'the music they'll play in heaven', which for him is Dance IX from Philip Glass's In The Upper Room. Producer: Jo Coombs A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.
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16-Jun-2014
Private Passions - Eva Schloss
Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss shares her extraordinary life story with Michael Berkeley and reveals the music that has brought her comfort, that conjures memories, and that brings her joy. Eva Schloss was born into a happy middle-class Jewish family in Vienna in 1929, but her childhood came to an abrupt end when she was nine and had to flee with her parents and older brother to escape the Nazis. Before going into hiding in Amsterdam Eva's family befriended Anne Frank's family, and after the war, the Frank legacy was to play a large part in her life - Eva's mother married Otto Frank and Eva and her mother worked tirelessly to promote Anne Frank's legacy through her diary. Like the Franks, Eva's family was betrayed, and she and her mother were captured by the Gestapo on her 15th birthday and transported to the Birkenau concentration camp. They were two of only a few prisoners still alive when the camp was liberated in January 1945. Her beloved brother and father did not survive the neighbouring camp of Auschwitz. Somehow Eva learned to live alongside the memories of those terrible years and after the war rebuilt her life in England. Now in her 80s she tours the world spreading her message of reconciliation and hope, and in 2012 she received an MBE for her work with the Anne Frank Trust and other Holocaust charities. Eva's choices of music include Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Strauss, who take her back to her happy Viennese childhood, as well as music by Mahler through which she recalls the pain of her teenage years. Produced by Jane Greenwood. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
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09-Jun-2014
Private Passions - Nitin Sawhney
Nitin Sawhney is a multi award-winning musician, producer and composer. With nine studio albums to his credit, he has collaborated with the likes of Paul McCartney, Joss Stone, Sting and Nelson Mandela, and has composed over 40 film and television scores, including for the BBC series Human Planet. In his own work he combines the musical traditions of East and West, and composes for a wide variety of different art forms. He has collaborated with the legendary theatre company Complicite, the dancer and choreographer Akram Khan and more recently has written scores for video games. His passion for diversity is reflected in his musical choices which include Ravi Shankar's Kafi Holi, flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia's Guajiras de Lucia and Debussy's ground-breaking Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. As well as being a composer, Nitin is a virtuoso performer on both guitar and piano and we hear the pieces he practises every morning, including Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu and Bach's Keyboard Concerto No.1 in D minor. This year Nitin Sawhney turns 50 and after a period of personal loss, including the death of Ravi Shankar, he discusses the impact this has had on his life and work. Producer: Hilary Dunn.
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02-Jun-2014
Private Passions - Irving Finkel
Assyriologist Irving Finkel talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for clay tablets, chamber music, and Jimi Hendrix. Irving Finkel is one of the world's leading experts in the world's oldest, and most impenetrable, system of writing - cuneiform. Because the scribes of Ancient Mesopotamia imprinted cuneiform with a stylus into clay tablets, lots of it has survived, and indeed Irving Finkel has spent the past 45 years delighting in the company of more than 130,000 cuneiform tablets at the British Museum. But one day a member of the public brought in a clay tablet which changed his life - it was a 4000-year-old blueprint for Noah's Ark - a thousand years older than the story in the Bible. Irving is also passionate about music - particularly old recordings - and his choices include string quartets by Schubert and Dvorak, 1930s blues and a blast of Jimi Hendrix. Producer: Jane Greenwood.
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19-May-2014
Private Passions - Emma Bridgewater
Nearly 30 years ago Emma Bridgewater, a young English graduate, went shopping for a cup and saucer for her mother's birthday present. She couldn't find anything she liked - so she designed one herself, and enjoyed the process so much that she installed a kiln in her London flat. That small kiln has grown into a company with an annual turnover of 11 million pounds - and has revitalised the old potteries industry of Stoke-on-Trent. Her teapots and mugs covered in polka dots, hens, dogs and birds have become a staple of the middle class kitchen, symbols of cosiness and comfort. In Private Passions, Emma Bridgewater talks to Michael Berkeley about our yearning for home - all the more intense as working lives become overwhelmingly demanding. She reveals the tragedy at the heart of her life - her mother's riding accident, which left her gravely brain-damaged but still alive, for 22 years. Under the pressure of that sorrow, Emma Bridgewater describes how work became a marvellous escape. She chooses music to remind her of her mother, and which consoled her after her mother's death last Christmas. She talks too about the adventure of setting up her business in Stoke-on-Trent, bringing derelict factories back to life - but missing her four children as she spent hour upon hour on the road. Her music choices include Pergolesi, Purcell, Kurt Weill, Boccherini, a carol by Benjamin Britten - and the UK Theme Tune, which used to start the day on Radio 4 as she was getting up early to begin work. Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus production, for BBC Radio 3.
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12-May-2014
Private Passions - Lady Brenda Hale
Lady Hale is a trailblazer. 30 years ago, she was the first woman to be appointed to the Law Commission (and the youngest person there); 10 years ago, she was the first female judge to be appointed to the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (as Baroness Hale of Richmond) and there hasn't been another woman appointed since. Last year she was appointed as the Deputy President of the Supreme Court. Where she is still the only woman! Her judgments have changed family and equality law in this country; and despite her eminent role she remains outspoken about domestic violence, women in prison, and the rights of children. In Private Passions, she talks about her upbringing in Yorkshire, one of three daughters - and about being in such a minority when she began to study law. Lady Hale chooses music which connects with her professional life: operas about crime, punishment and injustice (Beethoven's Fidelio and Britten's Billy Budd). She talks about how she'd like to change the law on divorce, and why she loves Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. She discusses the conflict between reason and emotion in her work, and reveals that she is haunted by certain cases from the past. And she reflects on the way her judicial role has revealed the worst - but also the best - of human nature. Finally, during this season of exam stress, she reveals her revision tip: march up and down the room, reciting the textbook and listening to Strauss. Produced by Elizabeth Burke, for Loftus.
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28-Apr-2014
Private Passions - Jonathan Meades
Writer and broadcaster Jonathan Meades's fascination with architecture began on a school trip to Marsh Court in Stockbridge, Hampshire - designed by that great architect of English Country Houses Edwin Lutyens. Subsequently, in a broadcasting career which spans 40 years, he has written and performed in more than 50 television shows on a wide range of topographical subjects: from shacks to garden cities, to buildings associated with vertigo; from beer and pigs, to the architecture of Hitler and Stalin. He was also a food critic for 15 years, winning the coveted Glenfiddich Award in 1999, and has written three novels and a memoir: "Encyclopedia of Myself". His latest television series, "Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloody-mindedness", was screened on BBC 4 in February. He now lives in the iconic Corbusier building, Cité Radieuse in Marseille - and his musical choices reflect his adopted country's love of chanson: French singer / songwriter Barbara's "Ma Plus Belle Histoire d'Amour" features, as does Jacques Brel's Mijn Vlakke Land. Film was not only Jonathan Meades's chosen career; his love of cinema also provided him with a rich musical education. Among his musical choices are Hans Werner Henze's soundtrack to the Alain Resnais film Muriel, and The Aquarium, from Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, which Terence Malick used in his ground breaking film Days of Heaven.
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21-Apr-2014
Private Passions - Nicholas Penny
For this special Easter edition of Private Passions, Michael Berkeley is given a backstage tour of the National Gallery by its Director, the distinguished art historian Nicholas Penny. For this programme he selects paintings on an Easter theme of death and rebirth, with music which accompanies and illuminates them. The painters include his great passion, Titian, with a visit to the Gallery's Restoration Lab, where a painting of the Resurrection is being brought back to life. Nicholas Penny talks about the way in which such paintings change their meaning over time, and about what to look for when we try to read 14th-century depictions of the Crucifixion. His musical choices include Rossini's Stabat Mater, Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, Handel's Messiah, Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Walton's Façade, a reading of James Joyce's story 'The Dead' - and the sound of English blackbirds singing in spring.
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14-Apr-2014
Private Passions - Charlotte Mendelson
Charlotte Mendelson's novels are in danger of making you laugh out loud: the absurdities of family life, the excruciating embarrassment of being young, or clumsy, or not quite English enough. There are four prize-winning novels thus far, and the latest, Almost English - which has been longlisted both for the Booker Prize and for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction - comes out in paperback this spring. In this edition of Private Passions, Charlotte Mendelson talks entertainingly about embarrassment - her own embarrassment, and why she inflicts it on her fictional characters. Embarrassment, she claims, is the most under-reported emotion - because we just can't bear to think about it. She explores too the legacy of her Eastern European family, and the feeling of never being English, of never fitting in, and how that fuels her writing. And she reveals why her music teacher gave up trying to teach her the piano and settled for the can-can instead. Charlotte Mendelson's music choices include Bach, Schubert, Chopin, the country singer Gillian Welch, and Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter's 'Always True to You in my Fashion' - a song which she claims has the best lyrics in the world. Produced by Elizabeth Burke for Loftus.
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31-Mar-2014
Private Passions - Theo Fennell
There's a huge revival in British craftsmanship going on at the moment, with a new generation keen to learn how to make beautiful things. For 40 years now, Theo Fennell has been one of the country's most distinctive and witty jewellers. His intricate and beautifully crafted designs take you into a strange dream-world: miniature skulls with jewelled snakes twisting from their eyes; bees cast in gold; dragonflies trailing amethysts; salamanders studded with diamonds. Perhaps not surprising that his jewellery has decorated rock stars such as Elton John, Lady Gaga and Freddie Mercury. In Private Passions, Theo Fennell reveals the music that inspires him when he's working - dreaming up those strange and beautiful new creatures. Music is what helps him, he says, when confronted by a blank sheet of paper. He also reveals that as a young art student he worked as a busker, and even bought a one-man band. He discusses the erotic power of jewellery, with a vivid story from his own experience. And during the recording, he sketches continuously, and has agreed to put some of his drawings on the Private Passions webpage. Theo Fennell's choices include Dvorak's Cello Concerto, Offenbach's opera 'The Tales of Hoffmann', Yehudi Menuhin playing Saint-Saëns's Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor, and a Charles Trenet song from 1937. And his great patron, Elton John. A Loftus production produced by Elizabeth Burke.
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24-Mar-2014
Private Passions - Craig Brown at Southbank Centre
Craig Brown has been described by The Sunday Times as "our greatest living satirist". He invented the conservative Spectator columnist Wallace Arnold, and Bel Littlejohn, the long-standing Guardian columnist who many Guardian readers took to be real. Brown is a kind of satirical ventriloquist: impersonating the voices of politicians and celebrities, mocking them week after week in Private Eye and The Daily Mail, mimicking thousands of different voices. This year he celebrates his 25th anniversary of parodying the rich and the famous on Private Eye. In this edition of Private Passions Craig Brown talks to Michael Berkeley about how he does it ? and why he does it. Does he find the whole world ridiculous? Brown reveals that before embarking on a parody he has to feel the creative germ of irritation, which he then attempts to transform into comedy. Parody, as he reveals, is a delightfully libel-free method of pricking the bubble of self-obsession in celebrity culture. For Private Passions, Brown reveals the music he finds inspiring, moving and funny. Some of his choices are surprising: gospel songs, for instance, are top of his list. He celebrates the Irish composer John Field, and enjoys both Satie and a plangent lament from Kathleen Ferrier. But he also chooses humorous pieces: Kenneth Williams reading Edward Lear, and Harry Belafonte singing 'There's a Hole in my Bucket'. He talks about living in a musical family; his wife, son and daughter are all gifted musicians, while he can't sing in tune, and has no sense of rhythm at all. The programme is recorded with an audience at the Radio 3 pop-up studio at Royal Festival Hall, as part of Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre.
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10-Mar-2014
Private Passions - John Finnemore
John Finnemore is one of our most successful comedy writers and performers. A star turn in Miranda as the doting husband Chris, he writes and stars in the award-winning Radio 4 sitcom Cabin Pressure, and he's made two series of the Radio 4 sketch show Souvenir Programme. He regularly appears on The Now Show, The Unbelievable Truth and The News Quiz. And apart from his own shows, he also writes for other comedians such as Mitchell and Webb. John reveals to Michael Berkeley his secret of comedy inspiration, his love of performing, and his struggle with insomnia. His choices include Beethoven, Flanders and Swann, and Chopin: the music that means most to him, the music that makes him laugh - and the music that helps him sleep. Producer: Jane Greenwood.
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24-Feb-2014
Private Passions - Kwasi Kwarteng
If you should happen to be walking through the House of Commons, and hear loud Wagner blasting out along those corridors of power ? you know you're heading for the office of Kwasi Kwarteng. He's been there since 2010, when he was elected MP for Spelthorne in Surrey. Before going into Parliament, he'd already established a reputation as a historian; his new book 'War and Gold' comes out later this spring, following 'Ghosts of Empire', a fascinating study of the legacy of the British Empire around the world. All this and he's not yet 40. In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about his own background: his parents came here from Ghana as students in the 1960s, and he says that thanks to them, 'the British Empire has always been with me'. His music choices include Wagner (naturally), Gilbert and Sullivan, Chopin, Schubert, Haydn, and Smokey Robinson ? he discovered Motown on an unforgettable American jukebox. He also includes a vintage recording of John Gielgud reading Shelley's 'Ozymandias', a poem which is a salutary warning for a politician about the transience of power. And he reveals that his ambition is to own a piano; he even chooses the ragtime piece he wants to play ? Scott Joplin's Elite Syncopations.
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17-Feb-2014
Private Passions - Joan Armatrading
When Joan Armatrading's mother bought a piano 'as a piece of furniture' little did she know what she was starting. The fourteen?year-old Joan taught herself to play it, then to play the guitar too and twelve years later she burst onto the music scene with her hit song Love and Affection. In a career spanning forty years, she has made 20 acclaimed studio albums as well as undertaking an international touring schedule which makes me feel tired just thinking about it. She's received three Grammy and two Brit Award nominations, she's the winner of the Ivor Novello Award, and she's the first female UK artist ever to debut at number 1 in the American Billboard Blues chart. And to cap it all, she has an MBE for services to music. In this programme Joan shares her love of classical music with Michael Berkeley and chooses pieces by Beethoven, Vivaldi, Tavener and Bach. She talks about her childhood as the daughter of immigrant parents in Birmingham, discusses how she managed to study for a degree while on the road, and reveals whether this year's tour really will be her last.
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10-Feb-2014
Private Passions - Michael Horovitz
Michael Horovitz is one of the last surviving Beatniks, 'the big daddy of the British Beat Movement'. In the 1950s, he founded a ground-breaking magazine which was the first to publish new work by Samuel Becket and William Burroughs, including passages from Naked Lunch which had been banned for obscenity in America. At 78 he's still performing his poems in pubs, and still playing his 'anglosaxophone', a kind of exuberant kazoo. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Horovitz talks about the poetic revolution that began in the 50s, and about his friendship with Stan Tracey, who died recently. He tells the story of how his family were forced to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s, where his father was a lawyer. His music choices include Beethoven, Mendelsohn and Stan Tracey, as well as a rare Charlie Parker jazz improvisation from 1945 (which includes one of the few recordings of Charlie Parker's voice). He includes too a moving recording of his wife, the poet Frances Horovitz, reading a poem she wrote when she was dying, and a recent 'jazz poem' of his own, where Horovitz plays alongside Damon Albarn and Paul Weller. Plus a few blasts on his 'anglosaxophone'...
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27-Jan-2014
Private Passions - Michael Sheen
Michael Sheen is famous for playing real people on screen - from Tony Blair and Kenneth Williams to Brian Clough and David Frost. And it was playing another real person - but this time on stage - that formed a turning point in his relationship with classical music. This person was Mozart, in the play Amadeus, and Michael has chosen part of Mozart's Requiem, used in that production. His other choices include music by Lisa Gerrard and Arvo Pärt and Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds starring Richard Burton, who shares a home town with Michael. He tells Michael Berkeley about his recent return home to Port Talbot to work for three years on a marathon staging of The Passion, which lasted for 72 hours and involved a cast of 1000, mostly local, people.
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20-Jan-2014
Private Passions - Lewis Wolpert
Lewis Wolpert is a distinguished scientist -and a familiar lanky figure on his bicycle, cycling through the Bloomsbury traffic to University College London where he is Emeritus Professor of Biology. His scientific research has been into the early development of the embryo, but he's a man with many other interests ? he's written books about depression, and recently a book about getting old ? and he's currently bravely embarking on a book about the biological differences between the brains of men and women. He talks to Michael Berkeley about the happiness he feels in his eighties, and about his early life, and his decision to leave South Africa where he was brought up to be a 'nice Jewish boy'. His choices are wide-ranging: from Noel Coward and Frank Sinatra to a late Beethoven Quartet and Wagner. Producer: Elizabeth Burke.
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12-Jan-2014
Private Passions - Music on the Brink: Pat Barker
Writer Pat Barker is fascinated by the First World War; for twenty years now, her award-winning novels have returned again and again to the trauma and grief and erotic intensity of wartime. Her novels draw on the experiences of real people: Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and in particular the army doctor W.H. Rivers, a pioneering psychiatrist who treated victims of shell shock. As this centenary year opens, with all its commemorations of the First World War, Pat Barker talks about why and how we should remember War - and about the power of fiction to tell historical truth. She reveals that her fascination with war began as a child; she was brought up by her grandparents, and her grandfather had a bayonet wound which she saw every time he washed at the kitchen sink. 'Through my grandfather and my stepfather, I have a direct link through to the world before the war - for me it's not simply reading history.' Pat Barker herself was a war baby - born in 1943 after her mother, a Wren, had a one-night stand with a man in the RAF. She never traced her father, and that central mystery in her life, 'half my identity missing', was part of what drove her to write. She talks about the stigma her mother faced as an unmarried mother, and in a moving section of the interview she wishes she could speak to her mother now to tell her 'It doesn't matter'. Pat Barker's music choices include her grandfather's favourite music hall song - his party piece as a boy in the 1890s; Anton Lesser reading two poems by Wilfred Owen, and Benjamin Britten's setting of Wilfred Owen in his 'Nocturne'; Butterworth's 'The Banks of Green Willow'; original cast recordings from Joan Littlewood's 'Oh What a Lovely War'; and Elgar's Cello Concerto, in the famous recording by Jacqueline du Pré. This programme is part of the Music on the Brink, Radio 3's season examining the cultural life of Europe on the eve of war.
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30-Dec-2013
Private Passions - Hugh Masekela
Hugh Masekela is a jazz legend. Brought up in South Africa during Apartheid, he left the country at 21, and spent the next 30 years in exile, releasing album after album ? 43 to date ? and performing alongside all the other great musicians of our era: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Stevie Wonder, The Who... He's still making music and touring the world, at 74, and Private Passions was lucky enough to catch him on a visit to London. He talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for performing, which began when Bishop Trevor Huddleston gave him money to go to buy his first trumpet. Masekela describes vividly the musical culture he grew up in: the townships were awash with music, he says, and there was a competing cacophony of sound. As a child he began piano lessons at four, begging his father to play records before he had the strength to turn the handle of the gramophone. Music took over and he says he's been 'bewitched' ever since. He tells the moving story of how as a teenager he played truant from school and instead spent his days playing with other musicians in recording studios; his father found out and beat him severely, and Hugh ran away from home. But a few weeks later his father visited the studio, and heard him play the trumpet. Realising that this was his future, his father forgave him, and welcomed him back into the family. Masekela also talks about his relationship with Nelson Mandela, and how Mandela smuggled a letter out of prison to him, inspiring his anthem (and worldwide hit) 'Bring Him Back Home'. He reveals the disillusionment he feels about South Africa now, and reflects on what would have happened had he stayed there ? 'I would have died very young'. Hugh Masekela's choices include Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, J S Bach, Billie Holliday and Ravel.
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23-Dec-2013
Private Passions - Justin Welby
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, talks to Michael Berkeley about his favourite music and the meaning of Christmas. His choices include Christmas music from Bach and Britten, and music Justin Welby loves from the late medieval period. He talks to Michael about his career in the oil industry, his relatively late ordination, and his meteoric rise to the top of the Anglican Church, and the music that has accompanied him on that journey. Michael asks him how he finds time for prayer and contemplation amid the pressure of heading the Anglican community, and what role music plays in his relationship with God. And he asks how he plans to spend his first Christmas as Archbishop.
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16-Dec-2013
Private Passions - Jasper Conran
Michael Berkeley's guests is Jasper Conran, one of Britain's best-known fashion designers. In 1978, Conran began producing women's clothing, and has since concentrated on such diverse fields as home furnishings, crystal and china, as well as designing costumes and sets for ballets, plays and opera. His musical choices encompass singers such as Kathleen Ferrier, Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith and Cat Stevens, as well as works by Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, and his favourite composer, Handel. M Berkeley: The Wakeful Poet (Music from Chaucer) (pub OUP) Beaux-Arts Brass Quintet BBQ BBQ 003, Tr 10 Duration: 25s Trad: Blow the Wind Southerly Kathleen Ferrier (contralto) Kathleen Ferrier DECCA 417 192-2, Tr 3 Duration: 2m20s Schubert: Impromptu No 4 in A flat, D899 Melvyn Tan (fortepiano) Schubert EMI CDC 7 49102-2, Tr 4 Duration: 6m48s Elizabeth Welch: Stormy Weather (Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler) LP Elizabeth Welch WORLD RECORDS SH 233 S1 B6 Duration: 3m23s Handel: Where'er you Walk (Semele - Act 2, Sc 3) Anthony Rolfe-Johson (tenor) English Baroque Soloists John Eliot Gardiner (conductor) Handel Semele ERATO 4509-99759-2 CD1, Tr 2 Duration: 4m58s Bessie Smith: You Gotta Give Me Some (Spencer Williams) Clarence Williams (piano) Eddie Lang (guitar) Bessie Smith BBC BBCCD602 8 Duration: 2m45s Mozart: Laudate Dominum (Vesperae solennes de Confessore, K339) Carolyn Samson (soprano) Choir of the King's Consort The King's Consort Robert King (conductor) Mozart HYPERION CDA 67560, Tr 5 Duration: 4m16s Ella Fitzgerald: Undecided (Charles Shavers and Sid Robin) Chick Webb and his orchestra CDR The Very Best of Ella Fitzgerald STARDUST B001GIILLA, Tr 1 Duration: 3m17s Chopin: Waltz in G flat, Op 70 No 1 Dinu Lipatti (piano) Chopin EMI 566904-2, Tr 6 Duration: 1m53s Handel: Comfort Ye My People (Messiah) Mark Padmore (tenor) The Sixteen Harry Christophers (conductor) Handel Messiah CORO COR 1606-2 CD1, Tr 2 Duration: 3m11s Cat Stevens: Morning has broken (words Eleanor Farjeon; music arr Cat Stevens) Teaser and the Firecat ISLAND IMCD269, Tr 7 Duration: 3m16s.
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09-Dec-2013
Private Passions - Tom Hooper
Somehow Tom Hooper has cracked the secret of making films which audiences really love. Whether you count Oscars and Baftas or box office takings he is, at 41, right up there as one of Britain's top film directors. The King's Speech won him four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and earlier this year his film of Les Miserables won three more Oscars. The box office takings for Les Mis stand at an eyewatering 441.8 million dollars - it's been a hit across the globe, with reports of audiences crying their eyes out in cinemas from Sydney to Japan. Tom Hooper doesn't often give personal interviews, but in Private Passions he talks to Michael Berkeley about his childhood, and about the anxieties and influences which have made him such a successful film director. He reveals that The King's Speech is in fact autobiographical: Tom's mother is Australian and his father is English, and growing up he was very aware that it was his mother's task - and his - to release his father from a particular kind of English inhibition and shyness. Tom Hooper decided to be a film director at 12; he talks entertainingly about his first film, about a runaway dog, and about singing in school musicals, where he discovered a passion for stage lighting, hanging high up above the school auditorium. He loves kit: camera lenses, microphones - he describes the excitement of finding the original microphones used by George V during his wartime broadcasts, and how he used them to record Beethoven for the soundtrack of The King's Speech. He explains too why he made the very brave decision to have all the actors in Les Miserables sing live for the camera. Music choices include Beethoven, Handel, The Beggar's Opera, Janacek, and the Damned.
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02-Dec-2013
Private Passions - Laura Mvula
Laura Mvula is more than just a pop star; before she had a best-selling album and industry awards she studied composition at the Birmingham Conservatoire. In an in-depth interview in Private Passions, she reveals how she went from classical music student to chart-topping singer. In this warm and funny interview, Mvula talks to Michael Berkeley about her musical upbringing and about how church music, piano and violin lessons and performances for her aunt's a cappella group, Black Voices, initially went hand in hand with a crippling stage fright. At ten, she was so scared of performing that she howled on stage when the applause started and had to be rescued by her parents. She also talks about how as a student she began going to hear English choral music, but she had an ulterior motive: she fancied one of her fellow-students, a classical baritone, so she went to see him every time she could. It worked, they're now married; and she fell in love with choral composers like Eric Whitacre at the same time. And Laura reveals how at first she didn't quite at appreciate her big break from producer Steve Brown (she was too busy eating a banana). Following her appearance at this summer's Urban Prom, Laura Mvula explains why she doesn't believe in separating music into genres and why she remains a passionate listener to - and advocate for - classical music. In this programme she reveals how she still finds inspiration in classical composers for her own work. She plays a piece of Debussy and talks about how it inspired one of her own songs, 'Make Me Lovely'; she also chooses Elgar, Michael Tippett, William Walton, and 'Lush and Bluesy', a string piece by her teacher at the Conservatoire, Joe Cutler. Other musical choices include William Walton, Nina Simone and Miles Davis.
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11-Nov-2013
Private Passions - Martin Gayford
Martin Gayford has a passion for painting and music, and has spent his career writing about artists - Constable, Van Gogh, David Hockney, Lucian Freud - and thinking about the connection between art and music. His new biography of Michelangelo is published in this month, and in this edition of Private Passions he explores the musical worlds of some of our greatest painters. He begins with the choir that Michelangelo heard as he lay high up on the scaffolding, painting the Sistine Ceiling - there were complaints he banged around too much, interfering with the music. Martin Gayford then moves on to talk about the painter Constable as a musician (he was a flautist) and to tell the story of Van Gogh's attempt to learn the piano - in order to experience synaesthesia, and paint the music he played in bright colours. Apart from his biographies of great artists, Martin Gayford is famous because his portrait was painted by Lucian Freud ('Man in a Blue Scarf'), a process that took 18 months. During that time they visited jazz clubs together, and the programme includes some of Freud's favourite music. There's also a food theme running through the programme - Gayford is a keen cook - and the programme ends with one of Toulouse Lautrec's favourite recipes, designed to be bright orange. As always Michael Berkeley's programme is perfect timing for cooking Sunday Lunch. Music choices include: Debussy, Duke Ellington, Haydn, Arcadelt, Thelonius Monk, Stravinsky's 'Rake's Progress' and Billie Holliday.
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04-Nov-2013
Private Passions - Roddy Doyle
It was a band called The Commitments that first brought Roddy Doyle fame 25 years ago - not a real group of musicians, but a comic novel about a group of Dublin teenagers who get together and form a soul band. The book and its sequels became successful films. Roddy Doyle gave up his job as a teacher and has gone on to write nine more novels set in Dublin, where he grew up and still lives. One of them, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, won the Booker Prize amd is a memorable tour de force told entirely in the voice of a ten-year-old Dublin boy. Roddy Doyle has also written for children, for the theatre and the cinema, and now, after 25 years, he's back where he started - he's turned The Commitments into a musical which has just opened in London's West End. Roddy's music choices range from the richness of Pergolesi and Mozart to the sparse modernism of Steve Reich and Brian Eno, with a touching love song to end the programme. He talks to Michael Berkeley about music while you work, the pleasures of Dublin dialogue, and the joy of taking up the trumpet in middle age.
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28-Oct-2013
Private Passions - Free Thinking: Chris Mullin
Private Passions makes its first visit to Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of ideas. Michael Berkeley talks to Chris Mullin, former MP, thriller writer and one of the sharpest political diarists of our age. He's certainly a free thinker: in three volumes of political diaries he's given us a devastating and very funny account of the workings of Westminster, from his vantage point as Labour MP for Sunderland South. Chris Mullin retired in 2010 after 23 years in Parliament; Michael asks him whether he was too free-thinking to get to the top â€" or perhaps his sense of humour was the problem. But there's more to Chris Mullin than his political career, as this programme reveals. He looks back to perhaps the greatest achievement of his life, when he campaigned successfully for the release of the Birmingham Six in the 1980s - innocent men imprisoned as a result of a miscarriage of justice. He talks too about his friendship with the Dalai Lama and how his travels in the Far East have given him a different perspective, and about finding love and raising a family later in life. Chris Mullin's musical choices include Handel's 'Messiah', sung by the Parliament Choir; a Chopin Nocturne; Tibetan, Vietnamese and African music and Mozart's C Minor Mass. He also includes music by Northumbrian musician Kathryn Tickell, celebrating his deep love of the North East and the rich life he has lived there. BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival takes place at Sage Gateshead 25-27 October and is broadcast for three weeks on Radio 3 from Friday 25 October.
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14-Oct-2013
Private Passions - Rory Kinnear
Michael Berkeley's guest is the actor Rory Kinnear. Rory Kinnear is in danger of becoming a national treasure. Audiences across the world know him thanks to the two recent Bond movies, where he plays M15 officer Bill Tanner. He was the journalist in the recent TV thriller Southcliffe, he was Denis Thatcher in the Margaret Thatcher TV biopic, he's the straight man to Count Arthur Strong... And he's established a reputation as one of our finest Shakespearean actors - his performance as Hamlet at the National Theatre is about to be screened across the UK as part of the National's 50th anniversary celebrations. This summer he played an unforgettably chilling Iago to Adrian Lester's Othello, again at the National. And he's just turned playwright - his first play, The Herd, directed by Howard Davies, has opened in London. He's a difficult actor to pin down. But in conversation with Michael Berkeley he reveals the man behind the theatrical mask. He talks movingly about his father, the actor Roy Kinnear, who was killed during a film stunt, and how he kept sane after the accident by playing the piano. Rory still plays in rehearsal rooms across the world, grabbing his chance at the piano while the other actors eat lunch. He reveals too that music is the key to his relationship with his sister, who was born with profound disabilities; Rory composes music for her, and plays songs as a way of communicating with her. He works increasingly with musicians, at the Proms last year, and in recordings. And, be warned, every morning he walks across London listening to music on his huge headphones - and singing along at the top of his voice. Music choices include Mark Padmore singing Bach, Haydn's Trumpet Concerto, a Beethoven violin sonata, Erroll Garner, and Big Rock Candy Mountain.
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07-Oct-2013
Private Passions - Greg Doran
Greg Doran is one of those lucky people who seem to have found his perfect place in life. From the age of 13, when his mother first took him to the theatre in Stratford, Shakespeare's been his passion; as a boy he dedicated himself to seeing every single Shakespeare play - sometimes managing to watch three Macbeths in a day. So - what better job than Artistic Director of our great national Shakespeare company, a role he took on 18 months ago. His production of Richard II with David Tennant in the lead opens on 10 October, and he's directing Henry IV next year with his partner Anthony Sher playing Falstaff. Doran doesn't come from a theatrical background - his father ran a nuclear power station. But his passion for music began early, thanks to a concert in the local village hall in Lancashire. A friend of his mother's, Mrs Sidebottom, got up on stage and sang 'Blow the Wind Southerly'. And young Greg was hooked. That haunting folk song begins his choice of music - sung in this case by Kathleen Ferrier. Other choices include Duke Ellington, a song by Cervantes, and a Vivaldi Concerto which changed Doran's life when he heard it in Paris. It was a low point - a love affair had ended, his ambition to be an actor was foundering. And the music spoke to him, and gave him a new direction. In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for Shakespeare, and about his relationship with Antony Sher. Its foundations are a shared life in theatre, but also a love of food: when Antony's depressed, Greg cooks for him the comfort food he ate as a child in South Africa. He's even learned how to make a special lamb stew - and he gives us the recipe: "I believe there is a Jewish saying that food is love. For me, tomato bredie is an expression of love.".
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30-Sep-2013
Private Passions - Sound of Cinema: Beeban Kidron
Beeban Kidron is a rare and very unpredictable film-maker. A woman in a man's world, she's made highly successful dramas such as the BAFTA-winning Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and the blockbusting rom-com Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. But she also makes documentaries which come straight from her heart: films about sex workers in New York, the women of Greenham Common, the sculptor Antony Gormley, and a highly-acclaimed film about girls sold into religious prostitution in India. And her latest film In Real Life is a documentary about teenagers and the internet. She talks to Michael Berkeley about the power of music in films, the pleasures of building relationships with composers, the joy of telling stories, and the sheer determination needed to make the films she feels so passionately about. Her choices include music from her film Swept from the Sea and her BAFTA-winning television series Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit; the music of her childhood; the piece which changed her ideas about love; and the scariest film music ever written. Producer: Jane Greenwood. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
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20-Sep-2013
Private Passions - Sound of Cinema: Philip French
It's quite possible that Philip French has seen more films than anyone else on the planet. Obsessed with cinema since the age of four, he has been reviewing films for the Observer for the past fifty years, as well as writing for many other papers and publishing several critically acclaimed books about cinema. He talks to Michael Berkeley about the role of the composer in the cinema, his late flowering love of Beethoven string quartets, his lifelong delight in the singing of Ruth Etting; and his greatest film music memories. His music choices are all associated with film ? from Disney's Fantasia; through The Ride of the Valkyries used so memorably in Apocalypse Now; to Miles Davis and avant garde composer Harry Partch. Philip French sees at least nine films a week ? that's getting on for 20,000 over his career. Michael Berkeley asks him, how important is music in making a film stick in the mind? Producer: Jane Greenwood. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
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09-Sep-2013
Private Passions - Angie Hobbs
Angie Hobbs is no ordinary philosopher. Her job takes her to places as varied as cathedrals, airforce bases and merchant banks, as well as frequently to our radio and TV screens. As our first ever Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy, based at Sheffield University, she's determined to ensure that philosophy doesn't remain exclusively in the hands of academics - she wants it to inspire us all to explore the big questions in our lives. Angie talks to Michael Berkeley about music in Greek philosophy, and about music as solace, as well as a celebration of life and the memory of people and places she has loved. Her choices include a Beethoven movement she considers to be the most beautiful music ever written, a Latin carol and an unusual arrangement of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, as well as music by Bach, Vaughan Williams and Emmylou Harris. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
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02-Sep-2013
Private Passions - Gillian Lynne
Gillian Lynne is best known as the choreographer of Cats and Phantom of the Opera, among other West End hits. She received a lifetime Olivier Award earlier this year. But her career began more than seven decades ago, when she was spotted as a dancer by Ninette de Valois. She danced during the War, with doodlebugs falling around her and just two pianos in the pit - no orchestras, as all the men were away fighting. She danced in the first night at Covent Garden after the War, when audiences dusted off their evening clothes. She then moved into movies, playing a gypsy temptress in The Master of Ballantrae opposite Errol Flynn. The sexual chemistry wasn't confined to the screen - she and Flynn had an affair, though his drink problem meant 'He wasn't a great lover. At the end of the day, he couldn't... But he was a beautiful man.' As she developed as a choreographer, Gillian Lynne worked with the leading composers of the day, including Sir Michael Tippett. In fact she asked him to make changes in his Ritual Dances (from The Midsummer Marriage) so it would become a bit clearer what on earth was going on. 'I said to Colin Davis, I don't know what this is about. But I think it's about orgasms. He said, "Quite right, dear girl. Quite right!"' Now 87, Lynne talks frankly about her career, and people she has worked with, like Frederick Ashton and Dudley Moore. She is still working - 'If I didn't I'd keel over' - and thanks to her daily workout, she is still enviably fit. She tells the story of finding love for the first time when she was in her 50s - with a man 27 years younger than herself. She's naughty, irreverent, and fun; this is also priceless social history. Music choices include Fauré, Walton, Vaughan Williams, Tippett and Errol Garner.
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19-Aug-2013
Private Passions - Sally Davies
The Chief Medical Officer, Sally Davies, is on our TV screens almost every week as the authority we appeal to in every health scare: horsemeat in burgers, antibiotic resistance, three-parent babies. She is clearly a person of tremendous power and influence, in charge of the National Institute of Health Research with a budget of £1 billion - voted by Woman's Hour recently one of the top ten most powerful women in the UK. Sally Davies talks to Michael Berkeley about her private life. She tells him about the death of her second husband from leukaemia less than a year after they were married, and how this has changed her as a doctor. (She scandalised her medical colleagues on a hospital ward round by putting her arms around a dying patient.) She discusses the breakdown of her first marriage, as well as the happiness she has found with her third husband and daughters. She also reveals that she believes drugs are a medical issue rather than a criminal one. Sally Davies is humorous, and fun - she admits she loves wine, for instance. She is deeply musical - she played in the Midlands Youth Orchestra as a girl and turns to music to relieve stress. Music includes: Mozart, Brahms, Wagner, Vaughan Williams, Rossini's Stabat Mater, Beethoven's Fidelio - and Queen.
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12-Aug-2013
Private Passions - Adam Nicolson
Adam Nicolson has the privilege, and the burden, of an extraordinary inheritance: Sissinghurst, that quintessentially English house and garden created by his grandparents Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. In his own right, he?s the author of a series of highly esteemed history books and television series, about the making of the King James Bible, about the English gentry, and most recently about 17th-century writers. But it?s that Sissinghurst connection which fascinates us all: growing up with bohemian writers and artists, there must have been music going on there all the time? Not at all - Adam reveals that his family were musical philistines. His father hated music because it moved him, and made him emotional ? so for an Englishman of that generation and class it was deeply suspect. It?s only in middle age that Adam is discovering music, and he admits cheerfully that his musical taste is 'dreadful'. He also talks about walking 6000 miles round Europe, about his love for the Hebrides, and about his disastrous 'open' marriage. Adam and his wife had a deal ? they were allowed to have two affairs a year, as long as they were abroad. This too was the legacy of Sissinghurst, and a father who urged him to have as many affairs as possible. What followed was predictable, and messy, but with a happy ending - as Adam?s choice of music reveals. A light-hearted programme, which includes music by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Eric Whitacre, Prokofiev, Roberta Flack, and a reading by Alec Guinness of T.S.Eliot's 'Little Gidding'.
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05-Aug-2013
Private Passions - Jocelyn Bell Burnell
The astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell changed the way we see the universe. At the age of only 24, as a Phd student, she discovered a totally new kind of star, a pulsar. Her older male colleagues got the Nobel Prize for the discovery - her name being unfairly, and in the view of many scientists, outrageously, left off. But many honours have followed, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell is currently Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford University. In Private Passions she talks to Michael Berkeley about the sexism she's fought all her life as a woman in science: the jeering and catcalls she encountered in lectures at Glasgow university, and the fight as a young girl to be allowed to study science at all. She reflects on what it was like to be denied the Nobel Prize so unfairly - and why she doesn't feel bitterness. She evokes the exhilaration of scientific discovery, and talks too about the darker times in her life, when she had a very sick child and her marriage failed. Her musical passions include Haydn, Verdi, Smetana, Sibelius, Rachmaninov and Arvo Pärt.
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23-Jul-2013
Private Passions - Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks
Lord Sacks ends his twenty-year tenure as Britain's Chief Rabbi this coming autumn. At his retirement dinner (24 June) Prince Charles described him as "a light unto this nation" and praised him for promoting the principle of tolerance, expressing mounting anxiety at the apparent rise in anti-Semitism, along with other poisonous and debilitating forms of intolerance. In this programme, Lord Sacks looks back at his life and career, and talks to Michael Berkeley about both the joyous and the sad music which has accompanied him during his time as Chief Rabbi. From the moment his father took the young Jonathan (as a reluctant teenager) to a concert at the Albert Hall he has been passionate about the power of music. But he has also been concerned about the lack of music written for the Jewish people. Composers from Mendelssohn and Mahler to Irving Berlin and George Gershwin have composed for other faiths and other peoples. He feels this is part of the reason why Jewish music needs invigorating - it needs an injection of joyousness. He also talks about composers whose music he feels augurs the nineteenth- and twentieth- century tragedies suffered by the Jewish people, as well as the music which he feels represents the possibility of national and religious reconciliation. His choices include Mahler, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Simon and Garfunkel and Bach. He is a thoughtful but also an ebullient speaker who loves jokes.
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15-Jul-2013
Private Passions - Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane is a writer and scholar who has spent years exploring the wild spaces of the world. In this location edition of Private Passions, he takes Michael Berkeley to an uninhabited island off the coast of Suffolk, Orfordness. It was a place used for military testing right up to the 1950s, and it's littered with abandoned rusty machinery and ruined observation towers; the wind scrapes across the debris and makes a kind of unearthly music. It's the perfect setting, then, to listen to music about wild spaces and bird calls: Mussorgsky's 'Night on a Bare Mountain' and Messiaen's 'Abime des Oiseaux' among them. Robert Macfarlane talks about feeling that he is walking with ghosts, particularly the ghost of poet Edward Thomas who died in the First World War. He introduces the music that Thomas listened to at the Front, Chopin's Berceuse (or Lullaby). The programme also includes a rare recording made in the 1950s on a rock far out into the Atlantic, of a group of Hebridean islanders singing psalms. Macfarlane is a Cambridge scholar and award-winning writer, as well as a climber, walker, and wild swimmer. He is extraordinarily eloquent when he introduces this atmospheric selection of music.
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08-Jul-2013
Private Passions - Ruth Rogers
Ruth Rogers has become one of our most celebrated cooks and best-selling food writers since she and her friend the late Rose Gray opened a modest cafe in West London more than twenty five years ago. Their modest ambition was to make the River Cafe the best Italian restaurant in the world. Since then Ruth Rogers has been instrumental in changing the way we think about Italian food in Britain. Ruth reveals how her musical passions bring together her love of Italy, food, family, and the human voice. Her choices of music include the joyous ode to wine from Don Giovanni; a contemporary opera chosen for her husband, the architect Richard Rogers; a moving piano tribute to her late son; and a Bob Dylan song which recalls the time, growing up in Woodstock, when she turned down his invitation to watch him rehearse.
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01-Jul-2013
Private Passions - Rufus Wainwright
Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright can justifiably be described as a member of folk royalty. The son of Loudon Wainwright 3rd and the late Kate McGarrigle, he is also the nephew of Anna McGarrigle and brother of Martha Wainwright, all accomplished musicians in their own right. He describes about how he spent the first few weeks of his life sleeping in a guitar-case, sang with his family from an early age, and depended on them during the difficult periods of his life. His teenage years and his twenties heralded difficulties coming to terms with his sexuality and with drug addiction, but he continued to perform and write music throughout the hard times. Now married to artistic director Jorn Wiesbrodt, he is also a father of Lorca, whose mother is the daughter of Leonard Cohen. Obsessed with Verdi, he has composed his own opera, set Shakespeare sonnets to music and composed for the ballet. His choices include Verdi, Massenet, Messiaen, Nina Simone, Kurt Weill, Manuel de Falla, Berlioz and Judy Garland.
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24-Jun-2013
Private Passions - Paul Muldoon
As part of British music season on Radio 3, poets from across the country talk about their musical passions with Michael Berkeley. Paul Muldoon, born and raised in Northern Ireland, is one of our most distinguished poets, having won the Pulitzer, TS Eliot and Irish Times Prizes. In this programme he celebrates his Northern Irish roots in music and poetry, and discusses his fascination with the place where popular and serious music meet. For five years he was professor of poetry at Oxford, and he now teaches at Princeton University in the USA, where he is writing libretti and goes to as many rock gigs as possible. Paul's choices include Lou Reed singing Kurt Weill, music from Stravinsky, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy, and a Metallica song played on four cellos.
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10-Jun-2013
Private Passions - Sean O'Brien
As part of the British music season on Radio 3, poets from across the UK reveal their favourite music. Sean O'Brien is a perfect choice for Private Passions because his poems capture the musical soundscapes of the north-east of England where he lives: the cries of gulls, the wash of the sea, the rumble of trains. In fact he's obsessed by trains, and for O'Brien, like many other poets, journeys by train are an inspiration and a form of meditation. So one of his choices is Steve Reich's hypnotic work Different Trains, in which the composer mixes fragments of train whistles and announcements. Sean O'Brien's other choices include Little Feat, Schubert, Vaughan Williams, Debussy's La Mer, and Prokofiev's film music for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, a film he first saw when skiving off games as a 16-year-old. He used to be a drummer in a rock band and likes to listen to everything very loud, so Miles Davies is the perfect soundtrack to Sunday mornings ... Michael Berkeley's guest Sean O'Brien reveals his Private Passions.
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03-Jun-2013
Private Passions - Gwyneth Lewis
As part of British music season on Radio 3, poets from across the country reveal the music which inspires them. Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis has the unusual distinction of having written the largest poem in the world, and it's about music. The words are six feet tall, inscribed over the entrance to the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, the music venue designed by Zaha Hadid: 'In these stones horizons sing'. Gwyneth has a passion for opera and the human voice, a passion which began early when her father played his favourite operas on every car journey - the whole family would sing along. As a child she sang in her school choir, singing opera in Welsh. Gwyneth talks very movingly about the depression she has suffered throughout her life; it was music - and particularly a Brahms choral work (the Alto Rhapsody) which she says 'saved my life'. She reads a poem inspired by listening to opera singers, The Voice. And although she is Welsh through and through and she was for a time National Poet of Wales - she reveals that she doesn't have much time for Welsh music. Choices include Verdi, Poulenc, Brahms, Mozart, Bach, a French chanson - and one haunting Welsh folk song.
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27-May-2013
Private Passions - Bruce Munro
Michael Berkeley's guest is the artist Bruce Munro, best known for his lighting installations such as Field of Light, first exhibited at the V&A Museum in 2004. He is also known for CDSea (made of 600,000 unwanted CDs donated by the general public from across the world), and 'Light Shower', an installation made for the spire cross within Salisbury Cathedral, designed to be switched on for the cathedral's 'Darkness into Light' candle-lit procession in 2010. The following year he unveiled a new installation, Star-Turn, a one-night-only piece to raise funds for the Help for Heroes charity. Munro's most recent installation, Cantus Arcticus, was launched in March this year and continues until the end of October at Waddeson Manor. His work was featured as an example of outstanding lighting design in the book by Design Museum, How to Design a Light (2010). Bruce Munro's musical choices include Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus as well as orchestral music by Rodrigo, Rautavaara and Prokofiev.
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20-May-2013
Private Passions - Harriet Harman
Michael Berkeley's guest is Harriet Harman MP, who has been a member of Parliament since 1982, first for Peckham, and since 1997 for Camberwell and Peckham. She entered Parliament as one of only 10 Labour women MPs. She has been Deputy Leader of the Labour Party since 2007 and is currently the Shadow Deputy Prime Minister and Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. She is currently the longest continuously-serving female MP. A lawyer by profession, she was first appointed to the Cabinet in Tony Blair's government as the first-ever Minister for Women and Secretary of State for Social Security. In 2007 she was elected as the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and served under Gordon Brown as Leader of the House of Commons, Lord Privy Seal and Minister for Women and Equality. On Brown's resignation she became Acting Leader and Leader of the Opposition until Ed Miliband was elected Leader. Her musical choices include extracts from West Side Story and Oklahoma, Mozart's Gran Partita, K361, Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Britten's Turn of the Screw.
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13-May-2013
Private Passions - Jonathan Hyde
Michael Berkeley's guest is Australian-born actor Jonathan Hyde, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company who has appeared in numerous plays from Shakespeare to Chekhov, Oscar Wilde and Tom Stoppard. He recently appeared as the speech therapist Lionel Logue in the stage version of The King's Speech. His film roles include J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic, and Sam Parrish/Van Pelt the hunter in Jumanji, as well as the Egyptologist in The Mummy. His many TV appearances include roles in Spooks, Foyle's War, Sherlock Holmes and Endeavour. He is currently appearing in Travels with my Aunt at the Chocolate Menier Factory in London. Jonathan Hyde is married to the Scottish singer Isobel Buchanan, and his musical choices include his wife as Micaela in Carmen, and singing a traditional Scottish folksong; part of Britten's Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge, an aria from Handel's Atalanta, and extracts from Stravinsky's ballet Apollon musagete.
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22-Apr-2013
Private Passions - Aleksandar Hemon
Michael Berkeley's guest is the Bosnian-born writer Aleksandar Hemon, who has lived in the USA for the past two decades, after leaving his native Sarajevo during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s. He has published four acclaimed works of fiction: the novel 'The Lazarus Project', and three collections of short stories, including 'The Question of Bruno' and 'Love and Obstacles'. His latest autobiographical work, 'The Book of My Lives', has just been published. His work has been compared to Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Conrad. His eclectic musical tastes range from an aria from Bach's St Matthew Passion and the famous Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony to traditional Bosnian music, a song by David Bowie, and jazz by Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington.
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15-Apr-2013
Private Passions - Declan Donnellan
Michael Berkeley's guest is the Laurence Olivier award-winning director Declan Donnellan, who co-founded Cheek by Jowl theatre company with Nick Ormerod in 1981. He has directed Shakespearian productions for the RSC, and a wide range of work for Cheek by Jowl, including Shakespeare, Restoration comedy, Jacobean tragedy, and plays by Corneille, Racine, Chekhov and Pushkin, as well as an adaptation of Dickens's 'Great Expectations'. In 1993 he directed the smash hit National Theatre production of Sweeney Todd. A specialist in French and Russian drama, he directed the 2012 film of Maupassant's 'Bel-Ami', starring Uma Thurman and Christina Ricci, and has directed Le Cid at the Avignon Festival and Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. His current Cheek by Jowl production is a French-language version of Alfred Jarry's satire 'Ubu Roi', which is touring in the UK and abroad. His music choices include traditional Irish music, 19th-century ballet excerpts and operas by Mozart and Verdi.
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01-Apr-2013
Private Passions - Janet Suzman
Michael Berkeley's guest is the South African-born actress Dame Janet Suzman, who has lived in London since 1959. She began her distinguished stage career with the RSC, where she has played many of the Shakespearean heroines, including Portia, Ophelia, Kate, Beatrice, Celia, Rosalind, and a much-acclaimed Cleopatra. She has also appeared on stage in plays by Ibsen, Chekhov, Marlowe, Racine and Brecht, as well as in contemporary drama by Pinter, Harwood and others, and in TV dramas such as Dennis Potter's 'The Singing Detective'. In 1971 she appeared as the Empress Alexandra in the film 'Nicholas and Alexandra', and was nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA and the Golden Globe. Other major film appearances have included 'A Day in the Death of Joe Egg', opposite Alan Bates, Frieda Lawrence in 'Priest of Love', and Peter Greenaway's 'The Draughtsman's Contract'. She is a great lover of the Baroque period, reflected in her music choices for Private Passions.
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25-Mar-2013
Private Passions - Rowan Williams
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, talks to Michael Berkeley about his musical enthusiasms, which include works by Bach, Dowland and William Byrd as well as Mozart, Britten and Schumann. First broadcast in June 2008.
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11-Mar-2013
Private Passions - Donna Leon
Michael Berkeley's guest is the American crime writer Donna Leon, whose best-selling novels, set in Venice, feature the Italian detective Commissario Guido Brunetti. Donna Leon is passionate about baroque music, and her choices include arias from operas by Handel, Vivaldi and early Mozart, as well as by Bellini and Verdi. Part of Baroque Spring First broadcast in May 2000.
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04-Mar-2013
Private Passions - Jared Diamond
Michael Berkeley welcomes Jared Diamond, the American scientist and author known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (which won him a Pulitzer Prize), Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? As an anthropologist, his work has involved over 20 expeditions to New Guinea and surrounding islands to study ecology and conservation. He is currently Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Some of his work, particularly concerned with the evolution of societies, has involved him in controversy. Jared Diamond's mother was a pianist, and he is a passionate music lover. In an appropriate prelude to Radio 3's Baroque season, his choices for Private Passions include several pieces by Bach, starting with the chorale prelude Jesu meine Freude, which he first heard at Clare College Chapel in Cambridge and which motivated him to learn the organ. He has since played his third choice, Bach's St Anne Fugue, while another Bach piece, a chorus from Cantata No.50, was chosen by him and his wife for their wedding processional. He also plays the piano, and has chosen part of Beethoven's Violin Sonata in G, Op.96, which he is currently playing. His other choices include Schubert's Erlkonig, sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; part of Brahms's Sextet in B flat, Op.18, the opening chorus of C.P.E.Bach's Magnificat, which was also played at his wedding, and one of Strauss's Four Last Songs, sung by Gundula Janowitz.
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18-Feb-2013
Private Passions - Fiona Sampson
Michael Berkeley's guest is Fiona Sampson, who began her career as a concert violinist before studying at Oxford University and becoming a writer and poet. Her collections of poetry include Folding the Real (2001), The Distance Between Us (2005), Common Prayer (2007), which was shortlisted for the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize, and Rough Music (2010), which was shortlisted both for the 2010 Forward Poetry Prize, and for the T.S. Eliot Prize. She has written and edited several books on the theory of creative writing, has translated writings from Eastern and Central Europe, and collaborates with visual artists, including print-makers and stone-carvers, on commissions. She has also collaborated with the Coull Quartet. She has been Fellow in Creativity at the University of Warwick, edits Poetry Review, and in 2011 she was elected a Fellow and a Council Member of the Royal Society of Literature. As a violinist herself, Fiona Sampson's musical passions naturally include string music, and she has chosen an excerpt from Mendelssohn's Octet, and a Bach unaccompanied partita played by Nathan Milstein, as well as Beethoven's Op.132 String Quartet. She also loves Vaughan Williams' song-cycle On Wenlock Edge, in which the tenor voice is accompanied by string quartet and piano. Her deep interest in Central and Eastern Europe is represented by Balkan folk music and the second movement of Bartok's folk-influenced Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.
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04-Feb-2013
Private Passions - George Young
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is Sir George young MP. A keen fan of opera, Sir George's musical choices range from Mozart (Don Giovanni) and Verdi (Don Carlos) to Gilbert and Sullivan (The Pirates of Penzance). Choral music is also a passion of Sir George - with excerpts from Haydn's Nelson Mass and Donizetti's Messa di Gloria - and his love of chamber music is reflected by Schubert's Quartettsatz and Hummel's Octet Partita.
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28-Jan-2013
Private Passions - Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Michael Berkeley's guest is the historian, biographer and critic Lucy Hughes-Hallett, whose books include a cultural history of the ancient Egyptian queen Cleopatra and a story of heroism told through eight famous lives from Achilles and Odysseus to Francis Drake and Garibaldi. Her latest book, 'The Pike', deals with the controversial life of the Italian poet and occasional politician Gabriele d'Annunzio, who evolved from romantic idealist to radical right-wing revolutionary, culminating in his dramatic attempt to seize political power in the Croatian city of Fiume (now Rijeka). Through his ideological journey, Lucy Hughes-Hallett examines the political turbulence of early 20th-century Europe and the rise of fascism. Lucy's musical enthusiasms range from Byzantine chant through operas by Monteverdi, Handel and Verdi to The Rolling Stones, and an extract from Debussy's 'Le martyre de Saint Sebastien'.
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14-Jan-2013
Private Passions - Orhan Pamuk
Michael Berkeley's guest is the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, who was born in Istanbul, a city which straddles East and West, and which haunts his many books. Until he was 22 he wanted to become an artist, and studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University. A year later he decided to become a writer, and published his first novel, Cevdet Bey and His Sons, in 1982. The following year he published The Silent House, which won him his first literary award, while The White Castle (1985) won him international renown. In the late 1980s he lived in the USA, where he wrote The Black Book; while his 1994 novel The New Life, about a group of university students influenced by a mysterious book, became one of the most widely-read Turkish novels. My Name is Red (1998) won many international awards, and in 2002 he published Snow, which he described as his 'first and last political novel', telling the story of tension between political islamists, secularists and nationalists. Both Istanbul and The Museum of Innocence pay homage to his beloved native city, where he has lived for nearly all his life. Orhan Pamuk has won many international awards, including the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature. Orhan Pamuk's eclectic choices reflect his interest in both Eastern and Western culture. They range from a Mozart piano concerto, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and part of Mahler's Fifth Symphony to songs by Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse, and traditional Turkish music.
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07-Jan-2013
Private Passions - Stephen Tompkinson
Michael Berkeley welcomes the popular actor Stephen Tompkinson, best known for his appearances in TV drama and comedy productions, such as DCI Banks, Wild At Heart, Ballykissangel and Drop the Dead Donkey, as well as in the film Brassed Off. He is currently making his stage musical debut as King Arthur in Spamalot in London's West End. Many of Stephen's choices for Private Passions relate to pieces he was introduced to as a child, such as Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet, and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. He first came to Scott Joplin's music through the film The Sting, while the score for Brassed Off, played by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, is particularly dear to his heart, owing to his own Northern roots. His remaining choices include a section of Mozart's Requiem, which he finds especially moving, and pieces by Cole Porter and Booker T and the MGs.
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31-Dec-2012
Private Passions - Simon Hoggart
Michael Berkeley's guest is the journalist and broadcaster Simon Hoggart, son of the sociologist Richard Hoggart. He has been writing for The Guardian since the 1960s, and from 1993 has been its parliamentary sketch-writer. He also writes a wine column for The Spectator, and his books range from 'Life's Too Short to Drink Bad Wine' to a serious political review and several popular collections of hilarious Christmas round-robin letters. He chaired Radio 4's comedy show 'The News Quiz' in the 1980s, and again from 1996-2006, and has appeared on TV's Grumpy Old Men series. His musical tastes range from Mozart's serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Beethoven's 'Pastoral' Symphony to Tallis's motet Spem in alium, a piece by Piers Hellawell, and excerpts from Berlioz's 'Damnation of Faust', Donizetti's 'L'elisir d'amore' and Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde'.
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24-Dec-2012
Private Passions - Diana Rigg
Michael Berkeley's guest is Dame Diana Rigg,whose career spans TV roles such as Emma Peel in The Avengers, Mrs Danvers in Daphne du Maurier's 'Rebecca', the amateur detective Mrs Bradley in The Mrs Bradley Mysteries, and Lady Olenna Redwyne in the HBO series Game of Thrones, as well as film - she was the only girl that James Bond ever married (in 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service') and theatre. She began her stage career aged 17, and between 1959 and 1964 played many roles at the RSC. In the 1970s she was a member of the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic, and created the roles of Dorothy Moore and Ruth Carson in Tom Stoppard's 'Jumpers' and 'Night and Day'. In the 1990s she appeared at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, playing Medea (which transferred to Broadway and won her a Tony Award for Best Actress) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Recently she has appeared in The Cherry Orchard and Hay Fever at Chichester, and as Mrs Higgins in Shaw's Pygmalion, opposite Rupert Everett and Kara Tointon, at the Garrick Theatre. She and her daughter Rachael Stirling will appear in 2013 in a specially-written episode of Doctor Who. Diana Rigg's musical favourites encompass Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, Mendelssohn's Overture The Hebrides, Schubert's Trout Quintet (she loves fishing); the song of a blackbird (she hand-raised two blackbirds), one of Erik Satie's Gymnopedies, and Eva Cassidy singing Sting's 'Fields of Gold'. The programme ends on an appropriately festive note.
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10-Dec-2012
Private Passions - Caroline Charles
Michael Berkeley's guest is the fashion designer Caroline Charles, who is celebrating 50 years of dressing celebrities of both sexes ranging from Mick Jagger, Lulu, Cilla Black, Barbra Streisand, Marianne Faithfull and Rudolf Nureyev to Diana, Princess of Wales. Her sexy, stylish clothes were worn by many famous actors and pop stars of the Swinging Sixties, and she has enjoyed consistent success ever since. Music plays an important part in Caroline's fashion shows, showcasing a range of styles and genres. Her tastes range from the colourful songs of Ali Farka Toure and Cesaria Evora to a Cuban Dance by Gottschalk, part of Shostakovich's First Jazz Suite, and Gershwin's lively 'Strike Up the Band' in an arrangement by Oscar Peterson and his trio. The more reflective side of Caroline's character is epitomized by a Satie Gymnopedie, Mozart's Andante in C for flute and orchestra, 'September' from Strauss's Four Last Songs, which Caroline has used in her shows to accompany the bridal display, and the second movement of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, played by Itzhak Perlman.
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03-Dec-2012
Private Passions - John Major
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is Sir John Major, who succeeded Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in November 1990, and served until Tony Blair's victory in the 1997 General Election. His father worked as a music hall performer, and he left school at 15 before continuing to study and qualifying as a banker. He became a Conservative Parliamentary candidate in 1974, and in 1979 became an MP in the Huntingdon constituency, a seat he held until his retirement from politics in 2001. After the 1987 General Election he was promoted to the Cabinet, and became Foreign Secretary in July 1989, and later that year Chancellor of the Exchequer, following the shock resignation of Nigel Lawson. His tenure as Prime Minister included the liberation of Kuwait, the beginning of the peace process in Northern Ireland, and the establishment of the National Lottery. He has recently published a memoir of his father, 'My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall', and has always retained a strong affection for the music of that genre, as well as for a wide variety of classical music, a passion he shares with his wife Norma.
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26-Nov-2012
Private Passions - Thomas Keneally
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the Australian novelist Thomas Keneally, who has published over 30 novels, dramas, screenplays and non-fiction works. He was shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize, before winning it in 1982 with his Holocaust novel Schindler's Ark, later adapted by Steven Spielberg as the Oscar-winning film, Schindler's List. He has won many other awards for his novels, which explore a wide range of subjects from a disastrous Arctic expedition and the exploitation of Aborigines to the negotiation of the Armistice that ended WWI, the conflict in Eritrea and the effect of war on those left behind. His latest book is The Daughters of Mars. Music is one of his great passions. He studied for the priesthood, and two of his choices, Mozart's Requiem and a Bach cantata, reveal his love of masterpieces of sacred choral music. He has also chosen the second movement of Elgar's Violin Concerto, representing his love of England, a Handel aria from 'Rinaldo' sung by Cecilia Bartoli, and three other works associated with place - a piece by the Australian composer Percy Grainger, a piece of early Italian music by Filippo Azzaiolo, and Bailero from Canteloube's Songs of the Auvergne.
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19-Nov-2012
Private Passions - Charles Williams
Michael Berkeley's guest is the Labour peer Charles Williams, who sits in the House of Lords as Lord Williams of Elvel. Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and the London School of Economics, Charles Williams played 87 first-class cricket matches for Essex and Oxford University. He subsequently enjoyed a successful and varied career as a businessman, including acting as director of Mirror Group Newspapers from 1985 to 1992. He is currently president of the Radnor branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales. he was made CBE in 1980 and a life peer in 1985. He has published acclaimed biographies of General de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer, Marshal Petain, Harold Macmillan, and the cricketer Sir Donald Bradman,and his latest book, Gentlemen and Players, looks at the difference between amateurism and professionalism in cricket, taking as its starting point the annual first-class cricket match Gentlemen v Players, first played at Lords in 1806, and focusing on the final ten years of amateurism in the game in the postwar period.
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12-Nov-2012
Private Passions - Dan Snow
Michael Berkeley's guest on this Remembrance Sunday is the TV presenter Dan Snow, son of the TV journalist Peter Snow and nephew of Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan. He studied Modern History at Oxford, and began his TV career when he and his father jointly presented a programme on El Alamein to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the battles. They followed it up with an eight-part BBC2 series called Battlefield Britain, and since then Dan Snow has presented on several state occasions such as the 200th anniversary celebration of the Battle of Trafalgar, the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII and the 90th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice in November 2008. He has also presented BBC2's 20th-century Battlefields, and many other programmes such as Little Ships (2010), China's Terracotta Army, Battle for North America: The Battle of Quebec (BBC2) and Dig WW2 (BBC1, 2012) on the excavation of historic sites and battlefields. He has just published a book, 'Battle Castles: 500 Years of Knights and Siege Warfare'. Dan has always been a keen sailor and rower. His music choices begin with Sibelius's Symphony No.2, which reminds him of family sailing holidays in the Baltic. Mozart is a favourite composer, and he has chosen the second movement of the Clarinet Quintet. He is half-Canadian, and the film 'Last of the Mohicans' is one of his favourites - he loves its soundtrack, especially Promontory. He has a Welsh grandmother, and has chosen the Welsh folk-tune Suo gan. His remaining choices are a movement from Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Nimrod from Elgar's Enigma Variations, which he finds deeply moving, and the end of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, a piece linked to a specific historical event 200 years ago this autumn.
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29-Oct-2012
Private Passions - Linda Partridge
Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions is the British geneticist and biogerontologist Dame Linda Partridge, who works on the biology of ageing. She is currrently Weldon Professor of Biometry and Director of the Institute of Healthy Ageing at University College London, and one of three founding Directors of the new Max Planck Institute for the Biology of Ageing in Cologne. Her current research on the biology of ageing focuses on single gene mutations and environmental interventions, such as diet, that can extend a healthy lifespan and protect against age-releated diseases. She is the recipient of many international awards, and in 2009 was appointed DBE. In 2009 the UK Research Council declared her one of six Women of Outstanding Achievement in Science, Engineering and Technology. Her musical choices range from pieces by Bizet and Chopin to Britten's Missa brevis, Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, the Prelude to Wagner's Das Rheingold, and Philip Glass playing his own Glassworks.
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22-Oct-2012
Private Passions - Tim Smit
Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions this week is Sir Tim Smit, the Dutch-born businessman who studied archaeology and anthropology before becoming a successful songwriter and music producer, winning seven platinum and gol;d discs. In 1987 he and his family moved to Cornwall, where he worked on The Lost Gardens of Heligan, and then created The Eden Project, an initiative to build two transparent biodomes in an old china clay pit. described as 'the eighth wonder of the world', The Eden Project aims to educate people about environmental issues, and has become a world-famous visitor attraction. Smit's book about the project, Eden, has become the bestselling environment book of the 21st century to date. TIm Smit was appointed Honorary CBE in 2002, and Honorary KBE in January 2011. He is also a Social Enterprise Ambassador. Tim Smit is also passionate about music, and plays the piano daily.
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15-Oct-2012
Private Passions - Arlene Phillips
Michael Berkeley welcomes the award-winning choreographer Arlene Phillips, who came to prominence by creating the hugely popular dance group Hot Gossip in the 1970s. After the group achieved TV fame, Arlene worked with major artists from Duran Duran and Diana Ross to Robbie Williams, TV shows and specials, large-scale events such as The Royal Variety Show and Party at the Palace, and worldwide stage productions of shows such as Flashdance, The Sound of Music, Grease and We Will Rock You. She has also directed smash-hit musicals such as Saturday Night Fever, Starlight Express, Jesus Christ Superstar, Saturday Night Fever and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. She has appeared on many TV shows, most notably as a judge on 'Strictly Come Dancing' from 2004 until 2009. In the run-up to the 2012 Olympic Games she was appointed the government's 'Dance Tsar' to help improve the nation's fitness. She has also choreographed over 100 TV commercials in the UK and USA. Arlene's music choices begin with the Dance at the Gym from Bernstein's West Side Story, which fuelled her love of American Jazz. As a small child, she dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer, and she has chosen the Transformation Scene from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, one of the greatest of all ballets. Andrew Lloyd Webber is a personal friend, and the theme from his Paganini Variations is her next choice, followed by a number from the show Les Miserables, sung by Alfie Boe. Mozart's Requiem is another passion, also the famous clog dance from the Herold/Lanchbery ballet La fille mal gardee. Her other choices include music by Philip Glass, Pachelbel's Canon, which was one of the first classical pieces she heard, and an Argentine tango.
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08-Oct-2012
Private Passions - Michele Roberts
Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions is the novelist and short story writer Michele Roberts. The child of a French mother and English father, she was brought up and still divides her time between the two countries. She studied English at Oxford University, worked for the British Council, and then became a writer. She is currently Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She is the author of twelve highly acclaimed novels, including 'Daughters of the House' (1992), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the W H Smith Literary Award; 'Flesh and Blood' (1994), 'The Looking Glass' (2000), 'Reader, I Married Him' (2005), and her latest novel, 'Ignorance' (2012), a war-time novel set in France. She has also published a memoir, 'Paper Houses', dealing with the themes that inform her novels - love, feminist ideals and the legacy of her Catholic upbringing; and a collection of short stories of sex and love, entitled 'Mud' (2010). Music has always played an important part in Michele Roberts's life, and her choices begin with Bach's Magnificat and continue with an aria from Handel's cantata 'Donna, che in ciel di tanta luce splendi', in praise of the Virgin Mary. Michele says she wanted to be a nun as a teenager, and became fascinated by female mystics and saints, including Hildegard of Bingen. She loves Kathleen Ferrier's voice, singing Handel's 'O Thou that tellest good tidings to Zion', which she finds very comforting. She also appreciates the voices of Alfred Deller, Jacques Brel and Bob Dylan, as well as an Italian women partisans' song, Bella Ciao, which appeals to her republican sympathies, and the Portuguese fado singer Mariza. Her choices end as they began, with Bach.
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24-Sep-2012
Private Passions - Joe Wright
Michael Berkeley's guest is the young British film director Joe Wright, whose 'Pride and Prejudice' (2005), starring Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen won four major awards including a BAFTA and an Empire Award, while 'Atonement' (2007), based on Ian McEwan's acclaimed novel and starring Keira Knightley, James McAvoy and Romola Garai, was nominated for an Oscar and won a BAFTA, an Empire Award, and a Golden Globes. Born in London, where his parents founded and ran the Little Angel puppet theatre in Islington, Joe took a degree in fine art and film at Central St Martins, and began his career making drama serials for the BBC, including Bodily Harm with Timothy Spall, Charles II: The Power and the Passion, with Rufus Sewell, which won a BAFTA., and Nature Boy, which was nominated for Best Drama Serial at the 2001 BAFTAS. he also directed the multi-award-winning TV drama Bob and Rose. Joe Wright's subsequent films include The Soloist, starring Robert Downey jnr; and Hanna, starring Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana and Saoirse Ronan. His latest release is Anna Karenina, adapted by Tom Stoppard from Tolstoy's novel, and starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law. He is married to international sitar star Anoushka Shankar.
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17-Sep-2012
Private Passions - Fay Weldon
Michael Berkeley's guest is the best-selling novelist, playwright and screenwriter Fay Weldon, whose work has been associated with the feminist movement. Her fiction, which includes novels, five collections of short stories, and a number of plays written for TV, radio and the stage, typically portray contemporary women trapped in oppressive situations caused by the patriarchal structure of society. She was brought up in New Zealand and returned to the UK when she was ten. She worked as a journalist before beginning a successful career as and advertising copywriter, from where she went on to write full-time. Her first novel was published in 1967, and since then she has written more than 20, including Down Among the Women (1971), Female Friends (1975), Praxis (1978), The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), which was memorably filmed as a TV series, The Cloning of Joanna May (1989), and Wicked Women (1995). Her most recent novels are Chalcot Crescent (2010), Kehua! (2011), and Habits of the House (2012), the first of a trilogy about the lives of a privileged London family at the end of the 19th century (Weldon scripted the pilot episode of the popular TV series Upstairs, Downstairs). She is a great fan of Handel's music, and has chosen two Handel extracts, 'All we like sheep have gone astray' from Messiah, and 'Angels ever bright and fair' from Theodora, sung by Isobel Baillie. There's also an extract from a Bach cantata; the opening of Act III of Wagner's Siegfried, an extract from Prokofiev's Suite from his film music to Lieutenant Kije; a short song by Charles Ives, and a track by Fay Weldon's husband, the poet Nick Fox, called 'In the Name of the Mother'.
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27-Aug-2012
Private Passions - Cecil Balmond
Structural engineer Cecil Balmond, deputy chairman of Ove Arup, has collaborated with some of the world's leading architects and artists on some of the most daring and celebrated contemporary projects. A frequent collaborator, Anish Kapoor, describes him as 'the world's greatest engineer', and he has worked with Kapoor on the 2002 Tate Modern installation Marsyas, the Tees Valley Giants, and on the 155m-high ArcelorMittal Orbit for the 2012 London Olympics. He has also partnered the Japanese architect Toyo Ito on the 2002 Serpentine Pavilion. In 2006 Balmond made his own debut as an architect, designing a footbridge in Coimbra, Portugal. His musical tastes, as discussed with Michael Berkeley, reveal fascinating links between his own work and music. He expounds on the idea of architecture as 'frozen music', especially in the music of Bach, represented here by movements from the Cello Suite No.1 in G. His mother was a piano teacher, and he was brought up with the music of Chopin, his chosen example today being the Fantaisie-Impromptu No.4 in C sharp minor, played by Artur Rubinstein. He himself plays classical guitar, and was introduced to John Williams while at university, so another of his choices is Paganini's Grand Sonata in A major, played by Williams. He loves jazz, and has chosen the Benny Goodman Quartet playing 'Runnin' Wild', followed by part of the opening movement of Brahms's Clarinet Quintet in B minor. He loves Beethoven, especially the symphonies, the piano sonatas and the late quartets, but today has chosen a song (Adelaide), which he feels is both heartfelt and also light relief from the great structures Beethoven set in motion. Finally there's a choral piece from Ladysmith Black Mambazo, which reminds him of time spent in Nigeria. First broadcast in June 2010.
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20-Aug-2012
Private Passions - Miriam Margolyes
Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions is the award-winning actress Miriam Margolyes, who has starred in many stage and screen productions, from Samuel Beckett's Endgame, Peter Hall's productions of Romeo and Juliet, She Stoops to Conquer and The Importance of Being Earnest, Blithe Spirit (as Madame Arcati) and Wicked (as Madame Morrible in London and on Broadway; to films such as Yentl, Cold Comfort Farm, Ladies in Lavender, How to Lose Friends And Influence People, and the Harry Potter films (as Professor Sprout); and TV productions including The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, The History Man, Vanity Fair, Oliver Twist, Doc Martin, Merlin and Coming of Age. She is regarded as the most accomplished female voice in Britain, and has recorded many audio books. A lifelong devotee of the works of Charles Dickens, she is currently touring the world with her one-woman show, 'Dickens' Women'. Miriam Margolyes is a great fan of virtuoso female singers, and her choices include Cecilia Bartoli singing a Rossini aria and Lucia Popp singing the Queen of the Night's aria from Mozart's Magic Flute. She has also chosen the fourth movement of Schubert's 'Trout' Quintet, a piece she particularly loves; an extract from the Kol Nidre service sung by Richard Tucker; Elgar's Cello Concerto played by Jacqueline du Pre; a rousing orchestral version of Parry's Jerusalem, and Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballe duetting in 'Barcelona'.
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13-Aug-2012
Private Passions - Es Devlin
Michael Berkeley's guest today is the stage designer Es Devlin, whose internationally-renowned stage and costume designs range from opera, ballet, dance, theatre, film and TV to pop, rock and rap. Her work has won many awards, including an Olivier Award for Best Costume Design and Linbury and TPi prizes. She studied music at the Royal Academy of Music as a teenager, before going on to study English Literature, Fine Art and set design. Her highly imaginative and creative designs are in demand all over the world: In 2012 alone, as well as designing the Olympic Closing Ceremony, she has worked on David McVicar's productions of Les Troyens and Salome at the ROH, Keith Warner's Parsifal and Francisco Negrin's Cunning Little Vixen at the Royal Danish Opera, Simon McBurney's The Master and Margarita at Theatre de Complicite, Russell Maliphant's The Rodin Project at Sadlers Wells, and with singer Rihanna at the Grammy and Brit Awards. She works regularly with Lady Gaga and Kanye West, and this year her sets will be seen throughout the world in the tour of Batman Live. Her choices for Private Passions are eclectic. They begin with an extract from Britten's opera 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', which she finds intriguing and bewitching; and continue with a Bulgarian folksong; the scene change music between Act I Scenes 1 and 2 of Wagner's 'Parsifal' in which 'time becomes space'; Diamonds from Sierra Leone (a remix of the John Barry/Shirley Bassey number) by rappers Kanye West and Jay Z; an extract from Berlioz's Les Troyens, which is currently in production at the Royal Opera House; the radiant final scene from Janacek's first opera Jenufa; Keith Jarrett improvising in The Koln Concert and Nina Simone singing Bob Dylan's I Shall Be Released.
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06-Aug-2012
Private Passions - Vangelis
Michael Berkeley meets Vangelis, the Greek composer of electronic, progressive. jazz, pop rock and orchestral music, whos began his career in the 1960s working with bands such as Aphrodite's Child. In the early 1980s he formed a musical partnership with Jon Anderson, the lead singer of the progressive rock band Yes, and in 1981 he shot to worldwide fame with his modern, synthesizer-heavy score for Hugh Hudson's Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire, set at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Vangelis won the Academy Award for Best Original Music Score, and the opening theme of the film was released as a single in 1982. In that year Vangelis composed the score for Ridley Scott's science fiction film Blade Runner, and in 1993 his score for Scott's '1492:Conquest of Paradise' was nominated for an Oscar. He has recently provided a reworked score for the current stage production of Chariots of Fire. His music relies heavily on synthesizers, while also drawing on Greek folk melodies. In all, he has composed more than 52 albums in a career spanning over 50 years. He is also a painter. Vangelis' choices for Private Passions include pieces by Debussy (the Sonata for flute, viola and harp), Stravinsky (The Rite of Spring), solo cello music by Bach, Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Wagner (Tristan and Isolde), Mozart (the Concerto for Flute and Harp) and Gil Evans.
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30-Jul-2012
Private Passions - Adrian Cadbury
In the first of three Olympics-related editions of Private Passions, Michael Berkeley goes to Birmingham to meet Sir Adrian Cadbury in a house once owned by one of his Victorian forebears who founded the Cadbury chocolate dynasty. Adrian was Chairman of the family firm for 24 years. He has been a pioneer in stimulating the debate on corporate governance, and produced the Cadbury report, a code of best practice for corporate governance around the world. Educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, Adrian rowed in the 1952 Boat Race, and then in the British coxless four in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. He joined the Cadbury business later that year and became Chairman of Cadbury Ltd in 1965, retiring in 1989. He was a Director of the Bank of England 1970-94, and also of IBM. He was Chancellor of Aston University for 25 years until 2004. His choices begin with Beethoven's First Symphony, a piece he played with the school orchestra, and gave him a life-long love for Beethoven. He loves opera, and has chosen 'Che gelida manina' from Puccini's La boheme, sung by Jussi Bjorling, and the chorus Va pensiero from Verdi's Nabucco, as well as a march from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro played by the band of the Coldstream Guards. He remembers hearing a carol by Elizabeth Poston in the King's College Chapel Christmas service, while his remaining choices include an excerpt from Simon Jeffes' Still Life at the Penguin Cafe, part of Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije, which he loves for its Russian quirkiness, and finally Chopin's famous 'Raindrop' Prelude, played by Claudio Arrau.
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23-Jul-2012
Private Passions - Anne Reid
Michael Berkeley's guest is the Newcastle-born actress Anne Reid, best-known for her roles as Valerie Barlow in Coronation Street and as Jean in Victoria Wood's comedy series Dinnerladies. She played Valerie over a ten-year span in the 1960s, and returned to TV after a break for child-rearing in Victoria Wood's As Seen on TV. From 1998 to 2000 she played Jean in Dinnerladies, while also appearing in many other TV shows including Midsomer Murders, Marple, Life Begins (alongside Caroline Quentin and Frank Finlay), The Booze Cruise, the revived Upstairs, Downstairs, and Doctor Who. In 1995 she was the voice of Wendolene Ramsbottom in the Wallace and Gromit film A Close Shave, and in 2003 she was nominated for a BAFTA Award for her role in the film 'The Mother', also starring Daniel Craig as the son with whom she has an incestuous relationship. In 2010 she appeared with Ricky Gervais in the film Cemetery Junction. She is shortly appearing in a new TV drama, 'Last Tango in Halifax'. Anne Reid's choices include the Overture to Vaughan Williams' The Wasps, which she remembers hearing on the radio as a child; John Ireland's piano piece April, which she learned to play herself; Liszt's Un Sospiro, played by Claudio Arrau, which she heard in the film Letter from an Unknoiwn Woman; Elizabeth of Glamis from Eric Coates's suite The Three Elizabeths; My White Knight from the Music Man, performed by her great friend Barbara Cook, the theme from Ennio Morricone's film score to Once Upon A Time in America, and Bill Evans' Children's Play Song, which she introduced to her late husband, a TV drama producer.
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16-Jul-2012
Private Passions - Mark Wallinger
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the Turner prize-winning painter, sculptor and video artist Mark Wallinger, who studied at the Chelsea School of Art and Goldsmith's College. From the mid-1980s his work has addressed the traditions and values of British society, its class system and organized religion, rooted in left-wing thought. His best-known work to date includes his sculpture 'Ecce Homo' for the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, a life-size cast of a young man representing Christ being presented by Pontius Pilate to the Judeans. In 2007, the year he won the Turner Prize, he exhibited 'State Britain', a recreation at Tate Britain of Brian Haw's protest display outside the Houses of Parliament. In October 2010 he and 100 other leading artists signed an open letter to the Culture Minister protesting against cutbacks in the arts, and created a new work, 'Reckless', for the occasion. From the early 1990s he has also used his personal enthusiasm for horses and horse-racing to explore issues of ownership and pedigree. His later work, including the video installations 'Angel' and 'Threshold to the Kingdom', focuses on religion, death and the influence of William Blake. With fellow-artists Conrad Shawcross and Chris Ofili, he is currently involved in the Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 joint project by the National Gallery and the Royal Ballet. His musical choices start with the Finale to Act I of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, music he has loved since childhood. He used Allegri's famous Miserere in the soundtrack to Threshold to the Kingdom,and his other choices include part of Bach's Goldberg Variations, an excerpt from Copland's ballet Appalachian Spring, a Schubert piano sonata, Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto, and Procol Harum's A Whiter Shade of Pale.
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09-Jul-2012
Private Passions - 08/07/2012
Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions this week is the best-selling children's author Judith Kerr. Now 89, Judith was born into a distinguished pre-war German Jewish intellectual family: her father, Alfred Kerr, was a well-known journalist and critic, and her mother, Julia, a composer. The family fled from Berlin in 1933 after Hitler's rise to power, and lived in Switzerland and Paris before reaching London in 1936. In the 1950s Judith met and married Nigel Kneale, author of the famous BBC TV science fiction series Quatermass. Their son Matthew Kneale has followed in his parents' footsteps, becoming an acclaimed novelist, while their daughter Tacy is an artist. Judith is both a writer and an illustrator, best known for her children's books, including the much-loved Mog series (about a cat), 'The Tiger Who Came for Tea', which is currently enjoying a stage adapation in London's West End, and the novel for young adults 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit', which is based on her own experiences as a child refugee, and won the 1974 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis. Judith's musical choices include a fragment of an opera about Einstein written by her parents; an excerpt from the final scene of Mozart's opera 'Don Giovanni'; the Jewish Memorial Prayer 'El Malei Rachamim' performed at the 2001 International Holocaust Memorial Day in London; Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, which was a favourite of her father, and was played at his funeral; part of 'Mars' from Holst's 'The Planets', which served as the theme music for Quatermass; The Dance of the Knights from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, which was a favourite of her husband's, and finally her own personal favourite, the Kyrie from Mozart's Mass in C minor, K427.
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02-Jul-2012
Private Passions - Brian Blessed
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the exuberant and much-loved actor Brian Blessed, who left school at 14, completed his National Service as a parachutist in the RAF, and went on to study acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School alongside Patrick Stewart. In the early 1960s he appeared as PC 'Fancy' Smith in the TV police drama 'Z-Cars', while his other TV roles include Caesar Augustus in 'I Claudius', Richard IV in 'The Black Adder' (1983) and Spiro in the BBC adaptation of Gerald Durrell's 'My Family and Other Animals'. He played Prince Vultan in 'Flash Gordon', starred as Old Deuteronomy in Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical 'Cats', has tackled a number of Shakespearean roles on stage and screen, including four of the five Shakespeare films directed by Kenneth Branagh, has appeared in many pantomimes, notably as Captain Hook in 'Peter Pan', guested hosted an episode of 'Have I Got News for You', and has starred as Henry VIII in a series of online videos for the BBC Comedy website. His distinctive voice may now be heard as an option on the TomTom satnav system. Brian Blessed is an active mountaineer, and has attempted Everest three times.. He has trekked on foot to the North Pole and has explored the jungles of Venezuela, as well as training as a cosmonaut. He has written five books, including 'Quest to the Lost World', a subject which fascinates him, and his autobiography, 'Dynamite Kid'. His musical choices include the fourth movement of Walton's First Symphony, the 'Lever du jour' sequence from Ravel's ballet 'Daphnis et Chloe', which evokes for him Conan Doyle's Lost World, an extract from Janacek's Sinfonietta, the end of Wagner's Gotterdammerung, 'Neptune, the Mystic' from Holst's Planets Suite, and the finale of Sibelius's Second Symphony.
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25-Jun-2012
Private Passions - DR Thorpe
Michael Berkeley's guest is the the historian and political biographer D R Thorpe, whose biographies include three British Prime Ministers of the mid-20th century - Sir Anthony Eden, Sir Alec Douglas-Hume, and Harold Macmillan. 'Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan', published in 2010, has been described as 'the best biography of a post-war British Prime Minister yet written', and was shortlisted for the Orwell Political Prize. Richard Thorpe taught history at Charterhouse for over 30 years, and is a Fellow of St Antony's College and Brasenose College, Oxford. His musical choices begin with 'Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul' from Elgar's 'Dream of Gerontius', which reminds him of the great Huddersfield choral tradition in the area where he grew up. English music is one of his great passions, represented here by the final movement of Vaughan Williams' 'A Sea Symphony', and the opening of George Butterworth's rhapsody 'A Shropshire Lad', a piece of great poignancy, given that Butterworth was killed on the Western Front just after his 31st birthday. The three composers who mean most to Richard Thorpe are Richard Strauss, Wagner and Britten, and he has chosen excerpts from Strauss's Elektra and Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, as well as 'Depart' from Britten's early song-cycle 'Les Illuminations', based on poems by Rimbaud. His final choice is the close of Sibelius' Seventh Symphony, the end of another great 20th-century symphonic cycle.
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18-Jun-2012
Private Passions - David Phillips
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is one of the UK's most distinguished chemists. Professor David Phillips is currently President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and is the author of nearly 600 books and papers in the field of photochemistry and laser research. After obtaining a PhD at the University of Birmingham, he undertook postdoctoral studies in the USA and Moscow, befopre joining the University of Southampton as a Lecturer in Physical Chemistry. He then became Wolfson Professor of Natural Philosophy at The Royal Institution, before moving on in 1989 to become Professor of Physical Chemistry at Imperial College, London, where he fulfilled several senior positions including Hofmann Professor of Chemistry 1999-2006, and Senior Dean. He is currently Senior Science Ambassador, Schools, Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Investigator. He has made frequent radio and TV broadcasts on aspects of science, and has received many international awards. In January 2012 he was awarded the CBE for his services to chemistry. His music choices share a generally upbeat and optimistic character. They include an aria from Handel's Ariodante, the last movement of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto played by Emil Gilels, and the scherzo from Dvorak's Piano Quintet, Op.81; the closing moments of Mozart's opera 'The Marriage of Figaro', and the end of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, as well as the opening movement of Bach's Double Concerto for two violins, played by David and Igor Oistrakh.
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11-Jun-2012
Private Passions - Celia Imrie
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is one of the most successful British actresses of recent decades. Celia Imrie has enjoyed frequent collaborations with Victoria Wood from the 1970s onwards, appearing as Miss Babs in the spoof TV soap 'Acorn Antiques', and as Philippa Moorcroft in 'Dinnerladies'. Other major TV roles include Diana Neal in After You've Gone, and Gloria Millington in Kingdom. Her film credits include Nanny McPhee, Hilary and Jackie (in which she played Iris du Pre), Calendar Girls, Bridget Jones' Diary, the 2007 remake of St Trinian's, in which she played the Matron, and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel . She is also a highly successful stage actress, and is currently appearing in Michael Frayn's Noises Off in London's West End, for which she was nominated for an Olivier Award. Celia Imrie learnt to play the piano as a child, and her musical private passions begin with Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto, played by Leonard Bernstein. She has also chosen one of Josef Suk's Love Songs for piano, written for his wife, Dvorak's daughter Ottilie. Celia Imrie's mother was a violinist, and her choices include the finale of Brahms's Violin Concerto played by NIgel Kennedy. A great opera-lover, she has selected arias from Charpentier's opera Louise, sung by Montserrat Caballe, and Puccini's Tosca, sung by Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi, which she loves for its dramatic intensity. Celia wanted to be a dancer, and finds it hard to sit still while listening to the waltz from Act I of Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella. Her final choice is Shirley Bassey singing 'Diamonds Are Forever'.
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04-Jun-2012
Private Passions - Carol Ann Duffy
On the Queen's Diamond Jubilee weekend, Michael Berkeley welcomes the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, as his Private Passions guest. The first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly gay person to hold the post, she was appointed in 2009, having won many awards for her poetry collections since taking first prize in the National Poetry Competition in 1983. Most recently, 'Rapture' (2005) won the TS Eliot Prize, and her latest collection, 'The Bees', won the 2011 Costa Book Award for Poetry. Born into a Roman Catholic family in the Gorbals, a poor area of Glasgow, Carol Ann developed a passionate love of literature at school, and for a decade from the age of 16 she lived with the Liverpool poet Adrian Henri. She had two plays performed at the Liverpool Playhouse and received an honours degree in phoilosophy from the University of Liverpool. In 1996 she was appointed a lecturer in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University and later became creative director of its Writing School. She was appointed Poet Laureate in 2009, having missed out to Andrew Motion a decade earlier. Her work as laureate includes poems on the MPs' expenses scandal, the deaths of the last British servicemen who fought in World War I, David Beckham's tendon injury, and the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Her poems, which explore everyday experience and a rich fantasy life, are on the school curriculum in the UK. A keen music-lover, Carol Ann Duffy learnt the piano as a child. Her choices include Chopin's E major Etude Op.10 No.3, which her mother loved to hear her playing; extracts from Mozart's 'Marriage of Figaro' and 'The Magic Flute', and Humperdinck's fantasy opera 'Hansel and Gretel'; Christy Moore singing a song with words by W B Yeats, and music by Bach and Schubert.
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28-May-2012
Private Passions - Matthew Fort
Michael Berkeley welcomes the food writer and critic Matthew Fort, who for over 20 years was the Food & Drink Editor of The Guardian. A keen cook for most of his life, he has also written for Vanity Fair, the Observer, the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Telegraph and Country Living, among many other papers and journals. His books include Rhubarb and Black Pudding (1998), about the traditional foods of Lancashire; Eating Up Italy: Voyages on a Vespa (2004), and its sequel about Sicilian food, Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons (2008). he has also contributed to Nigel Slater's book and TV series Real Food, and to Rick Stein's TV series Food Heroes. Matthew is a passionate music-lover, and his choices begin with Schubert's Marche Militaire No.1 for piano duet, the first record he owned. The virtuoso piano music of the eccentric composer Alkan is another of his enthusiasms, as is the playing of the great Romanian pianist Dinu Lipatti, who died so tragically young. His love of the English countryside is represented by Finzi's Romance for string orchestra, Op.11, while he has always loved opera, especially the works of Verdi, and La Traviata in particular. His final choice is a chamber sonata by Rossini, who was a great gastronome as well as a fine composer.
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21-May-2012
Private Passions - Tessa Hadley
Michael Berkeley welcomes Tessa Hadley, the author of four highly-praised novels - Accidents in the Home (2002), Everything Will Be All Right (2003), The Master Bedroom (2007) and 'The London Train (2011). She has stories regularly published in Granta, The Guardian and The New Yorker, and has published two volumes of short stories, of which the most recent is Married Love. She has written a book on Henry James, and teaches Creative Writing to MA students at Bath Spa University. A passionate music lover, Tessa Hadley's choices include the sensuous final duet from Monteverdi's opera The Coronation of Poppea, the gorgeous slow movement of Schubert's Piano Trio No.2, the trio from Act I of Don Giovanni, a movement of Beethoven's String Quartet Op.,130, three Romanian Folk Dances by Bartok, a song by Bob Dylan, and a jazz number played by her father Geoff Nichols' jazz band.
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14-May-2012
Private Passions - Craig Revel Horwood
Michael Berkeley welcomes the Australian-born choreographer and director Craig Revel Horwood, whose acidly witty comments as a judge have enlivened many series of 'Strictly Come Dancing'. Craig has now put himself under the spotlight as a contestant on the current series of the BBC's celebrity conducting competition 'Maestro at the Opera', hoping to reach the final and get the chance to test his skills with the baton in the opera pit. Craig began his career in Australia as a dancer, before arriving in Europe, where he worked as a dancer and singer in musicals. He appeared in the West End productions of 'Cats' and 'Miss Saigon', and was Dance Captain in 'Crazy for You'. He has been responsible for the direction and choreography of many hit shows, including 'Chess', 'Copacabana' and 'Sunset Boulevard', and has also worked in opera, including 'La Traviata', 'Carmen' and 'Il Trovatore'. His private musical passions, as revealed to Michael Berkeley, include extracts from Don Giovanni, La Boheme and La Traviata, as well as songs by Adele and Eva Cassidy, a tango by Astor Piazzolla, and an extract from Sunset Boulevard.
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07-May-2012
Private Passions - Paddy Ashdown
Michael Berkeley welcomes the politician and diplomat Paddy Ashdown, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats. who now sits in the House of Lords as Baron Ashdown. Born in India into a military family, he began his career as a Royal Marine and then as a MI6 intelligence officer. working under cover as a diplomat in Geneva. He joined the Liberal Party in 1975, and won a parliamentary seat in 1983, as the Liberal candidate for Yeovil. Shortly after entering the House of Commons he became SDP-Liberal Alliance spokeman on Trade and Industry, and then for Education. In 1988 he was elected leader of the new Liberal Democratic Party, which he led into two general elections in 1992 and 1997. He stood down in August 1999, was knighted a year later, and became a life peer after retiring from the Commons in 2001. From 2002 to 2006 he was High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina, having been a staunch advocate of international intervention there during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. He testified for the prosecution at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal. A keen music-lover, Paddy Ashdown discusses his choice of Beethoven's String Quartet Op.127, which he says epitomizes the dignity and nobility of the human spirit; Elgar's Sea Pictures, which he found inspiring when on active service; one of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs, which moves him to tears; an extract from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, which he thinks the greatest piece of music ever written; a Northern Irish folk song, which reminds him of his Irish upbringing; an extract from Act II of Puccini's Tosca, which he says is an anthem for liberation, and a poignant Balkan folksong, which is in the bloodstream of his life.
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30-Apr-2012
Private Passions - Margaret Mountford
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is Margaret Mountford, the former corporate lawyer who rose to TV stardom as one of Lord Sugar's team of expert advisers on The Apprentice. Born in Northern Ireland, she had many years of corporate experience as a partner in a law firm, and has been a non-executive director of Amstrad plc since 1999. She appeared on five series of The Apprentice between 2005 and 2009, and has appeared on recent series at the interview stage. She left the show to study for a PhD in papyrology at University College, London. Her musical tastes are orientated towards piano music and opera. Her choices begin with a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody played by pianist Shura Cherkassky, and continue with Jorge Bolet playing Liszt's transcription of Schubert's song The Trout, followed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert's Wandrers Nachtlied II. Margaret Mountford's next choice is a piano piece by Alkan, which she finds strangely haunting, while her favourite moment from Wagner's Ring cycle comes in Act II of Die Walkure when Brunnhilde announces to Siegmund that he must die in battle. A Chopin nocturne played by Vlado Perlemuter precedes the Song to the Evening Star from Wagner's opera Tannhauser, and Margaret Mountford's final choice is the famous drinking song from Act One of Verdi's La traviata, thrillingly sung by two of her favourite singers, Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti.
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23-Apr-2012
Private Passions - Steven Berkoff
Michael Berkeley welcomes the actor, playwright and director Steven Berkoff, renowned for the visceral quality of his plays such as East, West, Decadence, Greek, Sink the Belgrano, Scumbags, Ritual in Blood and Messiah.He has also adapted and directed for the stage Kafka's Metamorphosis and The Trial, the Greek tragedy Agamemnon, and Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. His plays, adaptations and his one-man show have toured widely abroad, from the Far East to the USA. As an actor, Steven has appeared in films ranging from A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Octopussy and Beverly Hills Cop to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. On TV he has been seen in The Professionals, Star Trek and Jonathan Creek, among others. He has published a variety of books on the theatre, and an autobiography, Free Association. His eclectic musical choices range from music for the stage - Milhaud's ballet 'La Creation du monde' Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Britten's opera 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', and incidental music to Brecht's 'Mother Courage' - to music that reflects his love of travel - Buddhist chant and an unusual Monkey Dance from Bali. There's also Ivo Pogorelich pl;aying the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.32 in C minor, Op.111, and Chet Baker with the Rogers and Hart classic 'My Funny Valentine'.
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16-Apr-2012
Private Passions - Keith Grant
Michael Berkeley welcomes the artist Keith Grant, one of the finest living landscape painters. Born in Liverpool, he studied at the Royal College of Art, where he came under the influence of neo-romantic painters such as Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland. He developed a particular enthusiasm for the landscape of the North, visiting Scotland, Iceland, and Norway, where he now lives with his Norwegian wife and their daughter. In the 1980s and 90s he also travelled widely, to French Guiana, Cameroon, Israel and Venezuela, as well as Arctic Greenland. His work exhibits resonant images of nature from the Northern Lights to the waterfalls of Sourth America. But it is in the austere beauty of the North, he says, that 'I sense the value of my life'. His luminous paintings, which are represented in many public collections, combine both abstract and figurative concerns, expressed through the imagery of night skies, icebergs, mountains, birch trees, the sea and the distant horizon. Keith Grant has chosen a variety of music to complement his artistic vision, ranging from the opening of Wagner's Das Rheingold, though works by Nordheim, Sibelius, John McLeod and Rautavaara, to more familiar musical landscapes by Vaughan Williams (The Lark Ascending and On Wenlock Edge), as well as Britten's Elegy from the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings.
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09-Apr-2012
Private Passions - Caroline Quentin
Michael Berkeley's Easter guest is actor Caroline Quentin, who has starred in many TV series from Men Behaving Badly, for which she won the 1995 Best Comedy Actress Award for her role as the put-upon Dorothy, to Jonathan Creek, Kiss Me Kate, Blue Murder and Life Begins (for which she received the 2004 British Comedy Actress Award). She has recently been seen in the third series of BBC1's Life of Riley. She has also starred in a number of one-off dramas, including Von Trapped, Goodbye Mr Steadman, Hot Money, Blood Strangers and Miss Marple-The Mirror Cracked, as well as the Just William series, in which she played Mrs Bott. She also appears regularly on stage, including, most recently, in Pippin at the Menier Chocolate Factory. Other stage roles have included Masha in The Seagull, Jenny in Arnold Wesker's Roots at the National Theatre, Dabby Bryant in Our Country's Good, and the lead in the West End comedy An Evening with Gary Lineker. Caroline studied ballet as a child, and remembers dancing to Chopin's Prelude No.7 In A, played by her mother, a talented pianist. Her other private musical passions inclde Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, which helped her through an emotional low point in her life; the overture to Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, which she thinks is one of the most thrilling pieces of music ever written; one of Canteloube's sensuous Songs of the Auvergne; an extract from Britten's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream, which she saw at Glyndebourne; and a Spanish Dance by Granados, arranged for classical guitar by Segovia., which reminds her of peaceful summer evenings in the country surrounded by her family.
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19-Mar-2012
Private Passions - Paul Scharner
Michael Berkeley's guest for the Sport Relief appeal this week is the Austrian footballer Paul Scharner, who currently plays in the Premier League for West Bromwich Albion. he started his career playing for Viennese and Salzburg clubs, before joining Norwegian club SK Brann in 2004. In December 2005 he signed to Wigan Athletic, scoring the winning goal in the Carling Cup against Arsenal in his first match. Over the next five years he played every outfield position for Wigan except left back. In August 2010 he joined West Brom, where he has found his best form playing in his favoured role of central midfield. His musical choices for Private Passions reflect his Austrian background, and feature works by Mozart, Beethoven and the Strauss family, as well as pieces by Grieg and Vivaldi.
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12-Mar-2012
Private Passions - Trevor Peacock
Michael Berkeley welcomes the distinguished stage and TV actor Trevor Peacock, whose most famous TV role is Jim Trott in The Vicar of Dibley. He has appeared in many other TV programmes, from Madame Bovary and The Old Curiosity Shop to EastEnders, Jonathan Creek, Hotel Babylon and Last of the Summer Wine; and has had starring roles in BBC Shakespeare adaptations, including the title-role in Titus Andronicus and Feste in Twelfth Night. During his long stage career he has been particularly asociated with the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester. A noted songwriter, he wrote the 1960s pop classic 'Mrs Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter', as well as other hits. His private musical tastes are wide-ranging, from English classics such as Walton's Belshazzar's Feast and Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis to Dvorak's Symphony No.8, Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin and Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony, as well as music by Gershwin and Ernest Tomlinson.
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27-Feb-2012
Private Passions - Tacita Dean
Michael Berkeley's guest today is the visual artist Tacita Dean, one of the Young British Artists, who is best-known for her work in 16mm film, although she also uses a variety of media including drawing, photography, and sound. Her large-scale installation, Film, is currently on show in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Born in Canterbury, she studied at Falmouth School of Art and the Slade. In 1995 she was included in General Release: Young British Artists held at the Venice Biennale, and has been associated with the group thereafter known as Young British Artists, who also include the Chapman brothers, Sam Taylor-Wood, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Douglas Gordon. She works predominantly in 16mm tape, and in 2001 she was given a solo show at Tate Britain. The previous year, she was awarded a scholarship to Berlin, where she now lives. In 2006 the most comprehensive retrospective of her work to date, Analogue, was shown at Basel, and in 2009 she had her first major solo show in Italy, Still Life. She was nominated for the 1998 Turner Prize, following her 1996 film Disappearance at Sea. Her current Tate Modern installation, Film, is an elegy for a fast-disappearing medium.
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20-Feb-2012
Private Passions - Stephen Evans
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is film producer Stephen Evans. His 14 feature films have received 11 Academy Award nominations, including two wins. In 1989 he and Kennth Branagh founded Renaissance Films, making Henry V, Peter's Friends and Much Ado About Nothing. He then set up Mad George Films with Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner for 'The Madness of King George', which won a BAFTA in 1996. He went on to produce Twelfth Night, The Wings of the Dove, and The Luzhin Defence, and executive produced Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, directed by George Clooney, and The Mother, starring Daniel Craig. His latest film is 'First Night', starring Richard E Grant and Sarah Brightman, a romantic comedy based on Mozart's 'Cosi fan tutte'. Music has always been important to Stephen Evans, and his choices include Alfred Brendel playing the scherzo from Schubert's Piano Sonata in B flat, D960; the exquisite trio 'Soave sia il vento' from Act I of 'Cosi fan tutte;', which plays a major role in 'First Night', part of Mahler's Sixth Symphony, which he loves for its twists and surprises, excerpts from Verdi's Macbeth, which he feels greatly enhances Shakespeare's play, and from Patrick Doyle's film score for Kenneth Branagh's Henry V; the Agnus dei from Rossini's 'Petite messe solennelle', which he finds very quirky, and Bob Dylan singing 'She Belongs to Me'.
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13-Feb-2012
Private Passions - Raymond Tallis
Michael Berkeley's guest today is one of the most remarkable men of our time. Dr Raymond Tallis has recently been acclaimed as one of the world's leading polymaths. He trained as a doctor and went on to become Professor of Geratric Medicine at the University of Manchester and a consultant physician in the Care of the Elderly at Salford. In 2006 he retired from medicine to become a full-time writer. Over the past 20 years he has published fiction, poetry, and 23 books on the philosophy of the mind, philosophical anthropology, literary theory, the nature of art, and cultural criticism, offering a critique of current predominant intellectual trends and an alternative understanding of human consciousness. His most recent books are 'The Kingdom of Infinite Space', reflecting on the mystery of embodiment, 'Hunger', exploring the basic drives behind humanity, and 'Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity', a critique which exposes the exaggerated claims made forr the ability of neuroscience and evolutionary theory to explain human behaviour, culture and society. Music is deeply important to Raymond Tallis. He has chosen the last movement of Beethoven's Quartet Op.135, which asks the existential question 'Must it be?', to which he thinks we may find an answer in the Beatles' classic 'Let it Be'. Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder explore the celebration of death and sex, while Tallis's great motet 'Spem in alium' creates an awesome wall of sound. FInally,the opening aria of Bach's cantata BWV 82 (Es ist genug) is related to Raymond Tallis's own views on assisted dying when an individual feels that 'it is enough'.
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06-Feb-2012
Private Passions - Lucy Worsley
Michael Berkeley welcomes the lively TV historian and Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces Lucy Worsley. Her popular TV series 'If Walls Could Talk: A History of the Home' found her peering into the forgotten domestic corners of history, finding out how people in past centuries really lived - how they slept, ate, cooked, bathed and disposed of their waste - by recreating the experience. She has also presented 'Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency' for BBC4. Lucy takes an equally practical, no-nonsense approach to music, and unusually, her choices for 'Private Passions' are nearly all pieces she has played or sung herself. They range from piano works by Erik Satie, Mozart, Bach and Liszt, to Verdi's Requiem (in which she sang as a tenor!) ; Jerome Kern's 'Long ago', which she performed at a Society of Antiquaries' dinner when she took the injunction to 'sing for her supper' quite literally; and Joseph Winner's Little Brown Jug, in which she has played the tenor sax solo in a big band arrangement.
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30-Jan-2012
Private Passions - Jennifer Worth
Another chance to hear a programme recorded in 2008 with Jennifer Worth, who died last year. Her books based on her early life as a young midwife working among the poor of London's East End in the immediate postwar years became surprise best-sellers, and have just been adapted as a BBC1 TV series. Music was always an abiding passion for Jennifer, as she reveals to Michael Berkeley. M Berkeley: The Wakeful Poet (Music from Chaucer) (pub OUP) 00 25 Beaux-Arts Brass Quintet BBQ BBQ 003 T10 Verdi: Chi fai?...Amami Alfredo! (from La traviata, Act 2, scene 1) Maria Callas (Violetta), Giuseppe di Stefano (Alfredo), Orchestra of La Scala, Milan/Carlo Maria Giulini EMI CMS 763628-2 CD1 T22 02 32 Archangelsky: Lord, Hear my prayer Russian Metropolitan Church Choir, Paris/Nicholas Afonsky EP: HMV 7EG 8262 S2 B1 04 10 Edith Piaf: C'est merveilleux (Contet/Monnot) La vie parisienne PAST PERFECT PPCD 78149 T24 03 04 Dvorak: Sonatina in G, Op 100 (II. Larghetto) Anthony Marwood (violin), Susan Tomes (piano) Dvorak HYPERION CDA66934 T2 03 50 Howells: King David Janet Baker (mezzo soprano), Martin Isepp (piano) Janet Baker SAGA SCD 9012 T11 04 19 Chopin: Nocturne in C sharp minor, Op 27 No 1 Vladimir Horowitz (piano) Chopin RCA 09026 60986-2 T13 05 17 Hebridean folksong arr Marjory Kennedy-Fraser: Skye Fisher's Song Kenneth McKellar (tenor), orchestra conducted by Bob Sharples The Bens of Jura LP: DECCA SKL 4137 S2 B4 02 55 Traditional Paraguayan: Pajaro Campana (The Bell Bird) Bill Morgan and his Paraguayan Harp Bill Morgan and his Paraguayan Harp PARADISE STUDIOS 001 S2 T8 03 54 Bach: Prelude and Fugue in G (Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2) Angela Hewitt (piano) Bach HYPERION CDS44291/4 CD4 T5-6 03 53 Vivaldi: Gloria in excelsis Deo (from the Gloria) Choir of King's College, Cambridge, ASMF/Sir David Willcocks Vivaldi LP ARGO 240D S6 B1 02 51.
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16-Jan-2012
Private Passions - Christopher Reid
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the poet Christopher Reid. 'A Scattering', a moving series of elegiac poems for his late wife, the actress Lucinda Gane, who died of cancer in 2005, won the Costa Book of the Year - the first book of poetry to win since Seamus Heaney's 'Beowulf' in 1999. 'A Scattering' was also shortlisted for the 2009 Forward Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize, and at the same time, his long poem 'The Song of Lunch', about two former lovers meeting at an old Soho haunt, was made into a BBC film starring Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman. A fomer poetry editor at Faber & Faber (a position once occupied by T.S. Eliot), he is often described as co-founder with Craig Raine of the so-called 'Martian' school of poetry, which applies exotic and humorous metaphors to everyday situations. He runs his own independent publishing house, Ondt & Gracehoper, and is also an illustrator. His Collected Poems have just been published by Faber & Faber. Christopher Reid's musical tastes extend from a Bach partita for solo keyboard and Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata for violin and piano, both of which he loves for their improvisatory qualities, to a movement from Bartok's Fifth String Quartet, which appeals to him for his folk-based character. He has also chosen Maddy Prior singing a traditional folk song, a piece for bass viol by Tobias Hume, Berio's Agnus, and music by Louis Armstrong and Jerome Kern.
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09-Jan-2012
Private Passions - Tamara Rojo
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the Spanish-born dancer Tamara Rojo, who since 2000 has been principal ballerina with the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden. Internationally acclaimed for her outstanding technique, brilliant artistry and acting skills, she has danced a wide range of principal roles with leading ballet companies all over the world, and won the 2010 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production, for her collaboration with choreographer Kim Brandstrup in 'Goldberg:The Brandstrup-Rojo Project'. Other awards include Spain's two highest artistic honours and the Paris International Dance Competition's Gold Medal. The roles for which Tamara is best known include Coppelia, Odette/Odile (Swan Lake), Clara (Nutcracker), Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Giselle, Manon, Cinderella, Mary (Mayerling), and especially Juliet in Kenneth MacMillan's 'Romeo and Juliet' which she danced with Carlos Acosta in London's vast O2 arena last June, and which she is currently dancing at Covent Garden. Articulate and passionate in her advocacy of music, Tamara has chosen pieces by a wide variety of composers for her 'Private Passions', many of which relate to her dancing. She starts with the prologue to Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake', followed by the poignant closing section of Mahler's 'Song of the Earth', sung by Janet Baker. Her choices continue with a Russian version of 'Carmen', a section of Arvo Part's contemplative 'Spiegel im Spiegel', and one of Bach's Goldberg Variations, played by Murray Perahia. The first movement of Elgar's Cello Concerto, played by Jacqueline du Pre, is followed by traditional Spanish flamenco, reflecting Tamara Rojo's own roots.
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26-Dec-2011
Private Passions - Andrew Lloyd Webber
Today Michael Berkeley welcomes Andrew Lloyd Webber, the most successful composer working in musical theatre of our time. His stream of multi-award-winning shows includes 'Jesus Christ Superstar', 'Evita', 'Starlight Express', 'Cats', 'The Phantom of the Opera', 'Aspects of Love', 'Sunset Boulevard' and 'Love Never Dies', for which he has won many international prizes including an Oscar, a Golden Globe, 7 Tony awards, 3 Grammy awards, and 14 Ivor Novello awards. 'Cats', 'Starlight Express' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar' (which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year) are the three longest-running musical in British theatre history. The son of William Lloyd Webber, Director of the London College of Music, and a piano teacher, Andrew showed an early interest in music, but always wanted to write and play his own pieces. He had already written eight musicals before he met up with Tim Rice at the age of 17, creating one of the most remarkable artistic partnerships in music theatre history. He is also a producer of musicals and films, and pioneered TV casting for musical theatre with the Emmy-award-winning BBC series 'How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?', won by Connie Fisher, who then went on to star in Lloyd Webber's smash hit production of The Sound Of Music'. He repeated this successful format with 'Any Dream Will Do' for his own 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat', 'I'd Do Anything' for 'Oliver!' and 'Over the Rainbow' for his new production of 'The Wizard of Oz' which opened at the London Palladium last March. He currently owns seven London theatres. His best-known composition outside musical theatre is the Requiem.
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12-Dec-2011
Private Passions - Dan Stevens
Michael Berkeley 's guest is actor Dan Stevens, one of the rising young stars of stage and screen. He plays Matthew Crawley in the ITV hit series 'Downton Abbey', which returns shortly with a Christmas Special. Before Downton, Dan played the lead role of Nick Guest in the BBC's adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winning novel 'The Line of Beauty', and appeared as Edward Ferrars in Andrew Davies' BBC adaptation of 'Sense and Sensibility'. He has also appeared in other TV dramas, including 'Turn of the Screw', 'Dracula' and 'Maxwell'. He has a leading role in a forthcoming US movie 'Vamps', alongside Sigourney Weaver, Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter. On stage he has appeared in several Peter Hall productions, including 'Hay Fever', 'Much Ado about Nothing' and 'As You Like It'; starred as Septimus Hodge in Tom Stoppard's 'Arcadia', and appeared in Samuel West's production of 'The Romans in Britain'. He is also a highly acclaimed narrator of audiobooks, and is often heard on BBC Radio 4. Dan Stevens is a fan of early music, and his choices include Byrd's Mass for 4 voices, sung by the Oxford Camerata and Allegri's Miserere. He has chosen extracts from two famous requiem masses, by Mozart and Faure, that he sang in the choir at Tonbridge School, while the slow movement of Bach's Double Violin Concerto, played by Daniel Hope, was a piece played at his wedding. Film music has had a particular influence on him, and he has chosen the Sanctus of the Missa Luba, from the soundtrack of 'If', and Philip Glass's Koyaanisqatsi, which he first heard while studying at Cambridge University. A piece by his university composer friend John Boden and Chet Baker's jazz classic 'I'm Old Fashioned' complete his list.
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05-Dec-2011
Private Passions - Henry Sandon
Michael Berkeley travels to the Worcester Porcelain Museum to meet the local celebrity, expert on English porcelain and music-lover Henry Sandon, known to millions of TV viewers for his many appearances as one of the ceramics experts on BBC1's Antiques Road Show. The programme is being recorded in front of an invited audience, among the Museum's exquisite collection of Worcester porcelain,which Henry himself curated for many years. Music is an abiding passion for Henry, who comes from a musical family stretching back to the 18th century. He himself studied at the Guildhall School of Music, and after graduation was appointed a lay-clerk at Worcester Cathedral. He began his career as a music-master at the city's Royal Grammar School before becoming curator of the Porcelain Museum. For the past 40 years he has appeared as an expert on TV series such as 'Going for a Song' and 'Antiques Roadshow' , as well as writing books on his specialities. He has also presented 'Songs of Praise'. Choral music is a particular passion fof Henry Sandon, and his choices include a motet by Thomas Tomkins, who was organist of Worcester Cathedral in the early 17th century. There's also vocal music by Purcell, Elgar, Britten and Lennox Berkeley; a movement from one of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, and part of an early wind quintet by another local celebrity, Edward Elgar. Finally Henry indulges his lighter side with music from Bernstein's 'West Side Story', and a song by Noel Coward.
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21-Nov-2011
Private Passions - Joey DeFrancesco
Michael Berkeley's guest today is the American virtuoso jazz organist, trumpeter and singer Joey DeFrancesco, who is in London for the annual Jazz Festival. Born into a family of jazz musicians, Joey began playing the piano aged four before switching to the Hammond organ. By the age of 10 he was playing his own gigs, and at 17 was invited by Miles Davis to join his band, with which he toured Europe. In the 1990s he worked with John McLaughlin's trio, and has partnered many other famous jazz musicians. He has been described as 'one of the most unfussily virtuosic torch-bearers of contemporary organ jazz'. Today he talks to Michael Berkeley about a range of music, from jazz classics by Jimmy Smith, John Coltrane, Frank Sinatra and Miles Davis, to piano music by Bach, Debussy and Chopin, and a Beethoven symphony.
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14-Nov-2011
Private Passions - Garry Fabian Miller
Michael Berkeley's guest is the artist Garry Fabian Miller, whose work uses early photographic techniques to experiment with the nature and possibilities of light as both medium and subject. Since 1992 he has explored a more abstract form of picture-making by passing light through coloured glass and liquid and cut paper forms, using very long exposure. These unusual methods - a form of camera-less photography - create luminous realities that shift from pure abstraction to imaginary landscapes, and the results are usually presented as a series of images. Garry Fabian Miller has exhibited widely throughout the world. In the UK, his work has been seen at the V & A Museum in London, Tate Liverpool, Newlyn, Edinburgh and Lincoln, among other venues. He is a regular exhibitor at the HackelBury Gallery in London, where his current exhibition, 'That I Might See', runs until mid-December. The themes of light and darkness also permeate his musical choices, which range from a piece by the medieval composer Perotin, through Tudor vocal music by Byrd and Dowland to traditional music sung by June Tabor and Anne Briggs. There's also the Sarabande from Bach's English Suite No.2 in A minor, BWV 807, a songs by Edvard Grieg, sung by Anne Sofie von Otter, and Antony & The Johnsons with 'Hope there's Someone'.
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07-Nov-2011
Private Passions - Anoushka Shankar
Michael Berkeley's guest today is the sitar player and composer Anoushka Shankar, one of the stars of world music today. She studied exclusively with her father, the great Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar, made her debut at age 13 in New Delhi, and released her first solo recording in 1998. In 2001 her third album, Live at Carnegie Hall, was nominated for a Grammy award. In 2002 she appeared at the Royal Albert Hall in a tribute concert to the late George Harrison, conducting a new piece by her father which featured Eric Clapton on solo guitar. Until 2005 she was primarily a solo performer of Indian classical music, but in that year she branched out with her fourth album, Rise, a fusion of East and West employing both acoustic and electric instrumentation, on which she appeared as composer, arranger and producer. It won her another Grammy nomination. She toured extensively in the wake of the new album, forming the Anoushka Shankar Project to present her new non-classical ensemble works to a live audience, and in 2007 released another album, Breathing Under Water, in collaboration with the Indian-American producer Karsh Kale It features guest appearances by her father and her half-sister, Norah Jones. She now applies her expertise as a fine Indian classical musician to working with top-quality musicians from a range of traditions to create innovative music that appeals to a wide audience. She has just released her next album, Traveller. Her eclectic choices for Private Passions include piano pieces by Debussy and Erik Satie; the Andantino from Faure's Piano Trio, Op.120; a piece by Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate, a collaboration which she particularly admires; a raga played by her father; a flamenco piece, and Nick Cave's song 'Into My Arms'.
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31-Oct-2011
Private Passions - Trevor Phillips
Michael Berkeley's guest today is Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Born in London, Trevor went to school in Guyana, where his family comes from, and studied chemistry at Imperial College, London. In 1978 he was elected president of the National Union of Students. He was elected a member of the Greater London Authority in 2000, quickly becoming chair of its Assembly. In March 2003 he became Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, and subsequently of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission, which in addition to its responsibilities in the areas of disability, gender and race, also examines age, religion, belief, sexual orientation and the promotion of human rights. He has been the executive producer of several major TV documentaries, including the award-winning 'Windrush'. He is a vice-president of the Royal Television Society, and was awarded an OBE in 1999 for services to broadcasting. His music choices begin with a movement of Haydn's Trumpet Concerto, played by Wynton Marsalis, whom he describes as 'arguably the greatest instrumentalist of his generation on any instrument'. He continues with Janet Baker - his favourite female singer - in an aria from Handel's 'Julius Caesar', followed by a traditional English song sung by the Unthanks. Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis comes next, followed by a piece that reminds Trevor Phillips of the six years he spent playing in a Salvation Army band. A Guyanese folk song is followed by Arvo Part's 'Fratres', which he loves for its spare, contemplative quality. Finally there's Tom Lehrer's 'The Elements', which partly explains why he decided not to follow a career in chemistry.
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17-Oct-2011
Private Passions - Lucinda Lambton
Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions this week is the photographer, writer and broadcaster on architectural subjects, Lucinda Lambton. Her enthusiasms range from the history of the lavatory to architecture for animals, vanishing Victoriana, and The Great North Road. She has researched, written presented some 55 films for the BBC and 25 for ITV, including Lucinda Lambton's A-Z of Britain, a 26-part BBC TV series, and Sublime Suburbia, a series of four films for ITV about the architectural and historic delights of London's suburbs. She gives talks throughout the British Isles and the USA, including for the National Trust, is a regular contributor to prominent newspapers and magazines, and has made several series on architecture for Radio 4. her musical passions range from a Bach Brandenburg Concerto to Mozart's charming piano variations on the nursery rhyme 'Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman' (better known in the UK as 'Twinkle, twinkle little star'), Weber's overture to 'Oberon', Joan Sutherland singing the famous Doll's Song from Act 1 of Offenbach's opera 'The Tales of Hoffmann', Yehudi Menuhin playing the astonishingly virtuosic last movement of Paganini's Violin Concerto No.1, music by a Cajun band from Louisiana, and two more well-known pieces from America, a country that Lucinda Lambton particularly loves.
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10-Oct-2011
Private Passions - Margaret Mountford
Michael Berkeley's guest this week in Margaret Mountford, the former corporate lawyer who rose to TV stardom as one of Lord Sugar's team of expert advisers on 'The Apprentice'. Born in Northern Ireland, she had many years of corporate experience as a partner in a law firm, and has been a non-executive director of Amstrad plc since 1999. She appeared on five series of 'The Apprentice' between 2005 and 2009, and has appeared on recent series at the interview stage. She left the show to study for a PhD in papyrology at University College, London. Her musical tastes are orientated towards piano music and opera. Her choices begin with a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody played by pianist Shura Cherkassky, and continue with Jorge Bolet playing Liszt's transcription of Schubert's song 'The Trout', followed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert's 'Wandrers Nachtlied II'. Margaret Mountford's next choice is a piano piece by Alkan, which she finds strangely haunting, while her favourite moment from Wagner's Ring cycle comes in Act II of 'Die Walkure' when Brunnhilde announces to Siegmund that he must die in battle. A Chopin nocturne played by Vlado Perlemuter precedes the Song to the Evening Star from Wagner's opera 'Tannhauser', and Margaret Mountford's final choice is the famous drinking song from Act One of Verdi's 'La traviata', thrillingly sung by two of her favourite singers, Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti.
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03-Oct-2011
Private Passions - Michael Grandage
Michael Berkeley talks to award-winning theatre director Michael Grandage, who succeeded Sam Mendes as director of the Donmar Warehouse in London in 2002. He also concurrently worked at the Sheffield Theatres until 2005, where his work included a number of high-profile new productions of his own as well as showcasing the work of innovative young directors and designers. He has given the Donmar an international profile, and has himself produced six plays a year there during his tenure, as part of a repertoire that includes a mixture of new plays, musicals such as 'Merrily we Roll Along', 'Guys and Dolls', 'Grand Hotel' and 'Evita', 20th-century American and British drama, and Euopean work in new versions. Three of his own productions transferred to Broadway, including 'Frost/Nixon', 'Hamlet', starring Jude Law, and John Logan's 'Red'. In 2010 he made his Glyndebourne debut as an opera director with a new production of 'Billy Budd', and this year has directed 'Don Giovanni' at the New York Met. He will step down as director of the Donmar at the end of this year to develop other areas of his work. His musical choices begin with part of a Palestrina Mass, and include the rondo from Mozart's Horn Concerto No,.3 played by Dennis Brain; Malcolm Arnold's Concerto for 2 pianos and orchestra, and the fourth movement of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony as well as a duet from the original National Theatre cast recording of 'Guys and Dolls', incidental music to 'The Tempest' by Julian Philips, and part of Britten's opera 'Billy Budd'.
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26-Sep-2011
Private Passions - Simon Mawer
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the novelist Simon Mawer, whose most recent novel, 'The Glass Room, was shortlisted for the 2009 Booker Prize. Born into a military family, he spent part of his childhood moving around the Mediterranean, and has lived in Italy for three decades. He began his career as a biology teacher before turning to full-time writing, and two of his books, including the 1997 novel 'Mendel's Dwarf', reveal an intense interest in genetics. 'The Gospel of Judas' has a Middle Eastern setting; 'Swimming to Ithaca' (2006) was inspired by his childhood experiences in Cyprus during the EOKA period, and 'The Fall' (2003) sprang from his own experiences as a rock climber. 'The Glass Room', inspired by an iconic 1920s house, returns to the central European setting of Brno, where Mendel also did his ground-breaking research. Simon Mawer's music choices begin with a piece by Hildegard of Bingen, an exemplar of medieval faith expressed through music. They continue with an extract from Mozart's Mass in C minor, K427, which represents faith turned into art suitable for the concert hall. Beethoven's Piano Sonata in C minor, Op.111 is for Simon Mawer the most remarkable piece of abstract art, while George Antheil's Ballet mecanique stands for one of the most significant artistic movements of the 20th century - Dadaism. His remaining choices are connected with place - works by Janacek and Vitezslava Kapralova, the young Czech female composer who died tragically young in 1940, remind him of Brno; Leo Ferre's song 'Paname' is about the 'real' Paris that the tourists don't see; while Duke Ellington's Mood Indigo, created in new Orleans, was transported to Paris by Sidney Bechet.
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19-Sep-2011
Private Passions - Aminatta Forna
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the Glasgow-born author Aminatta Forna, whose first book, 'The Devil that Danced on the Water' - a memoir of Sierra Leone where her dissident father was eventually arrested and executed by the regime - was runner-up for the 2003 Samuel Johnson Prize. Her next book, the novel 'Ancestor Stones', described by the Washington Post as 'a richly patterned mosaic of African culture and history', won several international awards; while her latest novel, 'The Memory of Love', set during the Sierra Leonean civil war of the 1990s, has been shortlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa). She is a trustee of the Royal Literary Fund, has published essays and articles, and writes for radio and TV. Several of her choices recall her childhood experiences of music: she tried to learn piano and has always loved Bach's keyboard music, which she listens to while writing. She went to school in Malvern, where she first encountered Elgar's Cello Concerto, which helped her write the love scene in 'The Memory of Love'; while an extract from Prokofiev's ballet 'Romeo and Juliet' recalls her early love of opera and ballet. Tchaikovsky's first Piano Concerto was also an early passion from her schooldays, while she became interested in the improvisatory nature of jazz during a year spent in the USA. While writing her first book she used to go to Westminster Abbey, particularly to hear church music, and Rodrigo Leao's 'Ave Mundi' marries her enthusiasm for sacred music and dance. Finally her African heritage is celebrated in the music of Ali Farka Toure.
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12-Sep-2011
Private Passions - Stella Tillyard
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the historian Stella Tillyard, who has just published her first novel, 'Tides of War', set in England and Spain during the Napoleonic Wars. Her PhD on 20th-century art criticism was published in 1987 as 'The Impact of Modernism', and she has taught English Literature and art history at Harvard and UCLA. 'Aristocrats', her biography of the 18th-century Lennox sisters, was published in 1994, won many awards, and was made into a TV series. Her subsequent books include a biography of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and 'A Royal Affair', about George III and his siblings. Stella Tillyard lives in London and Florence, and has taught at Queen Mary, University of London. Her musical passions reflect her interest in the contrast between light and darkness. They include the first movement of Schubert's Piano Trio in B flat, which she loves for its lyricism and structure as well as its emotional power; the Gigue from Bach's First Suite for solo cello, played by Pablo Casals; the famous aria 'Che faro senza Euridice' from Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice, which symbolizes the transition from darkness to light, as does the prisoners' chorus from Beethoven's opera 'Fidelio', a favourite of her father's; Weill's 'Alabama Song' from 'The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny' - she played trumpet in a production of this while she was a student at Oxford,, also in a performance of Bartok's Second Violin Concerto, under Hugh McDonald. There's also an old Yiddish ballad, and an extract from 'Gloria tibi Trinitas' by the contemporary composer John Hardy.
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05-Sep-2011
Private Passions - Edmund de Waal
Michael Berkeley's guest today is the potter and writer Edmund de Waal, internationally renowned for his beautiful porcelain vessels which are to be seen in museums and galleries all over the world, from London to Los Angeles, Korea and Frankfurt. The son of a dean of Canterbury Cathedral, he was educated at the King's School, Canterbury, where he was taught pottery by Geoffrey Whiting, a disciple of Bernard Leach. After leaving Cambridge, where he read English at Trinity Hall, he set up a pottery on the Welsh border, making inexpensive domestic pottery in Leach's Anglo-Oriental style, but later on began to interpret the Oriental tradition in a different way. Most of his work now consists of cylindrical pots with pale celadon glazes, and he specializes in installations involving groups of pots, such as 'Signs and Wonders' at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, part of their new Ceramic Galleries, and 'From Zero' seen last year at the Alan Cristea Gallery in London. De Waal is also a writer. His books include 'Twentieth Century Ceramics'; a monograph on Bernard Leach, and a prize-winning memoir, 'The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance', published in June 2010. Edmund de Waal has been passionate about music since childhood. Several of his choices - sacred music by Orlando Gibbons, J.S. Bach and Gesualdo - recall his formative years spent near a great cathedral. There's also music he works to, including Adams's 'Shaker Loops', Eno's 'This' and Moby's 'Porcelain', as well as Brendel playing a Mozart sonata and the Prologue and Pastoral from Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings.
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08-Aug-2011
Private Passions - Simon Hopkinson
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the former top chef, award-winning cookery writer and current presenter of the BBC1 TV series 'The Good Cook', Simon Hopkinson. Born in Bury, he was a chorister at St John's College, Cambridge, but left school at 17 to work in the kitchens of Le Normandie in Birtle, Lancashire, under Yves Champeau. In 1978 he became the youngest chef to acquire an Egon Ronay star with his restaurant The Shed in Dinas, Pembrokeshire. In 1983 he was installed as chef at Hilaire in London's Old Brompton Road, before working as chef and joint proprietor of Bibendum on the Fulham Road, winning plaudits for his philosophy of simple, well-judged cooking influenced by Richard Olney, Jane Grigson and Elizabeth David. In 1994 he published his first cookbook, 'Roast Chicken and Other Stories', which just over a decade later was voted 'Most Useful Cookbook of All Time' by Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine. From 1995 Simon Hopkinson has been a full-time cookery writer: his subsequent books have included 'The Prawn Cocktail Years', 'The Vegetarian Option', and 'Sweetbreads, Liver and Kidneys', as well as 'Week In, Week Out', a collection of stories based on his weekly food columns for The Independent. His love of music stems from his early choral training, and includes recordings of British choral music by the St John's College choir, as well as Delius's orchestral rhapsody 'On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring', Copland's 'Fanfare for the Common Man', French sacred organ music by Alain, and Messiaen's beautiful motet 'O sacrum convivium'.
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01-Aug-2011
Private Passions - Patrick Leigh Fermor
Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, travel writer and war hero, died in June at the age of 96. In 2005 he recorded an edition of Private Passions, in which he talked about the music he loved. This is another chance to hear that conversation with Michael Berkeley. Patrick Leigh Fermor was born in London in 1915, the son of a distinguished geologist. He was brought up in England after his parents left for India, and attended The Kings School, Canterbury, from which he was expelled for holding hands with a local greengrocer's daughter. At the age of 18 he set off to walk across Europe to Constantinople (now Istanbul), a journey which later inspired his two finest travel books, 'A Time of Gifts' (1977) and 'Between the Woods and the Water' (1986). After further travels in the Balkans, he fought in Crete and mainland Greece during World War II. His exploits with the Greek Resistance in Crete inspired his fellow-officer Captain Bill Stanley Moss's book 'Ill Met by Moonlight', later adapted as a film, with Dirk Bogarde playing Leigh Fermor. He published his first travel book in 1950, and became widely regarded as Britain's greatest living travel writer. He divided his time between his beloved Greece and Worcestershire, and was knighted in 2004. Patrick Leigh Fermor loved music of all kinds, from Greek folksongs to Irving Berlin. His eclectic selection for Private Passions includes an extract from Mozart's Don Giovanni and the finale of the Sinfonia concertante K364 for violin and viola; part of Schubert's 'Trout' Quintet; part of the Tenebrae Responsories by Victoria; Debussy's Gigues (from Images); Britten's arrangement of The Salley Gardens, and Michael Berkeley's own Variations on Greek Folk Songs for solo viola, inspired by Leigh Fermor's own celebrated vocal renditions.
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25-Jul-2011
Private Passions - Hugh Hudson
Michael Berkeley's guest today is film director Hugh Hudson, whose most successful feature film, 'Chariots of Fire' (1981) won four Academy Awards, and is said to have revitalized the British film industry. His next production, 'Greystoke - The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes' (1984) received four Oscar nominations, but 'Revolution' (1985) was a critical and commercial failure. He has since directed three more films, including 'Lost Angels' (1989) starring Donald Sutherland, and 'My Life So Far', and re-edited 'Revolution' in 2008 with a narration by Al Pacino. In the 1970s and 1980s he enjoyed great success with a series of high-budget commercials, especially for BA, Fiat, and Benson & Hedges. Hugh Hudson is passionate about music, and his choices begin with Richard Strauss's radiant song 'Morgen', followed by the Aria from Bach's Goldberg Variations, played by Glenn Gould. He has also chosen the closing moments of Elgar's 'Dream of Gerontius', the 'Sunrise' section of Ravel's 'Daphnis and Chloe'; pieces by Vangelis, who composed the hugely successful 'Chariots of Fire' theme music, and by John Corigliano, who wrote the soundtrack for 'Revolution', and jazz pieces performed by Thelonius Monk and Billie Holiday.
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18-Jul-2011
Private Passions - Helen Dunmore
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is novelist and poet Helen Dunmore, who won the first Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996 with 'A Spell of Winter'. Her seventh novel, 'The Siege' (2001) was shortlisted for the Whitbread and Orange Prizes, and deals with the 880-day siege of Leningrad by German forces during World War II. She returned to Leningrad in the final year of Stalin's tyrannical reign for the setting of her tenth novel, 'The Betrayal', longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. Helen Dunmore also writes poetry, short stories, and childrens' books. Her poem 'The Malarkey' won the National Poetry Competition in March 2010, and a month later she published her first picture book for children, 'The Ferry Birds', illustrated by Rebecca Cobb. Singing is particularly important to Helen. Her musical choices begin with a song by Stephen Foster, which reminds her of her father, who loved music-hall songs. She first heard Kathleen Ferrier as a young child, and has chosen Ferrier's classic recording of 'What is Life' from Gluck's 'Orfeo ed Euridice'. She herself sang at school, and particularly loved the traditional songs she heard on BBC Singing Together programmes, especially sea shanties such as 'Bound for Australia'. Her husband loves Gregorian chant, and the Salve Regina from the Feast of the Blessed VIrgin holds a particular personal significance for her. She also finds Mozart's Requiem intensely moving for its mysterious darkness Her other vocal choices include Country Joe and the Fish, which reminds her of the first rock festival she attended. Her instrumental favourites are the glorious second movement of Schubert's String Quintet, and the Intermezzo from Sibelius's Karelia Suite, which conveys an amazing sense of landscape.
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11-Jul-2011
Private Passions - Andrew Graham-Dixon
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the art critic and TV presenter of arts programmes Andrew Graham-Dixon. He began his career as Chief Art Critic of the Independent, won the inaugural Hawthornden Prize for Art Criticism in 1991, and since 1999 has been Chief Art Correspondent of The Sunday Telegraph. He has presented several landmark series on art for the BBC, including 'A History of British Art', 'Renaissance', 'The Art of Eternity', 'The Art of Spain', 'The Art of Russia' and 'The Art of Germany', as well as a film biography of Hogarth, 'Art That Shook the World' (a study of Impressionism), and 'The Secret Lives of the Artists', three films re-evaluating the lives and works of Caravaggio (of whom he recently published a biography), Vermeer and Constable. He has also presented documentaries about more recent artists including Jasper Johns, Lucian Freud and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Since 2006 he has been the face of the visual arts on BBC2's 'The Culture Show'. Andrew Graham-Dixon's musical tastes are equally wide-ranging, from a Schubert Impromptu he remembers his grandmother playing and the great Chaconne from Bach's Partita No.2 in D minor for solo violin to the opening of Wagner's 'Das Rheingold', which he finds truly revolutionary, Beethoven's A minor String Quartet Op.132, which to him represents the essence of Romanticism in its expression of invidual human feeling, to Keith Jarrett, whom he admires for his improvisatory skills, Glenn Miller's 'In the Mood', which, he says, is functional music guaranteed to cheer you up, and The Sex Pistols' 'Anarchy in the UK', which he thinks is the most important piece of British 20th-century music, as destruction is central to our culture.
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04-Jul-2011
Private Passions - Alex Horne
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the award-winning comedian Alex Horne, who has taken six solo shows to the Edinburgh Fringe, including 'Every Body Talks' (2004), 'When in Rome' (2005), 'Birdwatching' (2007), and 'Odds' (2010). He has toured his shows nationally, and published two books based on them, 'Birdwatchingwatching', and 'Wordwatching'. Words are particularly important to him, and he takes delight in creating new ones, as well as filming a documentary for BBC4 - 'The Games that Time Forgot: Cricket on Horseback and Other Forgotten Sports'. He has also created the innovative jazz comedy show 'The Horne Section', and is currently making a world record attempt to become the world's oldest man. His musical passions begin with the Rondo from Mozart's Fourth Horn Concerto, and continue with an extract from Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf', which was one of the pieces which first introduced him to classical music as a child. His next choice is 'Morning' by Editus, followed by the third movement of Victor Hely-Hutchinson's Carol Symphony, another childhood favourite. J.P. Sousa' s famous 'Liberty Bell' March, which inevitably brings Monty Python to any comedian's mind, is followed by Viktoria Mullova playing 'Winter' from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and Alex Horne's choices end with a musical tribute to another of his great passions, Cary Swinney's 'Birdwatching'.
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27-Jun-2011
Private Passions - Light Fantastic Compilation
As part of Radio 3's celebration of light music, Michael Berkeley introduces a selection of lighter choices by previous Private Passions guests, ranging from 'A Walk in the Black Forest' played by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, chosen by Stephen Fry; 'How sad it is' from Johann Strauss II's operatta 'Die Fledermaus' and Josef Strauss's waltz 'Spharenklange', chosen respectively by the late John Mortimer and actress Joanna Lumley; 'You've Gone Too Far' from Offenbach's 'Orpheus in the Underworld', chosen by playwright Mark Ravenhill; 'The Dambusters' March', chosen by comedian Al Murray, and three choices by the inimitable Dame Edna Everage ('Bless this House' by May Brahe, 'The Dream of Olwen' by Charles Williams, and an extraordinary performance of Khachaturian's 'Sabre Dance' by The Andrews Sisters) to a truly surreal performance by Spike Milligan, reading a bizarre auction catalogue over a serene orchestral background in 'Another Lot' - the choice of Private Eye cartoonist Barry Fantoni.
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20-Jun-2011
Private Passions - David Bintley
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is David Bintley, Artistic Director of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, and one of Britain's finest choreographers. He started out as a dancer, and one of his early leading roles with the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet (now the Birmingham Royal Ballet) was Stravinsky's puppet Petrushka - a role that made huge physical demands, as he tells Michael Berkeley. He made a name as a character dancer - other major roles included Widow Simone in Frederick Ashton's 'La fille mal gardee', Bottom in 'The Dream', an Ugly Sister in Ashton's 'Cinderella', the Red King in Ninette de Valois' 'Checkmate' and the Rake in her 'Rake's Progress'. David Bintley always wanted to be a choreographer since he made his first ballet aged 16 to Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale, and at 18 he made his debut as a choreographer for the Sadler's Wells company. From 1986 to 1993 he was resident choreographer at Covent Garden, and then left to work freelance for companies around the world. in 1995 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, where his work has ranged from Far from the Madding Crowd (1996) and Cyrano (1997) to popular hits such as The Nutcracker Sweeties, mingling classical ballet wirh jazz; the jazz-inspired reinterpretation of the Orpheus legend in 'The Orpheus Suite'; 'Cinderella', and 'Beauty and the Beast'. His double bill 'Passion and Ecstasy', combining 'Carmina burana', based on Orff's cantata, and 'Allegri diversi', based on Rossini, is currently playing at Birmingham. His personal music choices range from Mahler's Resurrection Symphony to a dance from Petrushka, the end of Act II of Verdi's 'Otello', an extract from Britten's 'Prince of the Pagodas' and works by James MacMillan, Bob Dylan and Matthew Hindson.
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12-Jun-2011
Private Passions - Amanda Foreman
In a special edition of Private Passions recorded at the 2011 Hay-on-Wye Literary festival, Michael Berkeley talks to the award-winning historian Amanda Foreman. The daughter of the Oscar-winning screenwriter Carl Foreman and an English mother, Amanda was born in London, brought up in Los Angeles and educated in England and New York. In 1998 she received her doctorate in 18th-century British history from Oxford University, and the following year she published her first book, 'Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire'. It became a huge international bestseller, won the 1999 Whitbread Prize for Best Biography, and has inspired a TV documentary, a radio play starring Dame Judi Dench, and a movie, 'The Duchess', starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes. Amanda Foreman has just published her second book, 'A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided', in which she traces turbulent Anglo-American relations during the American Civil War. She has compared the task with writing a symphony. Her musical passions, as revealed to Michael Berkeley during this special programme recorded in front of an audience at Hay-on-Wye, focus very much on English music, as befits a historian of the period. They include an anthem by Thomas Tallis, a keyboard piece by John Bull, songs by Purcell and Henry Bishop, and a chorus from Handel's oratorio 'Israel in Egypt', as well as music by Vivaldi, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, John Field, Vaughan Williams and Flanders and Swann.
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06-Jun-2011
Private Passions - Trevor McDonald
Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions this week is the journalist and former newsreader Sir Trevor McDonald. Born in Trinidad, he moved to Britain and began his media career as a BBC radio producer. He began his long association with ITN in 1973, first as a general reporter, then as a sports correspondent, and subsequently focusing on international politics - he secured interviews with Yasser Arafat, Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, among other notorious international figures. In the 1980s he became the first black TV newsreader in the UK. From 1992 he was the sole presenter of ITV's News at Ten, quickly gaining a profile as one of the best-known faces on British TV, and continued to present the evening news until he finally retired after the 2008 US Presidential Election. From 1999 to 2009 he hosted ITN's flagship current affairs programme Tonight with Trevor McDonald. He now focuses on presenting documentaries and features. He has won more awards than any other British reporter, and was knighted in 1999. His musical choices start with Elgar's 'Introduction and Allegro', which he first heard as a young man played by the Halle Orchestra on tour in Trinidad. They continue with the Prisoners' Chorus from Verdi's Nabucco, which represents the cry for freedom of all oppressed people; an aria from Handel's 'Messiah', which moves him as an expression of faith; an excerpt from Beethoven's Violin Concerto played by Nigel Kennedy, whom he greatly admires as a violinist; the Shaker hymn tune 'Simple Gifts' from Copland's 'Appalachian Spring'; an aria from Act I of Puccini's 'Tosca', and the finale of Chopin's First Piano Concerto, played by Artur Rubinstein, another of his musical heroes.
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30-May-2011
Private Passions - Max Beesley
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the Manchester-born actor Max Beesley, who made his name in the 1997 TV mini-series 'The History of Tom Jones' and has gone on to star in major TV series including 'Bodies', 'Hotel Babylon', 'Survivors' , 'The Last Enemy', and 'Mad Dogs' (with Philip Glenister, John Simm and Marc Warren). He recently appeared with Ashley Jensen in the ITV drama 'The Reckoning'. Born into a musical family (his mother was a jazz singer and his father a professional jazz drummer), Max was a pupil at Chetham's School of Music, studied percussion at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and pursued a career as a musician before turning to acting. He has toured as percussionist/keyboard/backing vocals with George Michael, Robbie Williams, Take That and Chaka Khan among others. Max Beesley is passionate about music, and his eclectic choices include keyboard pieces by Bach and Liszt, a Chopin prelude arranged for cello and piano by Aaron Copland, Elly Ameling singing Schubert's 'Ave Maria', part of the 'Dies irae' from Mozart's Requiem, 'The Shrove-Tide Fair' from Stravinsky's ballet 'Petrushka', music from his own soundtrack to the film 'The Emperor's Wife', and Pat Metheny's 'Third Wind' from the album 'Still Life Talking'.
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23-May-2011
Private Passions - Cathy Marston
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is Cathy Marston, Director of the Bern Ballet. She trained at the Royal Ballet School and began her career as a dancer before becoming a choreographer in the mid 1990s. She has worked with many international ensembles in the classical and contemporary dance fields, and in 2002 became the first Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House, where she created several ballets for the Linbury Theatre, and worked as movement director for opera productions. She then formed her own company, the Cathy Marston project, which toured the UK in 2006 with a triple bill of her own work. In 2007 she became the Director of the Bern Ballet in Switzerland, where she has created several new pieces, including 'Wuthering Heights', and 'Juliet and Romeo'. Many of her ballets are inspired by literature and biography, and she also creates shorter pieces that she calls 'dance poems'. The Bern Ballet is currently on tour and is appearing this week at the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House. Cathy Marston's own musical choices include extracts from piano concertos by Shostakovich and Brahms, part of a Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra by Gabriel Prokofiev, with whom she has collaborated (this work is being performed in its entirety at this year's Proms), a song from Schumann's Liederkreis cycle, Nina Simone singing 'Wild is the Wind', the Katia Labeque Band performing 'Unspoken' by Dave Maric (another composer with whom Cathy Marston often collaborates), and Gus MacGregor's 'Lifeline', which always cheers her up.
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16-May-2011
Private Passions - Mike Leigh
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the filmmaker, writer and playwright Mike Leigh, who began his career in the theatre and with TV dramas such as 'Abigail's Party' and 'Nuts in May', and went to to produce a string of original, award-winning films including 'Life is Sweet', 'Career Girls', the Gilbert and Sullivan biopic 'Topsy Turvy', 'Naked', 'Secrets and Lies', 'Happy Go Lucky', 'Vera Drake', and most recently, 'Another Year'. Many of his films involve an element of improvisation, and Mike Leigh has launched the careers of an impressive array of distinguished British actors, including Alison Steadman. Brenda Blethyn, David Thewlis, Sally Hawkins, Liz Smith and Jane Horrocks. His play 'Ecstasy' is currently enjoying a West End revival. Mike Leigh's choices begin with two extracts by Gilbert and Sullivan. He starts with a comic duet from 'Ruddigore' (I once was a very abandoned person)l, and goes on to 'The World is but a broken toy' from 'Princess Ida', which he loves for its sentimental charm. Mike Leigh sees Mozart's 'Cosi fan tutte' as essentially a comic opera, and has selected the gorgeous trio 'Soave sia il vento' from Act I. Then comes another facet of comic opera - the Doll's Song from Act II of Offenbach's 'The Tales of Hoffmann', which he used as the background to the brothel scene in 'Topsy Turvy'. There's also the original 1928 recording of the Ballad of Mack the Knife from Weill/Brecht's 'Threepenny Opera', an extract from a film score by Shostakovich, Jeanne Moreau singing 'Le Tourbillon de la vie' from Truffaut's famous film 'Jules et Jim'; 'Blue in Green' from Miles Davis' 'Kind of Blue', and finally the Rondo from Beethoven's Violin Concerto (Mike Leigh used Beethoven to great effect in 'Abigail's Party').
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09-May-2011
Private Passions - Ruth Goodman
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the social and domestic historian Ruth Goodman, well known to TV viewers as the co-presenter of highly successful historical reality series such as 'The Victorian Farm', 'The Edwardian Farm', 'Tales from the Green Valley' and 'The Victorian Pharmacy'. She is a freelance consultant, offering advisory services to museums, theatres, and educational establishments around the country. Her particular interest is the domestic - how daily lives were lived in former times from the Tudor to Edwardian periods; and her courses and lectures - delivered in her trademark lively and hands-on style - cover many topics from 'History of Eating', 'Victorian Cleaning' and 'Medicine - A Consumer's Guide' to 'Babies and Birth', and 'A Good Death'. As might be expected of such a live wire, Ruth is passionate about music, and particularly dance, of which she herself is an enthusiastic exponent. Dance informs many of her choices, from the famous Clog Dance from the Herold/Lanchbery ballet 'La fille mal gardee', to the Dance of the Knights from Prokofiev's 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'The Princesses' Round Dance' from Stravinsky's 'The Firebird'. She also chooses two baroque pieces - an extract from Purcell's 'Fairy Queen' and Handel's 'Arrival of the Queen of Sheba', as well as Itzhak Perlman playing Paganini's Caprice No.5, 'Knee Play 5' from Philip Glass's opera 'Einstein on the Beach', and 'The Floating Crowbar' for bagpipes - an instrument which plays a major role in Ruth's own domestic life.
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02-May-2011
Private Passions - Olivia Williams
The British actor Olivia Williams is pursuing an equally successful career in film and TV on both sides of the Atlantic. After spending three years at the RSC she played Jane Fairfax in the 1996 British TV film of Jane Austen's Emma. The following year she was screen tested by Kevin Costner and made her Hollywood debut in 'The Postman', later winning the lead role of Rosemary Cross in Wes Anderson's 'Rushmore' (1998). She went on to star as Bruce Willis's wife in 'The Sixth Sense' (1999), and has appeared in several British films including 'Lucky Break' (2001), 'The Heart of Me' (2002), for which she won a Best Actress award, and 'An Education' (2009). She played Mrs Darling in the latest film adaptation of Peter Pan. On TV she took the title role in the 2008 film 'Miss Austen Regrets', and was cast as Adelle DeWitt in Joss Whedon's Dollhouse (Fox TV, 2009-10). She is currently starring opposite 'Lost's' Matthew Fox on stage in London's West End in Neil LaBute's play 'In a Forest Dark and Deep'. Olivia Williams grew up in North London surrounded by music, and her personal favourites include 'The trumpet shall sound' from Handel's Messiah and the opening of Mendelssohn's Elijah, both of which she sang in at school. She also chooses the Prelude from Bach's G major cello suite, played by Pablo Casals, which was the first classical piece she discovered for herself; the second movement of a Vivaldi mandolin concerto; a psalm setting by the 16th-century Spanish composer Diego Ortiz, which she loves for its earthy quality; Arvo Part's 'Tabula Rasa', which she uses as a 'prop' to make her cry; the cadenza of Brahms's Violin Concerto, which her father hoped she might play (she went into acting instead), and the opening of Mahler's Second Symphony (the 'Resurrection').
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25-Apr-2011
Private Passions - Eric Knowles
Eric Knowles is well known to antiques lovers as a ceramics expert on BBC TV's 'The Antiques Roadshow'. He has also appeared on many other TV antiques programmes, including 'The Great Antiques Hunt', 'The Antique Inspectors' and 'You Can't Take it With You'. Eric worked for a firm of antiques shippers before joining Bonham's, the London auction house, in 1976. In 1981 he became head of the ceramics department there, and is a leading authority on 17th - 20th-century European and Oriental ceramics, 19th-and 20th-century decorative arts, and the glass of Tiffany and Lalique. Since 2009 he has worked independently of Bonhams. As well as his many TV and radio appearances, he has lectured extensively and written books on Victoriana, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Royal Memorabilia. Royal Doulton have produced an Eric Knowles character jug. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His Private Passions begin with a Bach Brandenburg Concerto, which is contemporaneous with the foundation of the famous Meissen porcelain factory at Dresden. Two other of his musical choices are related to his work - Borodin's 'In the Steppes of Central Asia' brings to his mind the camel trains bringing precious Chinese porcelain to Europe, and Debussy's liquid Arabesque No.1 evokes the sinuous forms of Lalique glass. Eric Knowles brought along a 17th-century Chinese bowl and a piece of Lalique glass, which can be seen on the BBC website, from his own collection to illustrate the similarities. His other choices include a movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade, a piece he loved as a boy, and an extract from Prokofiev's 'Lieutenant Kije' in an arrangement for brass band, which reminds him of his Northern roots.
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11-Apr-2011
Private Passions - Nicky Haslam
Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions this week is the flamboyant British interior designer, socialite and occasional cabaret singer Nicky Haslam, who founded the London-based interior design frim NH Design Inc. Founded in the1980s,the firm has worked for high profile celebrity clients, including Mick Jagger, Charles Saatchi and Rupert Everett, and has established a style which is always distinguishable for its humour, charm and wit. Nicky Haslam has also designed the decor for events such as the Opera Ball in Hong Kong, the Cartier Polo gala lunches at Windsor, a banquet at the National Gallery and a dinner at the State Apartments in Kensington Palace, as well as parties for HRH The Prince of Wales, the Rothschild family and Tina Brown. He has published an autobiography, 'Redeeming Features', as well as a book of his work entitled 'Sheer Opulence', and writes for various magazines and newspapers. He has also performed cabaret turns at the Savoy Hotel and Bellamy's restaurant in London. Nicky Haslam loves music, and his choices include songs by Eddie Condon, Frank Loesser and Borodin (adapted for the musical 'Kismet'), as well as opera arias by Charpentier (Depuis le jour from 'Louise', sung by Maria Callas) and Puccini ('Vissi d'arte' from 'Tosca'). He begins with Bizet's charming Symphony in C, and there's a little-known piano waltz by Leo Tolstoy, as well as an extract from Erich Korngold's film score 'The Sea Hawk'.
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04-Apr-2011
Private Passions - Frances Fyfield
Michael Berkeley's guest on Private Passions this week is Frances Fyfield, who started her career as a criminal lawyer working for the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, and went on to became a highly successful writer of crime novels. The most popular of these, featuring Helen West, have twice been adapted for TV, with the heroine played by Juliet Stevenson and Amanda Burton. Frances Fyfield's novels have won several awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Duncan Lawrie Dagger for the 2008 novel 'Blood from Stone'. Her most recent book is 'Cold to the Touch'. Frances Fyfield also writes short stories, contributes to BBC radio programmes such as Front Row and Night Waves, and presents 'Tales from the Stave' for Radio 4, in which she and a team of experts subject composers' original scores and manuscripts to forensic examination. The sea is very important to Frances Fyfield, and many of her choices for 'Private Passions' reflect this primary love, including the 'Sunday Morning' Sea Interlude from Britten's 'Peter Grimes', Mendelssohn's 'Hebrides' Overture; John Ireland's song 'Sea Fever', and the hymn 'Eternal Father, strong to save', as well as a reading of John Masefield's famous poem 'Cargoes'. She also loves collecting pictures and visiting art galleries, and has chosen an excerpt from Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition' to reflect this. The lighter side of life is represented by Victor Borge's 'A Mozart Opera', and there's also the Habanera from Bizet's opera 'Carmen'.
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28-Mar-2011
Private Passions - Nicole Krauss
Nicole Krauss is one of America's most distinguished young authors. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Harper's and Esquire, and her three novels to date - Man Walks into a Room (2002), The History of Love (2005), and Great House (2010) - have been translated into over 35 languages. Before she published her first novel, she was known as a poet, having studied English in the 1990s at Stanford University, where her mentor was Joseph Brodsky. In 1996-7 she undertook a masters degree in art history at Oxford University and the Courtauld Institute in London. Her second novel, The History of Love, became an international bestseller and won many awards. Nicole Krauss talks revealingly to Michael Berkeley about the influence of music on her work. She has always been fascinated by Glenn Gould, and her first choice is the 1955 recording of Gould playing part of Bach's Goldberg V ariations. She is particularly interested in endings, and has chosen the final moments of Mahler's Ninth Symphony, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Her choices also include Peace Piece by Bill Evans, which arose from an arrangement Evans was working on of a Bernstein song. She refers to the third movement (Molto adagio) of Beethoven's Op.132 String Quartet in her latest book, Great House, and reads the appropriate passage. her final two choices are Ry Cooder's Houston in Two Seconds from the soundtrack of Wim Wenders' film Paris, Texas, which she saw at the age of 19, and which influenced the story of her first novel, Man Walks into a Room; and a song by the singer and harpist Joanna Newsom, whose music and lyrics both appeal to her for their baroque strangeness.
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21-Mar-2011
Private Passions - Monty Don
This week on Private Passions, Michael Berkeley is invited to the Herefordshire home of horticulturalist and Gardeners' World presenter Monty Don. He and his wife Sarah bought their farmhouse in the early 1990s after their jewellery business collapsed. They set about creating a spectacular garden out of a field, while Monty carved out a new career as an amateur gardener and professional writer and broadcaster. In 2003 he became the first self-taught horticulturalist to present BBC2's Gardeners' World. He stepped down after a minor stroke in 2008, but is returning to the series this spring. A passionate proponent of organic gardening and farming techniques, Monty Don is now President of the Soil Association. He has also featured in the BBC programme and book 'Growing out of Trouble', in which several drug addicts manage a smallholding in an attempt at rehabilitation. In 2008 he presented 'Around the World in 80 Gardens', in 2010 the Channel 4 TV series 'My Dream Farm', helping people learn to manage a smallholding, and he has co-authored several books on food and cookery with his wife Sarah. A four-part BBC TV series based on his new book 'The Italian Garden' will air in 2011. Monty Don is passionate about music, and the works which move him emotionally include Bach's St Matthew Passion, the slow movement from Beethoven's 'Eroica' Symphony, Haydn's Symphony no.22 'The Philosopher', and the lament from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. He talks frankly to Michael Berkeley about his long struggle against depression, and the effect that music has on him. A livelier note is struck with the opening movement of Bach's First Brandenburg Concerto, and his choices end appropriately with Green Grass by Tom Waits.
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14-Mar-2011
Private Passions - Al Murray
Al Murray is one of Britain's most successful comedians. Educated at Bedford School and Oxford University, he began to work in comedy in the 1990s, and created his best-known act, his alter-ego The Pub Landlord, in 1994. Five years later a show based round the Pub Landlord won the Perrier Award at Edinburgh, and Murray has been nominated several times for an Olivier Award. He has appeared at the Royal Variety Performance and has hosted Live at the Apollo on BBC1; his sitcom Time Gentlemen Please on Sky One has become a cult classic, and his series Al Murray's Multiple PersonalityDisorder on ITV1 saw him introduce a whole range of new characters. Apart from his stand-up comedy routines, Al has recently presented Al Murray in Germany on BBC4, a historical series about the art and culture of Germany. He has also made The Road to Berlin, a documentary series about World War II for the Discovery channel. Al played in his school orchestra, and several of his choices for Private Passions are linked to his experiences as a youthful percussionist. These include Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade, which he remembers playing on an orchestral tour to Paris; Orff's Carmina burana, and Nimrod, from Elgar's Enigma Variations, which reminds him of a particularly poignant moment. There's also music by Handel (the coronation anthem Zadok the Priest), a chorale from a Bach cantata which he heard sung by the Leipzig Thomanerchor, an excerpt from Philip Glass's Low Symphony, and Eric Coates's famous Dam Busters March.
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07-Mar-2011
Private Passions - Amanda Vickery
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is Amanda Vickery, Professor of Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London, where she lectures on British social, political and cultural history. She is the author of 'The Gentleman's Daughter' (1998) and 'Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England' (2009), and writes and presents history documentaries for TV and radio, including 'A History of Private Life' and 'Voices from the Old Bailey' for BBC Radio 4, and the television series 'At Home with the Georgians' for BBC2. Many of her musical choices reflect aspects of everyday life in the 18th century - love and courtship as seen through the Northumbrian folksong 'O waly, waly' and the duet 'Bei Mannern welche Liebe fuhlen' from Mozart's opera 'The Magic Flute'; the intimacy and religious discipline of the closet (a movement from a Bach solo cello suite); a great public event (Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks, written to celebrate the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1749; the contrast between women singers who were allowed to earn a living publicly (represented by an aria from Arne's 1762 opera Artaxerxes) and those who had to pursue their music-making only in the domestic sphere (a Clementi sonata for piano duet). There's also more recent music by Poulenc (Hommage a Edith Piaf), Miles Davis and Amy Winehouse, as well as 'The Housewife's Lament' sung by Gwyneth Herbert (from 'A History of Private Life').
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28-Feb-2011
Private Passions - Douglas Gordon
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the Glaswegian artist Douglas Gordon, who won the Turner Prize in 1996 and represented Britain at the 1997 Venice Biennale. His work, which spans video and film, sound, photographic objects and texts, has since been exhibited in museums all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Tate Britain and the National Galleries of Scotland. His video and film work often plays with time elements and employs multiple monitors, displacing traditional expectations.'24 Hour Psycho' (1993) slowed down Hitchcock's masterpiece to last 24 hours, while 'Zidane: A 20th-Century Portrait' used multiple cameras to follow the international football star. His most recent work, k.364, premiered at the 2010 Venice Film festival and is currently showing at the Gagosian Gallery in London. It involves two Israeli musicians of Polish descent travelling by train through the bleak Polish landscape to Warsaw, where they perform Mozarts Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola, K364 in Kochel's catalogue (which gives the film its title). The film is an intimate document of the relationship between individuals and the power of music, against the backdrop of a dark and unresolved social history. Douglas Gordon draws on a wide range of cultural references in the work, and his personal music choices are equally eclectic. They range from Bach, Schubert, Puccini, Richard Strauss and Faure to Joy Division, Rufus Wainwright, Lou Reed and Cornelius Cardew.
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21-Feb-2011
Private Passions - John Sergeant
Berkeley's guest is the journalist John Sergeant, who graduated from Magdalen College Oxford in PPE and joined the BBC as a radio reporter in 1970. He subsequently worked as a war reporter in Vietnam, Israel and Northern Ireland and became a political correspondent in 1981. From 1992 to 2000 he was the BBC's Chief Political Correspondent, before a two-year stint at ITN as Political Editor. He has since appeared on TV shows such as 'Have I Got News for You', 'Countdown', QI, and the 2008 series of 'Strictly Come Dancing', on which he proved very popular with the public, if not with the judges. He is currently filming documentaries such as John Sergeant's Tourist Trail, and Tracks of Empire, in which he explores the origins of Indian Railways. His music choices have a distinct political slant. They begin in Vienna with Mahler's Fourth Symphony, which gives rise to a discussion about the rise of European anti-semitism. The tensions present in Vienna were replicated in Berlin, where Lotte Lenya recorded Kurt Weill's Alabama Song in 1930., three years before the Nazi rise to power forced Weill and others out of Germany.John Sergeant's next choice is the theme from the US musical 42nd Street, which demonstrates how Americans reacted to the financial crisis following the 1929 Wall Street crash. Bela Bartok's introverted Sixth Quartet was written on the eve of his own departure for America, where unlike Weill, he felt underrated. Meanwhile, the two greatest 20th-century Russian composers (Prokofiev, represented by his opera War and Peace, and Shostakovich - the 8th Quartet) ended up trying to appease the Soviet authorities. John Sergeant's final choice is an extract from John Adams' opera 'Nixon in China', covering the US President's 1972 visit to China.
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14-Feb-2011
Private Passions - Joanna van Kampen
Michael Berkeley's guest is the young actor Joanna van Kampen, who has played the role of Fallon Rogers in 'The Archers' for the past decade. The daughter of cellist Christopher van Kampen and violinist Marcia Williams (who both played for many years with the Nash Ensemble), she learnt violin and piano as a child, but then decided to make acting her career, training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She has worked at the Royal National Theatre and the RSC with directors such as Di Trevis, Peter Gill and Simon Usher. She is particularly interested in film music, and her choices include parts of Mozart's Requiem from the soundtrack of the film 'Amadeus', the Prelude to Bernard Herrmann's score for Hitchcock's 'Psycho', and music from John Williams' score for 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone', for which her mother led the orchestra. Her other choices include Maria Callas singing 'Depuis le jour' from Charpentier's opera 'Louise'; Dido's Lament from Purcell's 'Dido and Aeneas', sung by Janet Baker, cellist Yo Yo Ma accompanied by Bobby McFerrin's astonishing vocals in 'Ave Maria', and Stevie Wonder's 'If It's Magic'.
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07-Feb-2011
Private Passions - Richard Mabey
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is Richard Mabey, who has been described as 'Britain's greatest living nature writer'. His first book, 'Food for Free', came out in 1972, and since then he has published a stream of acclaimed books including a biography of Gilbert White, which won the 1986 Whitbread Biography of the Year', the ground-breaking bestseller 'Flora Britannica' (1996), and his latest book 'Weeds' (2010). He contributes frequently to BBC radio, wrote and narrated the 1996 BBC TV series 'Postcards from the Country', and has made films for the BBC on Kew Gardens and the Yorkshire Dales. He is currently working on a book about Flora Thompson, author of 'Lark Rise to Candleford'. His musical passions are wide-ranging, from a charming madrigal by John Dowland (which reminds him of his schooldays) and George Butterworth's poignant setting of Housman's 'Is my team ploughing?' to a modern setting of a First World War protest song, an improvisation by clarinettist David Rothenberg and two colleagues over the song of marsh warblers, 'The Quail' from Canteloube's 'Songs of the Auvergne', a male-voice choir from a Corsican hill-town singing a traditional song, and two contrasting pieces from Latin America, including one played by the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.
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31-Jan-2011
Private Passions - Tim Waterstone
Tim Waterstone is the founder of the UK bookselling retail chain Waterstones, which is now the largest specialist bookseller in Europe. He began his retail career in India, and from 1973 to 1981 worked for W H Smith, before founding Waterstones in 1982. In 1998 he became the founder chairman of HMV Media Group, which merged Waterstones and HMV. He has also served on the boards of many arts organizations, including the LPO, The Elgar Foundation, the Academy of Ancient Music, and the Library of King's College, London. He has published four novels, of which the most recent is 'In for a Penny, In for a Pound', and is the chancellor of Edinburgh Napier University. His musical enthusiasms, which he discusses with Michael Berkeley, focus on vocal music. They embrace Elgar's Sea Pictures sung by Janet Baker, an artist he particularly admires; a carol by Elizabeth Poston (which he loves equally for its words and music) sung by the choir of King's College Cambridge;Doretta's Song from Puccini's 'La rondine', sung by Angela Gheorghiu; the famous Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Klaus Tennstedt, a conductor whom Tim Waterstone considers one of the greatest of his time; the Pie Jesu from Faure's Requiem; Renee Fleming singing 'Im Abendrot', one of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs; and Jerome Kern's 'The Way You Look Tonight' sung by Fred Astaire - Tim Waterstone and his wife like to relax by listening to musicals from the golden era.
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24-Jan-2011
Private Passions - Katie Mitchell
Michael Berkeley talks to the theatre director Katie Mitchell, whose often controversial productions range from Greek tragedy to Dr Seuss and operas by Mozart and Janacek. Much of the music she has chosen is connected with her work in the theatre, including a Bach aria and a Schubert song and string quartets by Beethoven and Janacek as well as music by Luigi Nono and Alfred Schnittke.
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20-Jan-2011
Private Passions - Stewart Copeland
Michael Berkeley meets rock great Stewart Copeland, drummer with The Police, and a composer of operas and soundtracks as well as songs. His musical tastes, all of which have influenced his own style, range from Wagner, Ravel and John Adams to Booker T, Paul Simon and reggae from Desmond Dekker.
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03-Jan-2011
Private Passions - Mozart Compilation
In honour of Radio 3's New Year celebration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Michael Berkeley delves into the Private Passions archive to recall distinguished former guests who chose Mozart among their greatest enthusiasms. The late crime writer Michael Dibdin kicks off with Mozart's String Quartet in G, K387; then comes opera director Graham Vick, who was hard-pressed to narrow his Mozart choices down, but who eventually settled on a scene towards the end of 'The Magic Flute' . Psychologist and novelist Salley Vickers selected the slow movement of the Piano Concerto No.24 in C minor, K491; while actor Lenny Henry, political commentator Jonathan Dimbleby and Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo all had different reasons for choosing the opening movement of the Piano Sonata in A, K331. Two recent award-winning writers, Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson, and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, both selected extracts from Mozart's darkest and perhaps most psychologically disturbing opera, 'Don Giovanni'; while actor Simon Callow recalls his stage triumph as Mozart in Peter Shaffer's 'Amadeus', with the Adagio from the Serenade in B flat, K361, played to spine-tingling effect at the pivotal point of the drama. Finally, actor Fiona Shaw chooses the opening chorus of Mozart's last, unfinished work, the Requiem.
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27-Dec-2010
Private Passions - Pamela Stephenson Connolly
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the New Zealand-born Australian clinical psychologist, writer and former actor Pamela Stephenson Connolly, who is currently starring in the 2010 series of Strictly Come Dancing. After moving from Australia to London in 1976, she shot to fame on the 1980s TV sketch show 'Not the Nine O Clock News', alongside fellow-comedians Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones. She married comedian and actor Billy Connolly in 1989, and in 1996 gained a doctorate in clinical psychology in California. She now works in private practice as a psychologist, and in 2007 presented a series of programmes on the More4 TV channel called 'Shrink Rap. Her biography of her husband, 'Billy', won the 2002 British Book of the Year Award. Her musical private passions, as revealed to Michael, include two Antipodean divas, Joan Sutherland singing an aria from Bellini's 'Norma' and Kiri te Kanawa singing Strauss's radiant song 'Morgen', written as a wedding gift for his singer bride. Pamela Stephenson also admires the voice of Lotte Lenya singing the Alabama Song from Weill and Brecht's 'Mahagonny'. There's also one of Satie's Gymnopedies for piano solo, a frog song played on Balinese gamelan instruments, which reminds her of time spent in Indonesia and traditional Scottish fiddle music (she currently lives in Scotland). Dance is represented by Debussy's atmospheric 'Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune', which Pamela saw as an erotically-charged ballet.
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13-Dec-2010
Private Passions - Julian Rhind-Tutt
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is actor Julian Rhind-Tutt, who starred as Dr 'Mac' McCartney in the comedy TV series 'Green Wing', and has since appeared in many other TV shows, including Mark Gatiss's 'The Crooked House', and most recently Agatha Christie's 'The Halloween Party'. He has appreared in blockbuster films such as Notting Hill, Tomb Raider and Stardust, and recently appeared on stage in the supernatural thriller 'Darker Shores'. Julian was born into a musical family, and plays cello and piano himself. His personal musical favourites include a trumpet concerto by Telemann, inspired by his older brother who is a professional trumpeter; three pieces by Bach played by artists he particularly admires(Tortelier playing the Prelude from Bach's Suite No. 6 in D for solo cello; Andras Schiff playing movements from the French Suite No.2 in C minor, and David Goode playing a chorale prelude on the organ of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford); a Tudor anthem by John Hilton, which reminds him of his own early days as a choral singer; an extract from Puccini's 'La boheme' sung by Luciano Pavarotti, which was a favourite of his mother's; a song by Mahler; an excerpt from Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet, and - rather unexpectedly, the theme to Channel 4's News, which he likes for its enduring nature.
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06-Dec-2010
Private Passions - Adam Foulds
Michael Berkeley's guest is Adam Foulds, one of the most exciting young British writers to have emerged in the past decade. He read English at Oxford and graduated with an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in 2001. His first novel, 'The Truth About These Strange Times', won a Betty Trask Award in 2007, while his 2008 verse novella 'The Broken Word' won the poetry prize in the Costa Book Awards. In 2009 his second novel, 'The Quickening Maze', was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Adam Foulds is passionate about all kinds of music, but his selection today focuses on 20th-century music - Schoenberg's Op.24 Serenade, Debussy's Sonata for flute, viola and harp, songs by Ligeti and Stravinsky, two short pieces by Oliver Knussen, and the Vixen's Dream sequence from Janacek's opera 'The Cunning Little Vixen'. All reveal an absorbing interest in delicate and complex musical textures, as well as a keen ear for sonorities - characteristics he also brings to his own work. The two exceptions are the first piece, an extract from a Mass by the early English composer Nicholas Ludford, which Adam Foulds believes has much in common with the sound of more recent English music; and finally a track from Neutral Milk Hotel's album 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea'.
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29-Nov-2010
Private Passions - Howard Jacobson
In a programme recorded and first broadcast in 2002, Michael Berkeley talks to writer Howard Jacobson, whose latest novel 'The Finkler Question' has just won the 2010 Man Booker Prize. Renowned for his razor-sharp humour and irreverent wit, he has also written several works of non-fiction, including a book on the theory and history of comedy. His tastes in music, as revealed to Michael, are eclectic, ranging from a Bach cantata, a Schubert piano trio and operatic extracts by Mozart and Puccini to a duet from 'Bless the Bride', the waltz song from Lehar's 'The Merry Widow', and Percy Grainger's poignant setting of the sea shanty 'Shallow Brown'.
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22-Nov-2010
Private Passions - Terence Blanchard
In a programme first broadcast in 2008, Michael Berkeley meets the New Orleans-born trumpeter Terence Blanchard, who became a leading figure in the Jazz Resurgence movement of the 1980s, and has since pursued a highly successful dual career as performer and as composer of film scores, especially for director Spike Lee. He is currently artistic director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in New Orleans. His choices include works by Stravinsky, Debussy, Richard Strauss, Gershwin and Weather Report.
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15-Nov-2010
Private Passions - Zdenka Fantlova
Michael Berkeley's guest on Remembrance Sunday is the Czech-born former actress Zdenka Fantlova, a survivor of several infamous Nazi concentration camps including Terezin, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, in which she lost all other members of her family. Now in her 80s, she talks movingly about her experiences in Terezin, where she was among a vibrant community of artists, writers, actors, musicians and composers, who were encouraged by Nazi propagandists to exercise their creativity in performances and artistic events. She recalls standing next to the great Czech conductor Karel Ancerl as they worked in the camp kitchens, and happily discussing music by Dvorak and Smetana. Later, after the community was deported to Auschwitz, where many of them died, she was behind Ancerl in the selection queue, and saw his wife and their baby son being sent to the 'left' - the gas chambers -, while she and Ancerl were among the luckier deportees who went to the right and had a chance to survive. She also tells how her knowledge of English (picked up from hit songs of the time like 'You Are My Lucky Star') literally saved her life when, on the point of death in Bergen-Belsen, she was able to persuade a British soldier to get her out of the barracks and to hospital in the nick of time. One of the most striking aspects of her character is her amazing will to survive, and she resolutely refuses to see herself as a victim.As she tells Michael, although her terrible experiences were man-made, rather than a natural disaster, she believes that they nevertheless enriched her life. Her music choices include works by Czech composers Dvorak, Smetana and her fellow Terezin inmate Gideon Klein, as well as a Chopin study, a Mozart symphony and her father's favourite, Strauss's Radetzky March.
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08-Nov-2010
Private Passions - Arabella Weir
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the comedian, actress and writer Arabella Weir, who created the character of Insecure Woman in the hit TV series The Fast Show, and has recently used that character's catch phrase 'Does my bum look big in this?' as the title of an international best-seller, dealing with female insecurity about weight issues. She also starred with Richard E Grant in the 2003 comedy series Posh Nosh, and is often seen on the BBC2 comedy series Grumpy Old Women. She has written other best-selling books, and contributes to newspapers and journals such as The Independent and The Guardian. Arabella thought about taking up singing as a career, and extracts from Mozart's Don Giovanni (in the Joseph Losey film version, which she loves) and Verdi's La Traviata frame her list of choices . Her ambassador father used to play the piano, and the Scherzo from Schubert's Piano Sonata in B flat, D960, recalls for her his impatient efforts, littered with expletives! Her Scottish heritage is reflected in two traditional songs, Kathleen Ferrier singing Blow the wind southerly, and The Skye Boat Song, while she chose Alfred Deller singing 'The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies' as the theme music for Posh Nosh, thinking that it would appeal to the kind of pretentious people she was satirising. Her remaining choices are the opening movement of Beethoven's 'Ghost' Piano Trio, one of the first pieces of pure classical music she came to love, and Claudio Arrau playing the first movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata in A minor, KV310. At the end of the programme, she gives an unexpected demonstration of her vocal powers, in competition with Montserrat Caballe!
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01-Nov-2010
Private Passions - Shirley Williams
Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, is one of Britain's most prominent politicians. The daughter of pacifist and writer Vera Brittain and the philosopher Sir George Catlin, she graduated from Oxford University and was elected as a Labour MP in 1964. Between 1971 and 1973 she served as shadow Home Secretary and until she lost her parliamentary seat in 1979, held cabinet posts in James Callaghan's government. In 1981 she was one of the 'Gang of Four' who founded the SDP, and served as an SDP MP until losing her seat in the 1983 General Election. During the 1990s she was a professor at Harvard University, and in 1993 became a life peer. From 2001-2004 she served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, of which she remains an active member. Many of her musical choices are related to particular periods of her life. The 'Storm at Sea' Interlude from Britten's 'Peter Grimes' recalls her links with East Anglia, while an excerpt from Handel's Messiah and Kathleen Ferrier singing The Northumbrian folksong The Keel Row remind her of a time she sang in Messiah as a teenager, and then spent time working in the North East of England. Copland's Appalachian Spring recalls her American experiences; while she first encountered the music of Schubert in Germany, and learnt to appreciate its subtlety and beauty. Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water epitomises the politically turbulent decade of the 1960s, while Purcell's 'The Plaint' from The Fairy Queen brings to mind the anguish of personal bereavement.
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25-Oct-2010
Private Passions - Ian McDiarmid
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the Scottish actor Ian McDiarmid, who has won many awards for his stage performances from a variety of Shakespeare plays to Brian Friel's Faith Healer in London and on Broadway. He recently starred at the Donmar Warehouse in the title role of John Gabriel Borkman and as the Elector in Heinrich von Kleist's drama The Prince of Homburg. From 1990 to 2001, he and Jonathan Kent served jointly as artistic directors of the Almeida Theatre in London, working with actors such as Kevin Spacey and Ralph Fiennes. Since 1968 he has appeared in 47 films, most notably in the epic Star Wars trilogies, in which he played the villain Palpatine. On TV his many roles have included the Stuart statesman Edward Hyde in the BBC series Charles II: The Power and the Passion, and Denis Thatcher, opposite Lindsey Duncan as the Prime Minister, in the 2009 drama Margaret. Ian McDiarmid confesses that at heart he'd like to be an opera singer, and he particularly coverts the roles that Britten wrote for Peter Pears. His musical choices begin with two Britten works - the second movement (Waltz) of the Piano Concerto, and the poignant aria 'Look. Through the port comes the moonshine astray' from the opera Billy Budd, sung by Billy the night before his execution. They continue with Janet Baker singing Schubert's 'Gretchen am Spinnrade', and an excerpt from the Scottish composer James MacMillan's dramatic setting of the St John Passion. Drama and passion combine in the searing end of Act One of Shostakovich's opera 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk'; followed by poems by Wordsworth and Burns read by Robert Donat and Tom Fleming; a setting of Burns' Ae fond kiss sung by Kenneth McKellar, and finally the rousing finale of Bernstein's On the Town.
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18-Oct-2010
Private Passions - Marina Lewycka
Marina Lewycka, a post-war baby born to Ukrainian parents in a German refugee camp, has lived in England since she was one. Her parents settled in a village near Pontefract, and she has lived in south Yorkshire for much of her life. She read English and Philosophy at Keele University, enrolled for a PhD at Kings College, London, and then spent many years as an unpublished writer, before finally achieving huge success, at the age of 58, with the novel 'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian'. Her two subsequent novels, 'Two Caravans' and 'We Are All Made of Glue', also deal with aspects of immigrant life, treated with wry humour and great poignancy. Her musical passions, as revealed to Michael Berkeley, begin with two classics of the Baroque repertoire, Bach's First Brandenburg Concerto, and the aria 'I know that my Redeemer liveth', from Handel's Messiah. The Sibelius Violin Concerto was as great favourite of her father, who died recently; while Marina herself has attempted to play her next choice, Mozart's Piano Sonata in F, K332. She loves music that tells a story, and has chosen the March to the Scaffold from Berlioz's 'Symphonie fantastique', for its narrative energy. She says that all writers aspire to the ability to draw joy out of sadness, which Mozart does to consummate effect in the Countess's aria 'Dove sono' from 'The Marriage of Figaro'. Marina's own origins are referenced in the traditional Ukrainian folksong 'The Black Raven', while her deep love of nature is reflected in the sound of a dawn chorus greeting the coming day.
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04-Oct-2010
Private Passions - Graham Vick
Graham Vick, Artistic Director of the Birmingham Opera Company, is one of the leading opera directors of our time. His productions have been seen all over the world, from La Scala, Milan and the Kirov in St Petersburg to Paris, Munich, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and all the major British opera houses. His pioneering work in Birmingham is seen to be at the forefront of the modernisation of opera, opening it up to new audiences. As Graham Vick's work is primarily with opera, he prefers to relax by listening to a variety of vocal and instrumental music. His choices start with the 14th-century 'Messe de Notre Dame' by Guillaume de Machaut, and continue with the madrigal 'Vorrei baciarti' by Monteverdi. Then there's Chopin's Prelude in C sharp minor, Op.45, played by Benedetti Michelangeli, followed by an early afternoon Indian rag played by Ravi Shankar. The Finale of Beethoven's String Quartet in C sharp minor, Op.131, played by the Alban Berg Quartet precedes Graham Vick's only operatic selection - an extract from Mozart's 'Magic Flute', which for him is perhaps the most sublime example of a master craftsman at work. His programme ends with the final chorus from Leonard Bernstein's musical 'Candide', which sums up Graham Vick's philosophy of 'making our garden grow'.
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28-Sep-2010
Private Passions - Alan Sillitoe
Nottingham-born Alan Sillitoe, one of the 'Angry Young Men' generation of British writers, died earlier this year at the age of 82. The author of many novels, poetry collections and an auobiography, he shot to fame in 1958 on the publication of 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning', a gritty depiction of contemporary urban working-class life in the Midlands. The novel was filmed by Karel Reisz in 1960, starring the young Albert Finney as its anti-hero. Sillitoe's other best-known book, 'The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner', appeared in 1959, and was filmed three years later by Tony Richardson, starring Tom Courtenay. Alan Sillitoe was a keen music-lover, and his choices include Jerome Kern's 'Ol' Man River', sung by Paul Robeson; Maria Callas singing 'Casta diva' from Bellini's opera 'Norma'; Vaughan Williams' arrangement of the English folk-song 'Seventeen Come Sunday', Artur Rubinstein playing a Chopin Prelude, and two pieces by Soviet composers, reflecting Sillitoe's lifelong interest in the Soviet Union - an excerpt from Prokofiev's ballet 'Romeo and Juliet', and Shostakovich's 'The Execution of Stepan Razin'.
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20-Sep-2010
Private Passions - Jackie Kay
Michael Berkeley's guest on 'Private Passions' this week is the Scottish novelist and poet Jackie Kay MBE,whose work has won many awards including the Guardian Fiction Prize (for 'Trumpet', 1998), and the 2008 CLPE Poetry Award (for 'Red, Cherry Red). A mixed-race child, she was adopted at birth by a white couple and brought up in Glasgow, going on to read English at Stirling University. Her first collection of poetry, 'The Adoption Papers' (1991), was inspired by a her own experiences, and many of her poetry collections and novels (including the latest, 'Red Dust Road', 2010), explore key themes of cultural identity. Several of her works have been inspired by musicians, including Bessie Smith and jazz trunpeter Billy Tipton. Jackie Kay's personal musical favourites begin with one of Janacek's 'Lachian Dances', (two of her stories were influenced by works by Janacek), and then dive into the Baroque era with an extract from Pergolesi's 'Stabat mater' and a movement from a Bach cello suite played by Pablo Casals - she says that the cello is one of her favourite instruments and she loves Bach's emotional literacy. Then comes Nina Simone singing 'Four Women', which Jackie Kay says has a haunting and arresting quality, followed by Jessye Norman singing 'September' from Strauss's 'Four Last Songs'. Her next choice is 'Heygana' by Ali Farka Toure, which fuses African, blues and jazz, followed by the black American tenor Roland Hayes singing Schubert's 'Nacht und Traume'. Her Scottish roots are represented by the voice of Jean Redpath singing the poignant song of exile, 'Leaving the Land', while her final choice, Cole Porter's 'Brush Up Your Shakespeare' from 'Kiss Me Kate' has always been a favourite of her father's.
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13-Sep-2010
Private Passions - Peter Bazalgette
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is Peter Bazalgette, the British media entrepreneur who has been a leading light in the independent TV production sector, responsible for reality shows such as the UK version of 'Big Brother', and lifestyle shows such as 'Ground Force' , 'Changing Rooms', and 'Ready, Steady, Cook!' He went on to be Creative Director of the highly successful global TV company Endemol, and now sits on many company boards, including English National Opera. His mother was a pianist, and his first choice for 'Private Passions' is Alfred Brendel playing Schubert's Impromptu No.3 in G flat, which his mother used to play. He was in the school choir, and remembers singing Britten's 'A Ceremony of Carols', from which he has chosen 'Deo gracias!' He has also chosen the opening movement of Bach's Concerto for piano No.1 in D minor, played by Dinu Lipatti, who died tragically young, while the first movement of Strauss's Oboe Concerto, written when the composer was in his 80s, he feels is a remarkable example of optimism and vitality . Peter Bazalgette was introduced to opera by his wife, and loves opera sung in English (as at ENO). He feels that Mozart's 'The Magic Flute' is one of the most appealing and accessible operas for a newcomer, and has chosen 'A Man in Search of Truth and Beauty' from Act I. The lighter side of his musical passions is represented by Jack Hylton's dance band, and by 'In My Life' by The Beatles - the soundtrack, he says, for baby boomers' adolescence. Finally, there's the famous opening music by Carl Davis for the TV series 'Pride and Prejudice', played by his friend Melvyn Tan. Peter Bazalgette has been working in TV for 33 years and has commissioned a lot of title music - he feels that this music really works well.
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08-Sep-2010
Private Passions - Sam Taylor-Wood
Michael Berkeley meets Turner Prize-nominated conceptual artist and film-maker Sam Taylor-Wood, whose biopic "Nowhere Boy" traces the early life of John Lennon. Much of Taylor-Wood's work has been inspired by music, from opera to Bach, and her choices range from the opening of Gluck's opera "Orphee et Eurydice" the Kyrie from Mozart's Requiem and the opening of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to an Indian raga, Nina Simone singing "Wild is the Wind", and film scores by Ry Cooder and Michael Nyman.
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30-Aug-2010
Private Passions - Hisham Matar
Michael Berkeley's guest is the novelist Hisham Matar, who was born in New York to an affluent Libyan family. They moved back to Tripoli when he was three, but six years later his father was accused by the revolutionary government of being a reactionary, and the family was forced to flee to Egypt. While Hisham Matar was studying architecture in London, his father was kidnapped from his home in Cairo and delivered to the Libyan secret service. The last the family heard of him was in 1995, and they have no idea whether he is still alive, held as a political prisoner, or dead. Hisham Matar's first novel, 'In the Country of Men', was published in 2006, and nominated for that year's Booker Prize. It is a moving account of the political world of male violence under a brutal dictatorship, mirrored in the domestic sphere where women are the chattels of men. Hisham Matar has chosen a wide range of music for his Private Passions selection, in which various types of Arabic music are interwoven with works by Chopin (his 'Revolutionary' Study Op.10 No.12), Sibelius's Violin Concerto played by Jascha Heifetz, Ligeti ( a piano piece from 'Musica ricercata'), Schubert (the song 'Nacht und Traume), and Bob Dylan (I Shall be Released, sung by Jeff Buckley).
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23-Aug-2010
Private Passions - David Hyde Pierce
US actor David Hyde Pierce is one of the multi-award-winning stars of the American sitcom 'Frasier', in which he played Dr Niles Crane, younger brother of Kelsey Grammer's Frasier Crane. On Broadway he won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in 'Curtains', and went on create the role of Brave Sir Robin in Monty Python's 'Spamalot' musical. He has played a wide range of stage roles from Shakespeare to Chekhov, has appeared in films such as 'Sleepless in Seattle' 'Nixon', and ' A Bug's Life', and starred in a 2007 episode of 'The Simpsons'. He is currently appearing with Mark Rylance and Joanna Lumley in David Hirson's play 'La Bete' at London's Comedy Theatre (his West End debut), before the play transfers to Broadway in the autumn.The play, wittily written in mock-17th-century rhyming couplets, concerns the clash between the high-minded leader of a troupe of actors (Hyde Pierce), and a vulgar street clown (Rylance), who are brought together by their princely patroness (Lumley), in anticipation of an exciting creative combination - but what results is an irreconcilable clash of egos. David Hyde Pierce is both an Anglophile and a great lover of music - he originally hoped to be a concert pianist. He tells Michael Berkeley that he has compiled a list of music as a homage to England, beginning with the Overture to HMS Pinafore, a show in which he directed as a student . His love of the English cathedral tradition is reflected in Parry's anthem 'I was Glad' and his final choice, Louis Vierne's Carillon de Westminster, for organ. There's also Rosalyn Tureck playing Bach and his friend Stephen Hough playing a Mendelssohn piano concerto, as well as an extract from Berlioz's 'Beatrice et Benedict'', conducted by Sir Colin Davis, in which he himself acted.
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16-Aug-2010
Private Passions - Martin Jarvis
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the actor Martin Jarvis, who made his first TV appearance in 1965 as a giant butterfly in 'Doctor Who', and went on two years later to achieve worldwide fame as Jon Forsyte in the BBC's landmark adaptation of Galsworthy's 'The Forsyte Saga'. Since then he has appeared in other period dramas, including the title role in the BBC's 1968 serialisation of 'Nicholas Nickleby', and Uriah Heep in the 1974 BBC version of 'David Copperfield', as well as making guest appearances in a range of TV programmes from 'Doctor Who' to 'Inspector Morse', 'Murder She Wrote', 'The Bill' and 'EastEnders'. He is particularly well known for his many radio dramas, readings and audio books, both comic and serious, and has acted in many stage productions in London and abroad. His personal musical passions begin with the radiant end of Stravinsky's 'Firebird', and continue with Schubert's 'Die Forelle', sung by Janet Baker, followed by Andras Schiff and members of the Hagen Quartet playing the fourth movement of the 'Trout' Quintet, which Schubert based on the melody of his own song. Next comes the famous Toreador Song from Act II of Bizet's 'Carmen', and the slow movement of Mozart's last piano concerto, beautifully played by Clifford Curzon with the English Chamber Orchestra under Benjamin Britten. A light interlude follows with 'Painting the Clouds with Sunshine' by Ambrose and his Orchestra, before we hear Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra in part of the finale of Beethoven's Symphony No.7 in A. Finally. Martin Jarvis has chosen Lucy Parham playing Liszt's piano arrangement of Schumann's song 'Widmung', one of a set written for his wife Clara on their marriage in 1840.
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09-Aug-2010
Private Passions - Tracy Chevalier
Michael Berkeley's guest is the best-selling novelist Tracy Chevalier, whose 'Girl with a Pearl Earring', inspired by Vermeer's enigmatic painting, has sold 4 million copies worldwide and was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johanssen. Her novels so far have been historically based, and include 'The Lady and the Unicorn', inspired by a famous set of medieval tapestries in the Cluny Museum in Paris. Her latest book, 'Remarkable Creatures', tells the story of two early 19th-century female fossil-hunters whose remarkable discoveries pre-dated Darwin and upset the establishment status quo. Tracy Chevalier , who grew up in Washington DC and was educated at Oberlin College, Ohio, and then at the University of East Anglia, has lived in London for over 20 years. She played the clarinet as a child, and her music choices begin with two extracts from symphonies featuring a clarinet solo - Schubert's 'Unfinished' and Dvorak's 'From the New World' - as well as Brahms's Second Clarinet Sonata. Her choices also include two much-loved piano pieces, Schubert's Impromptu in G flat major played by Canadian pianist Paul Berkowitz and Schumann's 'Of Strange Lands and People', played by Alfred Brendel; as well as the Prologue to Leonard Bernstein's masterpiece 'West Side Story'; a piece of plainchant from a medieval part-book found in the Spanish monastery of Montserrat, which inspired Tracy Chevalier while she was writing 'The Lady and the Unicorn', and 'Once in a Lifetime' by Talking Heads.
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02-Aug-2010
Private Passions - Russell Kane
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is the stand-up comedian, actor and media personality Russell Kane, who is currently touring his new show, Smokescreens and Castles, around the UK, including the Edinburgh Festival. He won the Laughing Horse New Act of the Year in 2004, and two years later took his debut comedy show, 'The Theory of Pretension', to the Edinburgh Fringe. In August 2008 he took his stand-up show 'Gaping Flaws' to the Edinburgh Festival, along with his hour-long Fakespeare play, The Lamentable Tragedie of Yates's Wine Lodge, which he also performed at Stratford-upon-Avon. In 2009 he returned to Edinburgh with his play Fakespeare and a new stand-up show, Human Dressage. He has been nominated three times for the major Edinburgh comedy award. (formerly The Perrier). In 2008 he appeared on the BBC's 'Live at the Apollo', and has hosted several series of BBC Radio 2's 'Out to Lunch'. He presents a Sunday afternoon show on Q Radio digital station. Nothing if not erudite, Russell Kane cites Anthony Trollope among his favourite writers and Paula Rego as a favourite artist. His musical private passions begin with the third movement of Beethoven's 'Moonlight' Sonata, which he cites as a musical metaphor for the way his brain works when he is onstage. Bartok's Rhapsody No.1 for violin and piano makes him feel rustic and gleeful, while he fell in love with Chopin's Nocturne No.2 in E flat after watching Polanski's film 'The Pianist'. He loves piano music, and has chosen Debussy's Clair de lune and the Piano Sonata No.3 by Scriabin, whose music reminds him of his own writing process, passion firing off in all directions. Finally there's Schubert's Quartettsatz - he says he owes his love of Schubert to the impeccable taste of Woody Allen.
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27-Jul-2010
Private Passions - William Orbit
Michael Berkeley's guest is the extraordinarily versatile musician, composer, multi-instrumentalist and record producer William Orbit, whose celebrated remixes carry his signature electronic sounds and techniques, making him much sought after by major artists. He produced Madonna's album Ray of Light, and numbers Blur, All Saints, Sugababes, Katie Melua and Finley Quaye among other clients. In the past few years he has also released several albums of his own, and in 2007 he composed his first suite for symphony orchestra. He works as part of the art collective Luxor, with the ballet dancer Anna-Mi Fredriksson and the artist Pauline Amos. His eclectic personal musical choices include an early 16th-century motet by the French composer Jean Mouton, an aria from the 1735 opera 'Polifemo' by the Italian composer Nicolo Porpora, and another from Bellini's opera 'La sonnambula', sung by Maria Callas; part of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, played by David Shifrin and the Emerson Quartet; the opening movement of Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements, and the last part of the music Benjamin Britten wrote in the 1930s for the GPO film 'Night Mail'. There's also an example of William Orbit's own work: his arrangement of the 'Aquarium' movement from Saint-Saens' 'Carnival of the Animals'.
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19-Jul-2010
Private Passions - Nick Clegg
Michael Berkeley's guest today is Nick Clegg, Leader of the Liberal Democrats and MP for Sheffield Hallam. He was born in 1967, the third of four children of a half-Russian father and a Dutch mother. He speaks fluent Dutch, French, German and Spanish, and has a Spanish wife. After beginning his career as a journalist and development aid and trade expert for the European Commission, he was elected as an MEP in 1999, writing many essays on public policy issues. He was elected MP for Sheffield Hallam in 2005, and succeeded Menzies Campbell as party leader in December 2007. Since this programme was first broadcast in October 2008, he has become Deputy Prime Minister in the newly-elected coalition government. He admits that being an MP and particularly party leader, is such a full-time job (especially also having small children), that it doesn't leave very much time for leisure activities, but he loves listening to music when he can. His wife plays the piano, and three of his choices are of music played by pianists he greatly admires: a Schubert Impromptu in E flat minor played by Alfred Brendel, a Chopin waltz played by Claudio Arrau, and the slow movement of Chopin's Second Piano Concerto, played by Vladimir Ashkenazy. His other choices are Mozart's Laudate Dominum, K339, Schubert's terrifying song Erlkonig, sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Gerald Moore; and Richard Strauss's radiant Beim Schlafengehen, one of the Four Last Songs, sung by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. (Rpt).
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12-Jul-2010
Private Passions - Scott Turow
Michael Berkeley's guest this week is Scott Turow, the American attorney and best-selling crime writer. From 1978 to 1986 he was Assistant US Attorney in his native Chicago, prosecuting several high-profile corruption cases. He now works as a partner in a Chicago law firm, and has defended several death row cases, while also pursuing a highly successful career as a novelist. His legal thrillers, including 'The Burden of Proof', 'Personal Injuries', 'Presumed Innocent' and its new sequel, 'Innocent',have won many literary awards, and several have been filmed, including the 1990 movie of 'Presumed Innocent' , starring Harrison Ford. Scott Turow is a keen music lover, and his choices, as revealed to Michael Berkeley, begin with a Bach Brandenburg Concerto, to which he was introduced by his neighbour, a fine oboist; 'Bess, you is my woman now' from Gershwin's opera 'Porgy and Bess', which he feels doesn't get performed as often as it should for political reasons; two arias by Puccini, which he learnt to love as a child; Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring', which he admires for its experimental nature; Sondheim's 'Send in the Clowns', and songs from The Byrds and Pink Martini. Producer: Chris Marshall.
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05-Jul-2010
Private Passions - Barbara Stocking
Michael Berkeley's guest today is Dame Barbara Stocking, Chief Executive Officer of Oxfam. Born into a working-class Methodist family in Rugby, she grew up with a strong sense of the values of community and of helping other people, and after studying at Cambridge and Wisconsin Universities she decided to make a career in international development. She worked first on the Science and Heath programme in the USA, then for the NHS and the World Health Organization, before becoming in 2001 the first woman to take the helm at Oxfam, one of the UK's best-known international development charities. Music has always been a passion. She learnt the piano at school, where she first sang in Bach's B minor Mass (her first choice), and then discovered opera while studying at Cambridge. Today her love of opera is represented by an aria from Mozart's 'Marriage of Figaro', while Mozart features again with his last piano concerto, No.27 in B flat, played by Daniel Barenboim, who Barbara Stocking greatly admires for his work in the Middle East. The beautiful Notturno from Borodin's Second String Quartet reminds her of early dates with her husband, when they often went to chamber music concerts, while the importance of countries such as Africa and Latin America in her life is represented by the South African national anthem sung by women of the Calabash; Agustin Lara's 'Granada', sung by Jose Carreras at the famous Three Tenors concert at the 1990 World Cup, and finally music by Juan Luis Guerra, an artist she discovered recently in the Dominican Republic after visiting post-earthquake Haiti.
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28-Jun-2010
Private Passions - Thomas Allen
Michael Berkeley's guest today is Sir Thomas Allen, whose trajectory from modest origins in the North East of England to international acclaim as one of the finest operatic baritones of our time in part inspired the story of 'Billy Elliot'. After studying singing at the Royal College of Music he made his professional operatic debut as Rossini's Figaro over 40 years ago, and has gone on to sing many leading roles in a range of works from Mozart to Benjamin Britten at the world's great opera houses and festivals. He is widely admired in the operatic world for his beautiful voice, versatility in repertoire, and supreme acting ability. This season his roles have included Don Alfonso (Cosi fan tutte), Faninal (Der Rosenkavalier), Gianni Schicchi and Beckmesser (Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg). Thomas Allen's private musical passions, as revealed to Michael Berkeley, encompass three operatic excerpts - the Overture to Humperdinck's 'Hansel and Gretel', which he loves both for its childlike simplicity and Wagnerian overtones; the Prelude to Act III of Wagner's 'Die Meistersinger', and the final scene of Monteverdi's 'The Return of Ulysses' in Jeffrey Tate's recording of the controversial arrangement by Hans Werner Henze, in which Allen himself sings the role of Ulysses. There's also an excerpt from Schubert's great Fantasia in F minor for piano duet, and the 'Moonlight' episode from Frank Bridge's tone-poem 'The Sea', which reminds him of his own origins in a North-Eastern fishing village.
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