Private Passions

Some 40 years ago, Teresa Keswick exchanged her career as a London lawyer for life as a nun in an enclosed and largely silent Carmelite monastery in Norfolk. She’s devoted her life to prayer and work and has become a highly skilled embroiderer. Since 2014 she’s written a regular column for The Oldie magazine. In a special programme, originally broadcast on Easter Day 2021, Sister Teresa shares her fascinating life story and the music she loves with Michael Berkeley. Teresa tells Michael about her initial reluctance to accept her vocation and leave her busy social life in London for a remote monastery in the Norfolk countryside and the contentment she eventually found in the strict daily routine of prayer and work. She chooses pieces by Handel and by Beethoven that reflect her life before she became a nun, and two pieces of plainchant that play a central role in the life of her community. She describes her ongoing love of 1960s pop music and we hear a song by Simon and Garfunkel that she still plays when she has a day off from work, once a month. And she appreciates the importance of having fun – in life and in music – choosing the party scene from the opening of La traviata, which recalls a wonderful evening at the opera when she lived in London. Teresa describes how her community celebrates Easter Day and chooses music from Bach’s Mass in B Minor; she says this music is the only thing that comes close to describing Christ’s resurrection. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Bill Browder describes himself as Vladimir Putin’s number one enemy. When Putin came to power, Browder was the most successful international businessman in Moscow, seizing the opportunities offered by the collapse of communism to build up a multi-billion-pound investment fund. But then he uncovered what he calls serious corruption at various state-backed companies. In 2005, he was detained by the authorities and was kicked out of Russia. His tax adviser Sergei Magnitsky was arrested, and died in prison in Moscow in 2009. In his memory, Browder has spent the past decade leading a global campaign against Russian corruption – Magnitsky Acts have now been passed in America, Britain and Europe – legislation freezing the assets, and banning travel, of officials guilty of human rights violations. Browder’s exciting account of his time in Russia, Red Notice, has become a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Browder tells his extraordinary and compelling personal story. He now lives in a secret location somewhere in London and lives in fear of his life. He talks about the guilt he felt when Magnitsky died, and how he found a new meaning in life afterwards, by campaigning for the laws which bear Magnitsky’s name. Browder’s music choices reflect the high drama of his life, with excerpts from operas by Verdi and by Puccini which he discovered when he went to the Bolshoi in Moscow. He includes too music by the Russian composer Sviridov, a setting of a Pushkin short story. And he ends with Jessye Norman singing “Amazing Grace” – a hymn which reflects his belief that he has been helped, and sustained, by powerful forces outside his control.A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

The shepherd and writer James Rebanks shares his favourite music with Michael Berkeley and describes how he is restoring the balance of nature on his Lake District hill farm.James Rebanks’s family have lived and farmed in Cumbria for over six hundred years. His grandfather taught him to work their land in the old-fashioned way, but by the time James took over from his father, modern industrial methods and economic pressures had made hill farming almost impossible. James has told the story of his farm, his family, and his renewed hope for the future, in two best-selling books: "The Shepherd’s Life" and "English Pastoral".James tells Michael about the challenges and pleasures of spring for a shepherd, with long days and nights lambing his beloved Herdwick sheep, and his relief at the end of winter. He describes the tensions in his relationship with his father when he was growing up and how films brought them together; he chooses film scores by John Barry and by Jerome Moross. James’s mother introduced him to books and classical music and Rachmaninov particularly reminds him of his mother.James tells Michael the extraordinary story of his education: dropping out of school at 15 with just two O levels, he won a place at Oxford in his early twenties and gained a double first in History. And he pays a moving tribute to his wife Helen with music by Michael Nyman as together they witness the joyful return of wildlife to their farm.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Dublin-born artist Sean Scully is known worldwide for his abstract paintings of blocks and stripes of bold colour. You can see his work in the Tate, the Guggenheim, and the National Gallery of Ireland, among many other prestigious collections. He was brought up in what he describes as “abject poverty” and his paintings now fetch more than a million pounds; he and his wife and son fly back and forth between two homes, one south of Munich and one in New York. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Sean looks back at his post-war childhood. His Irish father was a deserter and the family was on the run, often living with travellers. Once they moved to London, his mother earned a living as a vaudeville singer; she had an act with the transvestite performer next door. Sean worked as a builder’s labourer but discovered art through going to church with his Catholic grandmother. The stained-glass windows made an unforgettable impression. He went to night school, determined to be an artist, but was rejected by eleven art schools. He discusses the toughness needed to become an artist, especially in “brutal” New York. He admits that his restlessness now – constantly moving around the world, and buying up property – is a legacy from his traveller childhood. And he reveals the power music has over him when he’s painting.Music choices include Brahms’ Cello Sonata No 1' Schubert’s String Quintet; Kodály’s Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello; Beethoven’s "Pastoral" Symphony; and Bartok’s First String Quartet. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Caroline Bird was only fifteen when she had her first collection of poems published; she’s been writing since she was eight, hiding in the corner behind her bunk beds at home. This was in Leeds, where Caroline was brought up, the daughter of playwright Michael Birch and theatre director Jude Kelly. She’s now published six collections of poetry, along with a clutch of plays for theatre and radio. Her latest poetry sequence “The Air Year” was awarded the prestigious Forward Prize for the best collection of poetry published this last year. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Caroline Bird talks about the impact of being published as a teenager, and about the depression that led her to drug addiction by the time she was a student. She confesses she finds classical music without words almost unbearably emotional – as a child, it made her deeply sad. Understanding that sadness and coming to terms with it, she returns now to music she heard when she was young, going as far back as the music her mother played to her in the womb. Music choices include Rachmaninov’s Sonata for Cello and Piano; Janet Baker singing Elgar’s Sea Pictures; Billie Holiday; and Lionel Bart's Oliver!Produced by Elizabeth BurkeA Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

The economist Tim Harford shares his passion for contemporary classical music with Michael Berkeley.Tim Harford has for many years been the Undercover Economist at the Financial Times; he is the author of nine books, and is a familiar voice on Radio 4 as the presenter of More or Less, Fifty Things that Made the Modern Economy, and now also How to Vaccinate the World.Tim is on a mission to show us how, if properly investigated and explained, good statistics can help us see things about the world and about ourselves that we would not be able to see in any other way. He was awarded an OBE for services to improving economic understanding in 2019.Tim talks to Michael Berkeley about how his love of music developed in childhood, encouraged by his father, who introduced him to composers such as Janáček and Britten. He chooses music by his favourite contemporary composers Philip Glass, Brian Eno and Steve Reich, and a beautiful piece of choral music by Arvo Pärt that was sung at his wedding.Tim spends his working life pursuing cool-headed analysis of statistics and data but he reveals to Michael Berkeley the piece of music that makes him surrender to his most passionate emotions.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Rachel Clarke is a doctor who specialises in palliative care. She’s now on the Covid frontline; in March 2020 she moved to Horton General Hospital outside Banbury to care for the most gravely unwell patients on the Covid Wards. She’s the author of three books: the first, about being a junior doctor; the second, which was read on Radio 4, “Dear Life”, about working with the dying, and most recently, “Breath-taking”, which describes in moving detail what it’s been like in hospitals during the pandemic. In a moving programme recorded in mid-January, Rachel Clarke gives a frontline report from the hospital where she works. When she looks out of the window, she sees lines of parked cars – and people just sitting in them, watching the hospital, for hours: unable to visit their loved ones, they are just getting as close as they can, yearning for a glimpse through the windows. Instead, nursing staff must give loving care to people who are at the end of their lives - Rachel reassures listeners that nobody in hospital will ever die alone. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Rachel Clarke reveals the music that gives her courage and hope on the way to the hospital every morning. She talks about the difficulty of explaining to her children why she has taken such personal risks to treat Covid patients, and shockingly she reveals the kind of abuse she faces on social media from people who think that Covid is fake. Music choices include Vaughan Williams, Bach, and Tchaikovsky. She loves Jimi Hendrix too, and tells the story of driving down to the South of France with the man who will become her husband, terrified to tell him she loves him, listening to Hendrix all the way. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3. Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Jamie Parker shot to fame as one of Alan Bennett’s original History Boys – he was the one who played the piano. In this week’s Private Passions he tells Michael Berkeley about the vital role music plays in his life. A decade after The History Boys Jamie took the title role in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the marathon West End and Broadway show which won nine Olivier Awards, including Best Actor for Jamie. In between, he has sung in Sondheim, Gilbert and Sullivan and the Sinatra tribute Prom, and appeared in films such as 1917 and Valkyrie. And he has starred at Shakespeare’s Globe – memorably as the recorder-playing Prince Hal. Jamie shares with Michael his lifelong passion for the clarinet – he chooses Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto, which he has played himself, as well as music by Gershwin and by Louis Armstrong with inspiring clarinet parts. Two of Jamie’s favourite pieces of music come from films he loved as a child – Henry Mancini’s score for Blake Edwards’ The Great Race and the music for Watership Down by the neglected composer Angela Morley. Jamie shares her remarkable story: born a man, she transitioned in 1972 and was a largely self-taught musician. She wrote extensively for film, television and radio, including the theme tune for Hancock’s Half Hour, and she won three Emmys and was twice nominated for an Oscar.And Jamie reveals how, in his long quest to play it, he instilled an enduring love of Rhapsody in Blue in his childhood dog. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Since the publication of her first novel while she was still in her twenties, Nadifa Mohamed has been a writer to watch. Her second novel, The Orchard of Lost Souls, won her the Somerset Maugham Award and gave her a place on the prestigious Granta List of Best Young Novelists. She’s about to publish her third novel, and is also turning it into an opera – a commission from the Royal Opera House. What’s striking in all her work is the epic sweep of her storytelling, which explores themes of exile and survival: her characters are caught up by war and love. Nadifa herself left Somali-land in northern Somalia when civil war broke out and she was only four when she came to Britain in 1985. She talks to Michael Berkeley about her dramatic family history, and about her father, who was a travelling troubadour in Sudan. She pays tribute too to the Somali musician Hudeidi, who died of Covid this last April. He was her teacher on the oud for seven years, and her mentor, and she spent many evenings jamming with him in his west London flat. Her musical choices range from Pergolesi, Purcell and Vaughan Williams to Max Richter, Toumani Diabate and Louis Armstrong. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Michael Berkeley talks to disc jockey David ‘Kid’ Jensen about his career in pop music and his lifelong love of classical music. In 1968 David Jensen left his native Canada to become the youngest member of Radio Luxembourg’s original ‘all live’ line up. He was just 18 – hence his enduring nickname, ‘Kid’. Since then he’s never been off the air, working at Radio 1, Radio 2, Capital Radio, Heart, and picking up five Gold Sony Awards along the way. And for many people of a certain age his appearances with John Peel on Top of the Pops were the highlight of their week. David tells Michael about his first job in radio, at the age of just 16, playing classical music on a radio station in his native British Colombia and he chooses music by Dvorak that reminds him of that time. His passion for opera is reflected in arias by Italian composers and a contemporary Icelandic composer, in honour of his Icelandic wife, Gudrun, and their happy marriage of 45 years. In 2013 David was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and he talks movingly about the challenges of living with the disease and the determination and optimism with which he has faced it. And he shares memories of practical jokes at Radio 1; holidays with Paul and Linda McCartney; football matches with The Rolling Stones; and how Billy Bragg helped launch his career by delivering a curry to David and John Peel at Broadcasting House. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Anyone who saw Sheku Kanneh-Mason play the cello at the Royal Wedding, or win BBC Young Musician of the Year at the age of only 17, will realise that he comes from the most extraordinary family. Two of his siblings are also Young Musician finalists, and his older sister, Isata, is a professional pianist. Collectively the seven Kanneh-Mason children make music wherever they are. During lockdown, that was the family home in Nottingham, from which they performed live on Facebook.Michael Berkeley’s guest is their mother, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason: the woman who inspires them, who gets up before dawn to drive them to lessons and trains, who organises their practice schedules, who dances with them in the kitchen. She tells Michael Berkeley about how she does it – and why. She looks back on her childhood in Sierra Leone, and the huge transition of coming to live with her grandparents in Wales after her father died. She reveals her own musical ambition – to play the violin – and discusses how she manages to get the children to practise. She explores with Michael the question of prejudice in the classical music world. And she plays the reggae song the family will be dancing to at Christmas. Other choices include Verdi’s “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”, Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio, Mozart’s Requiem, Schubert’s Trout Quintet and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Deep River”. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

On this darkest day of the year, Judith Herrin brings to Private Passions the dazzling gold of medieval icons and mosaics: she has spent a lifetime exploring the history of Byzantium, that thousand-year civilization which led Europe out of the dark ages and into the modern era. She’s one of our greatest historians of the early medieval Mediterranean world, that melting pot of East and West, Christianity, Islam and paganism. She’s worked in Paris, Munich, Istanbul and Princeton, and is currently Emeritus Professor of Byzantine Studies at King’s College London. She is the author of eleven books, and her latest is a fascinating study of the north-Italian city of Ravenna, famous for its gold mosaics and once the centre of the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about her passion for Ravenna, which she first visited as a teenager. The mosaics there made an unforgettable impression – an almost mystical experience. As a young woman, Judith Herrin spent her summers in Prades in Southern France, working on a peach farm by day and going to hear Pablo Casals at night. She chooses a memorable archive performance of Casals, as well as a recording of Jacqueline du Pré, who was a friend when she was growing up. Her own instrument is the bassoon and she chooses bassoon music by Mozart and by Janáček. And she has never forgotten seeing The Doors at the Roundhouse in the mid-60s, with revolution in the air and the excitement of creating a new kind of history. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Michael Berkeley talks to Alexandra Harris, one of the very first Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers, about her passions for landscape, weather and music.As the evenings draw in and the weather gets colder, Alexandra Harris could not be happier. There’s no greater fan of English weather – even the miserable cold, wet variety – so much so that she’s written a book about it – Weatherland: Writers and Artists under English Skies.Alexandra is a Professor of Literature at the University of Birmingham, is this year’s chair of the Forward Prizes for Poetry, and among her other highly praised books are a biography of Virginia Woolf, and Romantic Moderns, about the complex relationship between modernism and tradition in English art and literature, which won the Guardian First Book Award. Alexandra tells Michael about her love of weather, winter and Schubert’s Winterreise, and about the music that conjures up the English landscapes that mean so much to her: we hear pieces by Britten, by the violinist Laura Cannell and by the Norfolk composer Simon Rowland-Jones.Alexandra’s twin passions, for early church music and for the quiet of the evening, are brought together in music by Tallis written for the monastic service of Compline – and she acknowledges how lucky she is to be able to listen to it in the warmth and comfort of her home rather than in a freezing medieval monastery. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Mike Brearley, the former England cricket captain, talks to Michael Berkeley about the wide range of classical music that inspires him.Mike is one of the most successful cricket captains of all time, winning 17 tests for England and losing only four. No one who follows the game will forget the so-called ‘miracle’ of the 1981 Ashes: recalled as captain, Mike galvanised the demoralised team in one of the greatest-ever feats of sporting psychology - and led England to an astonishing 3-1 series victory.The Australian fast bowler Rodney Hogg famously described Mike as having ‘a degree in people’ – and that’s particularly appropriate as he’s gone on to have a long and successful second career as a psychoanalyst, as well as writing a series of books and working as a cricket journalist. Mike talks to Michael Berkeley about the close engagement he has with music – he listens with the same intensity and concentration he brought to test cricket and that he brings to his work as a psychoanalyst.He chooses music by Bach, Monteverdi, and Tchaikovsky, and a Mozart sonata that reminds him of his father, also a first-class cricketer.Mike is drawn to the complexity and darkness of music written by Beethoven and by Schubert at the very end of their lives and to an opera by Harrison Birtwistle that he finds challenging and difficult but ultimately enlightening.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Sarah Perry’s novels are like extraordinary highly coloured dreams - or nightmares. Her bestseller The Essex Serpent features a mythical sea-creature that roams the Blackwater marshes, and the novel that followed, Melmoth, is a terrifying gothic tale with a female ghost who always seems to be just behind you, almost out of sight. In Private Passions, Sarah Perry talks to Michael Berkeley about ghosts and Gothic nightmares, and admits that the ghost in Melmoth haunted her too. She wrote the book high on painkillers amidst the ‘torment’ of spinal collapse, an experience of pain which thankfully she recovered from, but which has changed her view of life. She looks back on her upbringing in the Strict Baptist Chapel, in which popular culture was banned – but classical music was played on speakers so large they reached her shoulders, and Beethoven blasted her out of bed at night.She talks too about Essex, and trying to live down the social shame of being an “Essex Girl” – before realising that Essex girls have a proud tradition, and being an Essex girl was something to aspire to: loud, pleasure-loving, refusing to fit in. Sarah Perry was a viola player as a child, and her music choices include one of Hindemith’s sonatas for viola – which she describes as “the Essex girl of instruments”. She also loves late Beethoven quartets, and Dvorak, and Bach, and the contemporary composer Stephen Crowe, whose setting of fragments from Sappho is one of her choices. She hates jazz – well, almost all jazz. She invites us to hear the one track that completely seduced her. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Michael Berkeley talks to writer, photographer and broadcaster Johny Pitts about the music from his European and American heritage that inspires him. Johny was brought up on a housing estate in a tough part of Sheffield, the son of an African-American father and a mother of Irish descent. His prize-winning book, Afropean: Notes from Black Europe, describes his recent five-month journey through Europe exploring the idea of a shared black European identity. He’s a musician too, part of the Sheffield-based Bare Knuckle Soul Collective, and classical music also plays a big part in his life.Dvorak inspires two of Johny’s choices: an arrangement of the New World symphony by Raymond Lefevre, and music by Florence Price, the first African-American woman to be recognised as a major symphonic composer. Her story echoes that of Johny’s grandmother, who moved to New York in the great migration of the early 20th century when six million African Americans fled the racism and poverty of the rural South. Johny’s grandmother arrived in New York at the time of the Harlem Renaissance, a period immortalised for Johny by Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Music by Wagner and by Sakamoto brings back strong memories of Johny’s childhood, and both aspects of his cultural identity are brought together in a Russian Rag from the WWI African-American bandleader James Reese Europe.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Gretchen Gerzina says that she’s drawn to writing about those who cross boundaries of time, place, and race. During a distinguished academic career, she’s explored the lives of black people in 18th- and 19th-century Britain and America, and she presented a ten-part series on Britain’s Black Past for Radio 4. She also has a passion for 19th-century children’s books and has written a biography of Secret Garden author Frances Hodgson Burnett - and a biography of Bloomsbury artist Dora Carrington. Gerzina herself has spent a life moving back and forth between two cultures, Britain and the US. Currently Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, as well as teaching, she’s also now writing a memoir about growing up mixed-race in America; she says: “It’s time to put the past to bed.”Her music choices reflect her interest in 18th- and 19th-century black composers and include Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Joseph Boulogne. She reveals, too, a passion for Early Music, with Corelli and Purcell, whose exuberant “Welcome, Welcome Glorious Morn” heads her playlist. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Jack Klaff’s first movie was Star Wars: a two-day booking for which he was paid £250. Star Wars fans still write to ask him for his autograph. But to focus on that one film from 1976 is to miss the rich variety of an acting and directing career that has taken in Shakespeare, James Bond, Chekhov and Midsomer Murders, alongside writing more than a dozen one-man shows for television and the stage. He’s also been involved for thirty years in the public understanding of science, working both in a think-tank in Brussels and as a visiting professor in the US. Brought up in South Africa and the son of a watch-maker, Jack now lives in South London, where he’s set up a home studio so he can do Zoom productions of Beckett. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, he looks back critically at the way he was brought up during Apartheid, and how he was affected when his uncle and aunt were imprisoned as political dissidents by the South African regime. And he talks about what it was like recording Star Wars – a franchise then so unknown that his agent put the booking in the diary as “Stan Wars”. His playlist includes Schubert’s much-loved String Quintet, in a recording he loves from 1956; Yo-Yo Ma playing “Hoedown” with Bobby McFerrin; a late string quartet by Beethoven; Maria Callas in La Traviata; the African song Shosholoza; and Danny Kaye making fun of Russian composers. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the artist Heather Phillipson whose giant swirl of cherry-topped, fly-blown whipped cream has recently been installed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.Heather was a serious classical musician in her teens, and often uses music she’s composed and performed in her work.She talks to Michael about music she’s loved since her childhood, including a Mozart symphony and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf; a radical opera by Robert Ashley from the 1980s that has had a profound influence on her work; piano music by Grieg which reminds her of her grandmother; and the soaring emotional impact of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 5. Produced by Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3.

Professor Anthony David works at the mysterious interface between the mind, the brain and the body. The Director of the Institute of Mental Health at University College London, he’s published 13 books and more than 600 academic articles, and his work focuses on illnesses at the edge of human understanding. He tells Michael Berkeley about some of the patients he’s tried to help over the years: a man who thought he was dead; a strong teenage boy who appeared to be paralysed despite no detectable physical cause; and the manic patient he bonded with during a piano and guitar jamming session in the hospital gymnasium.Music has been central to Anthony’s life since he played the flute in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in his primary school orchestra. He chooses that piece and complements it with Dudley Moore’s hilarious homage to Beethoven. And we hear music Anthony loves from Debussy, Copland, Bach and Sondheim as well as from a school friend who went on to become one of our most celebrated jazz pianists.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

In an emotional and highly personal interview, the former rugby international Brian Moore tells Michael Berkeley about the role music has played during his extraordinary life.Brian is a man of many parts – nicknamed ‘the pitbull’ for his fiercely competitive attitude on the rugby field, he won 64 England caps, playing in three world cups, and in the sides which won three Five Nations grand slams. He toured twice with the British Lions and in 1991 he was voted Rugby World Player of the Year.But he’s also had a parallel career as a City solicitor, is much in demand as a rugby commentator, has written for newspapers not just about sport but wine too, is a passionate fan of Tolkien and Shakespeare, writes books, loves motorbikes and skiing, and even trained as a manicurist when his then wife opened a nail bar in Soho. In a moving tribute to his 92-year-old adoptive mother, Brian chooses her favourite music, by Mendelssohn, and we hear the Overture from The Nutcracker, which he’s seen every year since he was 17 and now shares with his own daughters. We also hear the Mozart aria that convinced Brian it was the right time to retire from rugby. Unafraid to talk openly about his personal lows as well as his sporting highs, Brian reflects on the power music has over his emotions. Indeed, one piece proves to be totally overwhelming and he has to leave the studio while it is playing.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the writer Helen Macdonald, whose book "H is for Hawk" shot to the top of the bestseller lists, not just here but around the world. It’s perhaps no surprise that there’s a certain amount of birdlife in her playlist, from Stravinsky’s The Firebird to a piece inspired by a song thrush by the Finnish-English singer Hanna Tuulikki. She chooses music from A Carol Symphony by Victor Hely-Hutchinson, full of glittering ice, which consoled her when she was working in the UAE. We hear Britten’s Second String Quartet, Lully’s “The Triumph of Love”, Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony and a song by Henry VIII.Helen Macdonald talks about why writing about nature can be a way of holding the world to account, and about how she finds joy in the fields and lanes around her in Suffolk, during this difficult time. She reveals too what it’s like living with her grumpy parrot Birdoole, who steals the keys from her computer keyboard. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

For more than 20 years, in more than 20 books, Peter Stanford has grappled with religious belief. Starting with a book called Catholics and Sex, he’s gone on to write the lives of Martin Luther and Cardinal Hume, and the biography of the campaigning Catholic Lord Longford; he’s published books about the devil, about heaven, and most recently – a fascinating book about angels. They’re works which mix history, theology, literature and art history – and some really honest and funny personal stories; because although he was brought up a Catholic, he says he’s the kind of church-goer who always wants to jump up and argue with the sermon.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Peter Stanford reflects on his Liverpool childhood, and the challenges his mother faced living with MS. He talks about his commitment to prison reform, and his belief in the importance of rehabilitation, even for those who have committed appalling crimes. And he reflects on why so many people believe in angels, even when they say they don’t believe in God or any organised religion. Peter has never seen an angel himself; but at the end of the programme he does tell an extraordinary story about being touched by the supernatural. Music choices include Hildegard of Bingen, Jacqueline du Pre playing Bach, Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate, the political protest singer Harry Chapin, and Jennifer Johnston singing a song that resonates now: “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the forensic ecologist Professor Patricia Wiltshire, a solver of puzzles who has carved out a whole new discipline within forensic science. Patricia solves crimes with her microscope by meticulous examination of tiny particles such as pollen and spores left at crime scenes or found on the clothing of criminals or on their victims. She says: ‘Nature will invariably give up her secrets to those of us who know where to look.’Patricia tells Michael how the course of her life was changed by a phone call from the police asking her to assist on a murder case. She was able to match the pollen left by the shoes of the murderers in their car to the plants where they had dumped the body of their victim, and thus secured their conviction. Since then she has worked on nearly 300 cases including the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham; the Millie Dowler and Sarah Payne cases; and the Ipswich prostitute murders.Patricia chooses music by Chopin that she played when she was learning the piano in her 40s, and music by Hasselmans, which expresses her regret at never having learned to play the harp. We hear Russian ballet music, and a Mozart aria sung by her favourite singer Cecilia Bartoli. Patricia talks movingly about how her grief at the death of her infant daughter allows her to deal with the most distressing aspects of her job. She describes the happiness she finally found with her second husband at the age of 63 and chooses exuberant flamenco music to celebrate their relationship. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Brian Greene is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University in New York; he’s renowned for his ground-breaking discoveries in superstring theory. But the reason he's well known way beyond the scientific community is that he’s so very good at explaining science to a wide popular audience. He’s written six best-selling books, starting with The Elegant Universe, which explains string theory, and most recently Until the End of Time. In 2008 he and his wife founded the annual World Science Festival in New York, which is now held in Australia too, and gets forty million hits online. The son of a composer, he’s also worked extensively with musicians, and has collaborated with the composer Philip Glass. He says: "Like a life without music, art or literature, a life without science is bereft of something that gives experience a rich and otherwise inaccessible dimension.” In conversation with Michael Berkeley, he shares his musical discoveries: pieces by Bach, by Beethoven, and by Philip Glass. He reveals how as a graduate student he learnt to play the piano purely in order to play the Brahms Rhapsody in G Minor. We hear too haunting cello music composed by his father, Alan Greene, and specially recorded for the programme.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

In a moving and personal interview the novelist and journalist Andrew O’Hagan talks to Michael Berkeley about his family and the music that inspires his writing. Andrew O’Hagan grew up on a tough housing estate in north Ayrshire, the son of a cleaner and a carpenter, and the youngest of four boys. He has gone on to become one of our most prolific, vivid and meticulous writers - an essayist and investigative journalist whose subjects have included Julian Assange; the invention of Bitcoin; and the Grenfell fire. And he has published five multi-award-winning novels, ranging from a fictionalised life of Lena Zavaroni to the tragedy of a Catholic priest in a small Scottish town - and the memoirs of Marilyn Monroe’s dog. Andrew tells Michael Berkeley that his childhood ambition was to be not a writer but a ballet dancer, which did not go down well in his tough home and school environment. We hear the ballet music by Massenet that first transfixed him. Despite living in England for many years Andrew returns to Scotland constantly in his novels. He chooses a setting of a poem collected by Robert Burns, which always takes him back to his homeland. And we hear music by John Field and by Beethoven, two composers who provide him with creative inspiration. Andrew talks movingly about his love for his family and chooses music by June Christy that accompanied the birth of his daughter, and a poem by Shelley set by Frank Bridge which was played at his wedding. Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

John Dyson spent 23 years as a judge, moving up through the High Court, the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court and finally becoming Master of the Rolls. He retired as Master of the Rolls three years ago, but he’s back working on international arbitrations, busier than ever; in fact, he presided over the recent decision that the Saracens rugby team were being overpaid. Through it all, the great passion that has sustained him is music. He's an accomplished pianist and took lessons from the legendary teacher Dame Fanny Waterman. Piano music is his first love, and so his music choices include Beethoven’s exuberant first piano concerto; Schubert’s F Minor Piano Fantasy for Four Hands, and Bach’s Goldberg Variations. He loves opera too, especially Verdi’s Otello, an opera written when the composer was in his seventies. Choosing Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms becomes an opportunity to talk about his Jewish heritage, and about his grandmother, who escaped from Bergen Belsen. John Dyson talks too about the rise of anti-Semitism now; he says: “our suitcases are packed.”A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Wildlife sound recordist and sound artist Chris Watson talks to Michael Berkeley about how his favourite music is inspired by the natural world. Chris is most famous for his sound recordings for David Attenborough’s television series – for which he’s won BAFTAs – but he’s a musician too. A member of the influential post-punk band Cabaret Voltaire in the late 70s and early 80s, today he’s a sound artist and composer, creating installations around the world.His 2003 release Weather Report, featuring soundscapes of a Kenyan savannah, a Highland glen, and an Icelandic glacier, was voted one of the 100 best albums to hear before you die by The Guardian, and has been described as ‘cinema for the ears’.Chris’s mission in life is to make us stop what we’re doing and listen to the sounds of the natural world and this is reflected in his choices of music. We hear his own recording of a Sami calling to his ancestors across a Norwegian lake, and northern landscapes echoed in Sibelius’s symphonic poem Tapiola. And Chris chooses the music of multi-award-winning Icelandic film composer Hildur Guðnadottir, who worked with him to record the soundscape for the television series Chernobyl. Chris tells Michael about the challenges of recording in cold and hostile environments for his many series with David Attenborough, and the pleasures of the year he spent recording the sounds around Aldeburgh for Benjamin Britten’s centenary, in 2013. We hear the magical combination of a recording he made of a nightingale in Britten’s garden paired with the Ciaconna from Britten’s Second Cello Suite.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Jools Holland, king of boogie-woogie piano, reveals his lifelong passion for classical music in conversation with Michael Berkeley. The piano is at the heart of everything Jools Holland does. Since he left school at fifteen and joined Squeeze, he - and his piano - have been pretty much constantly on the road, touring with The Jools Holland Big Band, and now his nineteen-piece Rhythm and Blues Orchestra. He also finds time to present a regular Radio 2 show and has made a record-breaking fifty-five series of Later with Jools Holland, the longest running music show on television, chatting to and playing with everyone from David Bowie and Paul McCartney to Amy Winehouse and Jay-Z. Jools tells Michael that his first musical passion was Bach, listening as a young child growing up in Deptford to a family friend playing from The Well-Tempered Clavier. He juxtaposes two pieces from this collection, played by his favourite pianists Edwin Fischer and Friedrich Gulda, to illustrate his passion for interpretation – for Jools, music is predominately about ‘the singer, not the song’.He has a great passion for early recordings: we hear Kathleen Ferrier and Isobel Baillie singing Mendelssohn in 1945 with the pianist Gerald Moore; Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in Richard Strauss’s bitterly comic opera Arabella; and Tito Schipa, the great Italian tenor of the 1930s, singing an eighteenth-century French love song.Jools tells Michael how he taught himself the piano and developed his trademark boogie-woogie style; how he’s kept sane and healthy during the decades he’s spent on the road; and how he winds down with the non-musical passion that he keeps in his attic...Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Stephen Schwartz is a master of musicals. He wrote Godspell, Pippin, and The Baker’s Wife; he’s written the lyrics for films such as Pocohontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Enchanted - and many others. His musical Wicked, for which he wrote the words and music, has become something of a cult; it opened on Broadway in 2003 and in the West End in 2006, and it’s been running both in New York and in London ever since. He’s received numerous awards – three Oscars, four Grammys – and he’s over from New York for the opening of his new musical, The Prince of Egypt, a stage version of the popular film. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Stephen Schwartz reveals how classical music gives him ideas for his most successful musical numbers. In fact, he admits, he steals ideas from the great composers “flagrantly”. The opening of Wicked, for instance, comes from Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C-sharp minor – listeners to this episode can hear both, and compare them. He has been influenced too by Carl Orff and the exuberant orchestration of Carmina Burana. He also talks us through the bass chords he has borrowed from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, and the two bars of Beethoven that he believes are the most moving music ever written. He reflects about the success of Wicked – and the “green girl inside us all”. Other musical choices include Bernstein’s Mass, Bach’s sixth Brandenburg Concerto, Copland’s Appalachian Spring, and Puccini’s opera La Rondine.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Isabel Allende’s first novel, “The House of the Spirits” catapulted her to literary stardom, and was acclaimed as a classic of Latin American magic realism. That was nearly forty years ago and she’s not stopped writing since: with twenty novels and four volumes of memoir, she’s been translated all over the world and has sold some seventy-four million books. They’re vivid family sagas, with eccentric characters, dramatic reversals, discoveries of lost children, violent death, disease and revolution, and sudden consuming love affairs. But Isabel Allende’s own life is as extraordinary as any of her novels. Abandoned by her father as a small child, she spent her early years travelling across South America with her stepfather, who was a diplomat. He was the cousin of Salvador Allende, Chile’s socialist leader, who became Isabel’s godfather. But when Allende was deposed by the right-wing government of General Pinochet in 1973, Isabel – by then married, with children – became caught up in the violent revolution and had to flee the country. She now lives with her third husband in California. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Isabel Allende reflects on her extraordinary life, and reveals how she has found happiness now in her seventies. Music choices include Vivaldi, Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 1, Albinoni, the Chilean singer Victor Jara, a moving song from the Spanish Civil War, and a Mexican love song from the 1940s, “Kiss Me Lots”.A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

As part of Radio 3’s celebration of female composers, Michael Berkeley draws together some of his guests who have championed works by women. Turner Prize-winner Helen Cammock introduces the 17th-century Venetian composer Barbara Strozzi, and actor Greta Scacchi tells the story of her discovery of the 18th-century musician and composer Maria Cosway. There is music too by Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century writer, abbess and mystic, who is a role model for scientist Uta Frith; and a discussion of Clara Schumann and her complex relationship with husband Robert from biographer Lucasta Miller. Architect Daniel Libeskind champions the work of the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, whose work for him conjures up the glittering beauty of modern glass buildings. And Michael Berkeley reveals the answer to the question he’s frequently asked about this programme: which composer gets chosen most often? And the answer is that, apart from Bach, probably the most popular choice of all at the moment – from men, women, young, old, artists, scientists, writers – is Nina Simone.A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Piers Gough co-founded his own architectural practice while he was still at college, at the age of only twenty-two. He made his name during the redevelopment of London’s Docklands, though you can also see his work in Liverpool (the golden “bling bling” building), in Nottingham, where he built a centre for Maggie’s cancer charity, and in Glasgow, where he designed the masterplan for the redevelopment of the Gorbals. He’s won numerous awards for his buildings, not least for his bright-green triangular public lavatory in London’s Westbourne Grove. And six of his buildings have been listed by English Heritage, protected for posterity. He’s been president of the Architectural Association, he’s a Royal Academician... which all sounds steady enough, but trying to sum up his style, the Architects Journal said: “One’s never certain whether one is in a town house, a country house, a castle, or a gigantic piece of sculpture.” In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Piers Gough reflects on the challenges of designing for the modern city, and on the influence of the accident that broke his spine and which at one point made him doubtful that he would ever walk again. He shares, too, the surprise and fun of becoming a father in his sixties.Music choices include William Walton’s “Belshazzar’s Feast”; Monteverdi’s haunting love duet “Pur ti miro”; Handel’s “Semele”; and Piers's favourite country-music track, “Truckstop Honeymoon”. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Michael Berkeley talks to author Chibundu Onuzo about the challenge of writing novels while studying for her A-levels, and the role of music and faith in her life.At the age of nineteen, Chibundu became the youngest female writer ever to be signed by Faber and Faber. She started writing aged ten while growing up in Lagos, Nigeria and was working on her first novel, ‘The Spider King’s Daughter’, while doing her A-levels at boarding school in England. It was published while she was still at university and was shortlisted for a host of prizes – winning a 2013 Betty Trask Award. Her second novel, ‘Welcome to Lagos’, was published in 2017 to great acclaim. Chibundu talks to Michael Berkeley about growing up in Lagos, and the challenge of adapting to life at boarding school in Britain. She chooses a carol, ‘I Wonder as I Wander’, that she sang with her school choir in Winchester Cathedral. The soundtrack to a Nigerian television advert from the 1990s speaks to her about the tensions between western and traditional values in Nigeria. We hear a miniature by Christian Petzold that will be familiar to anyone who has ever learned the piano, alongside music from Handel and from Dvorak’s Symphony No 9, ‘From the New World’.And, in a special moment for Private Passions, Chibundu is joined in the studio by members of her family to sing a setting of Psalm 23 by her uncle, Bishop Ken Okeke.Produced by Jane Greenwood. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

In a frank and moving interview the priest and former politician Jonathan Aitken talks to Michael Berkeley about the music that has accompanied his rollercoaster life. At one time Jonathan Aitken was widely tipped to be a future Conservative Prime Minister, but his glittering political career came crashing down just over twenty years ago, when he stood in the dock of the Old Bailey to plead guilty to perjury, after a lie he told about the payment of a hotel bill caused the collapse of his libel case against the Guardian and Granada Television. He left the court in a prison van with an 18-month sentence. Last December, he was back at the Old Bailey – this time leading the annual carol service, having recently been ordained as a priest. Jonathan chooses pieces which bring back childhood memories of singing for Benjamin Britten and performing Messiah as a chorister in Norwich, and we hear a song John McCormack sang to him during the three years Jonathan spent on a Dublin TB ward as a very young child.He talks frankly to Michael about the mistakes and pride that led to his downfall from public life, and how he survived disgrace, divorce, bankruptcy and prison. He chooses, with a smile, the Prisoners’ Chorus from Fidelio, and a setting of Psalm 24 that was a crucial part of his spiritual journey in prison.Jonathan tells a funny musical story about when Nixon met Wilson, and he reveals the piece of music that best captures his sense of redemption and renewal as he embarks on his new life as a prison chaplain. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Michael Berkeley talks to the writer Ann Wroe about the inspiration and comfort she finds in music. Ann spends the first 36 hours of each week wrestling with the challenge of distilling the life of a person into just 1000 words – because, for nearly two decades, she has written the weekly obituary for The Economist.The rest of Ann’s week is spent wrestling with biography of an altogether different kind - because she finds the subjects for her books in the shadowy territory where history meets myth. She dares to mix intense scholarship with her own imagination to capture the essence of figures as varied as Perkin Warbeck, the pretender to the English throne; Pontius Pilate; and the mythical lyric poet Orpheus. Hilary Mantel has said of her: ‘She is a genius, because she lights up every subject she touches’.Ann tells Michael why she is attracted to such ambiguous subjects for her biographies and why she often chooses the quirky over the famous for her Economist obituaries – she’s written about the lives of firefighters, woodcarvers and even animals.Passionate about the natural world, Ann chooses piano music by Schubert that conjures up walks on the South Downs; Jonathan Dove’s Seek Him that Maketh the Seven Stars; and Frank Bridge’s The Sea, which takes her to her beloved Brighton.She talks movingly about her attitude towards death and what might come after it, and tells Michael why most of her music choices are ‘bittersweet’, including a song by Vaughan Williams to remember her late husband.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Michael Berkeley talks to the environmental lawyer James Thornton about tackling the climate crisis, about Zen Buddhism and about James's love of the violin. Every day we’re bombarded with more bad news about the climate crisis, deadly air pollution, and our oceans filling up with plastic. So who will save our fragile planet? The UN? Governments? Scientists? Activists? If James Thornton is anything to go by, it might well be lawyers. As the founding CEO of ClientEarth, an international not-for-profit organisation, he holds governments and corporations to account and forces them to uphold environmental legislation.Many musicians support the work of ClientEarth – David Gilmour donated the $21million raised from the sale of his guitars – and James chooses music with an environmental theme from his long-time collaborator Brian Eno. He talks to Michael about his lifelong passion for the violin and how playing it helps him keep his life in balance - he chooses Jascha Heifitz’s astonishing recording of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto. He is also an ordained Zen Buddhist priest and we hear a key Buddhist text set by the master of modern gamelan, Lou Harrison. And James talks about why he prefers life in the UK to his native USA, not least because he was able to marry his long-term partner, the writer Martin Goodman. We hear the music by György Kurtág which they chose for their wedding.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

William Sieghart, the founder of the Forward Prizes for poetry and National Poetry Day, talks to Michael Berkeley about the music and poetry he loves. Over the last twenty-five years National Poetry Day has become a popular fixture in the cultural calendar, and it was William’s idea to have permanent poems engraved at the Olympic Park in East London.He’s also the creator of the hugely successful Poetry Pharmacy. At festivals and events, William sits in a tent and people bring him their dilemmas, problems and sadnesses - and he ‘prescribes’ them a poem to console, comfort or encourage. The Poetry Pharmacy has spread to Radio 4, television and hugely successful poetry anthologies, described by Stephen Fry as ‘a matchless compound of hug, tonic and kiss’. William chooses music by Schubert and by Mendelssohn that reminds him of his father, who fled Vienna just before the Second World War, and he talks movingly about the effect of his father’s immigrant experience on his own life. He describes how poetry and, later, music, helped him through his distress at being sent to boarding school at the age of eight and chooses recordings of music by Bach and by Debussy that have remained vital to him ever since. And in the spirit of the Poetry Pharmacy, he reveals the poetry and music he turns to for comfort in a crisis. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Helen Cammock grew up wanting to be a singer, and performed on the folk circuit as a teenager. But then she stopped, and became a social worker for more than ten years. Finally, at the age of 35, she took up photography, went to art school – and she’s never looked back. She’s known now for her richly-layered video installations, which mix film archive, dance and poetry with current interviews, all woven together with music. She is the joint winner of the 2019 Turner Prize; for the first time in its 35-year history, the Prize was shared between all four artists on the shortlist, at their request. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about why music is at the heart of all her work. Last year the MaxMara art prize paid for her to spend six months working in Italy, and there she began to explore the subject of lament, and particularly laments sung by women. As part of her performance work, Helen Cammock began to take singing lessons again, and lament, loss, longing, and hopes for a better future, are all captured in the music she chooses. She shares the excitement of discovering little-known women composers of the 17th century Francesca Caccini and Barbara Strozzi. She talks about the troubling incident which persuaded her to give up a career in social work, when she was told to abandon a young woman outside a police station. She remembers the isolation and boredom of growing up in the countryside of Somerset, and the racist abuse her family faced every Saturday when they went shopping together.Music choices include Jessye Norman singing Purcell’s “Dido’s Lament”; Glenn Gould humming along to Bach; Nina Simone on the piano; and Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

As we start a new year, our thoughts turn towards the year ahead with all its plans and resolutions. And yet of course it is irrational to make this complete distinction between December and January; in fact, the more you think about it, the more you realise that everything about time is strangely slippery. The slippery nature of time is something that preoccupies Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist who has worked in Italy and the United States and who is currently directing the quantum research group at the Centre for Theoretical Physics in Marseille. His books “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics”, “Reality is Not What it Seems” and “The Order of Time” have become international best-sellers, outselling “Fifty Shades of Grey”.In Private Passions, Carlo Rovelli talks to Michael Berkeley about how music has helped him think about time, and how memory of the past and expectation of the future come into constant play when we listen to music: “We don’t live in the present, we live a little bit in the future and a little bit in the past – we live in a clearing in the forest of time.” He looks back to his childhood, growing up in Verona, and hearing Vivaldi played every week in the local church. He discusses Philip Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach”, a work he admits he likes particularly for its title. He thinks about how Mozart represents the end of time in his “Dies Irae”, music he loves to listen to at full volume when his partner is out of the house. Other choices include Schubert, Arvo Pärt, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and the Bach cantata he discovered as a teenager that still astonishes him. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Darcey Bussell became principal dancer of the Royal Ballet at the age of only twenty; she went on to become a household name thanks to her seven years as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, a job she unexpectedly stepped down from earlier this year. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, she looks back at a career which started when, against the wishes of her mother, she went to ballet school at thirteen – and was desperately unhappy, thinking she’d made the worst mistake of her life. Alone, away from her family, she used to listen to Mozart’s Requiem again and again. She had little hope of becoming a star ballerina as she was “too tall” at five foot seven, and “not British-looking”; what this amounted to is that most British male dancers were not tall enough to partner her. But then she met choreographer Kenneth Macmillan, and he saw her potential. She reflects candidly on the “disciplines and sacrifices” of a life devoted to dance: the long hours training, dancing till your stamina runs out and you literally can’t feel your legs. Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty pushed her to the limit. She reveals how becoming a judge on Strictly gave her new confidence to speak in public for the first time and why she doesn’t mind being labelled as the judge who was “too nice”. She talks too about creating a new post-performance life out of the glare of the public eye, her mission to bring dance to all schoolchildren, about injuries and the battle for fitness, and about the toll dancing has taken on her feet. Her music choices range from the intensely serious – Stravinsky's 'Agon, Poulenc's Gloria, the Mozart and Faure Requiems - to Dinah Washington’s “Mad about the Boy” and “Roxanne” by The Police. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

As a small child, Matthew Bourne used to put on shows in his parents’ living room in East London; by the age of eight or nine, he was staging musicals for the whole school, co-opting his friends to star in Mary Poppins and Cinderella. (He played an ugly sister.) Fast forward to today and Sir Matthew Bourne is now Britain’s most popular and successful choreographer and director, with a long list of awards for shows including Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Cinderella, The Car Man (based on Carmen), Edward Scissorhands, and The Red Shoes. Sir Matthew has become particularly associated with Christmas shows and he’s somehow nailed the essence of the Christmas “treat”. He attributes this to memories of the shows his parents took him to. But, despite their outings, it never occurred to anyone in the family that Matthew might make a living in the theatre, and he was twenty-two before he took his first dance lesson. This, he believes, has given him a strong connection with the audiences coming to see his shows. Despite this, there have been some bumps in the road: when he first staged Swan Lake with all-male swans and two male dancers dancing a love duet, some of the audience walked out. He reflects on the challenges of creating dances in which men dance together but are not strong enough to lift each other. Matthew Bourne is a profoundly musical choreographer: he talks about listening to famous pieces of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev over and over again. Other choices include a Percy Grainger setting of an old Christmas carol; film music by Bernard Hermann; Mary Poppins; and his favourite song from his favourite musical, The Sound of Music: “Climb Every Mountain” – which could describe his own stellar career.A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

David Nott is a Welsh consultant surgeon and Professor of Surgery at Imperial College London; for more than twenty-five years he has volunteered as a surgeon in disaster and war zones across the world. He has worked in Sarajevo, Kabul, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Iraq, the Congo, Yemen, Gaza, and, most recently, Syria. Often under fire, in makeshift tents or in rooms with no adequate lighting or machinery or drugs, he has risked his life to save others – operating on people injured by bullets and bomb blasts, delivering babies, stitching people together as the sound of gunfire raged outside. In conversation with Michael Berkeley David Nott reflects on why he chooses to live so dangerously (“It’s a kind of addiction”) and on how his perspective has changed since he had a young family. He tells the story of saving the life of a man he discovered to be an ISIS leader, believing at every moment he was about to be killed. Once back safely in the UK, he suffered an extreme breakdown, and was helped by a friend who is a Catholic priest. Music choices include Elgar’s “Nimrod”, Vaughan Williams's “The Lark Ascending”, and music from Africa and from Syria. And, as he says, unapologetically, his playlist is “very Welsh”, including “Myfanwy” and the Welsh hymn “Llef”. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Hannah Rankin grew up on a sheep farm near Loch Lomond. Earlier this year she made history by becoming the first Scottish woman to win a boxing world title when she became the IBO (International Boxing Organisation) super-welterweight champion. She’s recently returned from winning her first big fight in America. But, as she tells Michael Berkeley, she is just as likely to be found in the woodwind section of an orchestra as she is in a boxing ring, because Hannah is also a highly accomplished bassoonist. She studied at the Royal Scottish Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Music, and now teaches in schools and performs with the London Sinfonietta, at the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre, and the London Coliseum. With her fellow Royal Academy of Music alumni she founded the Coriolis Quintet. Known on the professional boxing circuit as the Classical Warrior, Hannah explains how she balances her two lives, in the ring and on the stage, and what it’s like building up to a really big fight.She chooses music by Mendelssohn and by Sibelius from early in her musical career, which reminds her of northern landscapes, and operas by Humperdink and by Tchaikovsky - composers who share her love of the bassoon. And we hear music that transports Hannah back to summers shearing sheep on the family farm.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

In a special programme to coincide with the London Jazz Festival the outstanding saxophonist YolanDa Brown talks to Michael Berkeley about her passion for spreading the joy of music, especially to children.YolanDa presents 'YolanDa’s Band Jam' on CBeebies and hosts Young Jazz Musician of the Year. She’s an ambassador for BBC Music Day and chair of the charity Youth Music. She has won a string of awards, including two Jazz MOBOs – Music of Black Origin Awards – and her most recent album, 'Love Politics War', topped the jazz charts. Less well known is that she started out on a career in social science research, taking masters degrees in both Operations Management and Methods of Social Research and beginning a PhD before veering back to her first love – music. YolanDa talks about the importance of introducing children to live music at the earliest possible age. Her own daughter responded to music in the womb and went to her first opera at the age of four. We hear music from YolanDa’s own first musical outing to see Iolanthe with her father, also at the age of four.YolanDa describes her vibrant mix of jazz and soul as ‘posh reggae’, influenced by her Jamaican heritage. We hear a track from her latest album and tracks from musicians who have influenced her, including Kamasi Washington, Dave Brubeck and Bobby McFerrin. She talks to Michael about playing the piano and violin as a child; classical music remains very close to her heart, and she chooses music by Schubert and Dvorak.And we hear a special commission from film composer Hans Zimmer, part of the BBC’s Ten Pieces Trailblazers, which was introduced by YolanDa when she presented this year’s CBeebies Proms. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

The film director Ken Loach talks to Michael Berkeley about the classical music he’s loved throughout his life and the dangerous power of music in film.Ken Loach began his career directing Z Cars - but very soon entered the national consciousness in the late 1960s with films such as Cathy Come Home, Poor Cow and Kes. He’s kept up this prolific pace in the subsequent fifty years, making more than fifty award-winning films for cinema and television, and achieving a level of realism rarely captured by other directors. His latest film, Sorry We Missed You, is about the impact on families of the gig economy. Ken talks to Michael about the music of his childhood growing up in Nuneaton after the war – he chooses Brahms's Academic Festival Overture to recall music lessons at school - and he we hear a piece by Schubert which reminds him of his own children growing up.Ken picks recordings which bring back particular moments in his life: the sheer energy and excitement of Carlos Kleiber’s 1974 recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; the 1968 recording of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto by Mstislav Rostropovich and Herbert von Karajan, which brings back memories of making Kes; and Geza Anda’s recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number 21, which was used in the film Elvira Madigan.Every one of Ken’s films has a cause at its heart such as homelessness, unemployment and civil rights. We hear the music of resistance that reflects the struggle of ordinary people for justice and dignity that has driven his career.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Psychotherapist and author Philippa Perry talks to Michael Berkeley about the power of music to shape our emotions and tell the stories of our lives.Philippa left school at 15 and did all sorts of jobs, including a stint in McDonalds before training as a psychotherapist and becoming a best-selling author, agony-aunt and broadcaster. Her graphic novel about the process of psychotherapy, 'Couch Fiction', was published in 2010, and since then she’s written 'How to Stay Sane' and 'The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read – and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did'. Philippa talks to Michael Berkeley about her thirty-year marriage to the artist Grayson Perry, and how a song from La traviata broke through her father’s dementia; she emphasises the importance of learning new things throughout our lives, choosing music by Shostakovich that surprised and delighted her at this year’s Proms.We hear music played by the violinist Min-Jim Kym; a supremely joyful moment from Beethoven; and Philippa is moved to tears hearing a piece of Chopin that her aunt played when she was a child. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Producer: Jane Greenwood

Sir Venki Ramakrishnan is President of the Royal Society and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2009 for his research into the ribosome – the mysterious ancient molecule that decodes DNA, what he terms ‘the mother of all molecules’. He’s what you might call a science all-rounder: he gained a PhD in Physics before turning to Biology, and his Nobel Prize was in Chemistry. Born in India, he moved to the US as a postgraduate student, and in 1999 came to Britain to work at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.Alongside science Venki Ramakrishnan has another passion – for music, and, in particular, chamber music, which grew out of the Indian classical music he heard as a child. His son Raman is the cellist with the Horszowski Trio and we hear their performance of music by Schubert, as well as a Brahms piano quartet and a Beethoven cello sonata, reflecting both Raman's and Venki’s deep engagement with that instrument. Venki's other great love is for the violin, and he chooses music by Mozart alongside Bach's Double Violin Concerto - which Venki himself played whilst learning the violin as a graduate student in the USA.He talks to Michael about the central role of music in his life, about how he would reform the Nobel Prizes in science, and why he swapped the mountains of Utah for the fens of East Anglia.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Selina Cadell is one of our most versatile and accomplished actresses - from French and Saunders to Chekhov on Broadway, and from Alan Bennett to Shakespeare, she brings humour and sensitivity to stage and screen. Michael Billington described her recent performance in Charlotte Jones’s play Humble Boy as ‘one of the best pieces of acting you’ll see anywhere'.Instantly recognisable to millions as the infatuated neck-braced pharmacist in the hugely popular TV series Doc Martin, Selina has another string to her bow – as a director specialising in 18th-century drama and, particularly, opera. She talks to Michael Berkeley about how she coaches singers to become better actors and she chooses arias from operas she’s directed: Handel’s 'Arianna in Creta' and Stravinsky’s 'The Rake’s Progress', written in 1951 but set in Handel’s time. Selina shares memories of her godfather Sir Ralph Richardson - and his acting tips – and we hear his beautiful reading of Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale. She chooses a song by Noel Coward in memory of her brother, the actor Simon Cadell, and she speaks movingly about the death of her husband and mother earlier this year, choosing Debussy’s 'La Mer' as a celebration of her husband’s love of the sea. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3

Peter Tatchell was still a teenager, living in Australia, when he started on what has been a long and headline-grabbing career of political protest. He was only fifteen when he began campaigning against the death penalty, and in support of aboriginal rights. At the age of seventeen, he realised he was gay, and the struggle for gay rights became his increasing focus: he was a leading activist in the Gay Liberation Front in the 1970s, and, more recently, a campaigner for same-sex marriage. He gained international celebrity for his attempted citizen's arrest of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in 1999 and again in 2001, on charges of torture and human rights abuses. Beaten by Mugabe’s bodyguards, he suffered permanent eye and brain damage. He has also been beaten up by Neo-Nazis in Moscow, and held in prisons across the world. He says, ruefully: “I’m the master of the motorcade ambush”. One of his tactics has been literally to run into the road and throw himself in front of official limousines; he did it not just to Mugabe, but also to Tony Blair – protesting against the war in Iraq – and John Major.In a rare personal interview, Peter Tatchell talks about the early experiences which fired him into trying to change the world. He grew up at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Australia - his mother believed it was against her Christian principles. And yet despite this Peter loves, and forgives her.The music list is a mix of stirring protest and softer romantic pieces which help Peter escape from daily pressures. Choices include Prokofiev’s “Battle on the Ice” from the film score to Eistenstein’s Alexander Nevsky; Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”; Prince; and the jazz drummer Billy Cobham. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke