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PODCAST

Private Passions

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical passions and talk about the influence music has had on their lives.

music personal journals

All Episodes

37:05

John Surman

Private Passions ·

2017/11/19

As part of Radio 3's coverage of the London Jazz Festival, Michael Berkeley talks to the saxophonist and bass clarinettist John Surman, who over a career of dizzying versatility that spans more than fifty years, has shown us just how many different ways jazz can be made. Surman's hundreds of recordings include solos with synthesizers, saxophone trios, trios with voice and drums, with brass bands and big bands. He has made albums with church choirs, duos with church organs and with drums, as well as

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36:05

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Private Passions ·

2017/11/12

Simon Sebag Montefiore is a prizewinning writer whose books return again and again to Russia. His latest novel is Red Sky at Noon, the last of his Moscow Trilogy, following Sashenka and One Night in Winter. His most recent history, The Romanovs 1613-1918, tells the story of twenty tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness. It's a world of unlimited power and ruthless empire-building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence and wild extravagance

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33:34

Ronan Bennett

Private Passions ·

2017/11/05

Ronan Bennett is a novelist and screenwriter whose latest drama series on the BBC, "Gunpowder", dramatizes the story of Guy Fawkes from the point of view of the Catholics, who were persecuted in England at the time. All through his substantial body of work Ronan Bennett has explored the roots of violence and terrorism, something he knows about from personal experience, having grown up as a Catholic in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. He was imprisoned twice as a young man, accused of IRA terrorist

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37:52

Vesna Goldsworthy

Private Passions ·

2017/10/29

Thirty years ago, Vesna Goldsworthy fell in love with a young Englishman she met at a summer school in Bulgaria; she moved to England to be with him, much to the disapproval of her parents, arriving in London in 1986. Since then, she's established a reputation as a writer of great wit and originality: with her memoir, Chernobyl Strawberries; with her poetry; and in 2015 with her first novel, Gorsky, which became a best-seller and which was serialized on Radio 4. Vesna Goldsworthy is also a Professor

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32:59

Allan Corduner

Private Passions ·

2017/10/22

Allan Corduner is an astonishingly versatile actor, equally at home in the West End, on Broadway, in television series such as Homeland, or in films like Yentl, Florence Foster Jenkins, and Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy, in which he played the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, perfect casting for an actor who is also an accomplished pianist. He talks to Michael Berkeley about his favourite music, with pieces by Scriabin, Sibelius, and Bruch that reflect his Russian, Finnish and Jewish heritage. And Allan

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33:04

Sir Simon Wessely

Private Passions ·

2017/10/15

As part of Radio 3's Why Music? The Key to Memory weekend, Michael Berkeley talks to the psychiatrist Sir Simon Wessely. Professor Sir Simon Wessely is one of our most eminent psychiatrists: until recently the President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, he is the current president of the Royal Society of Medicine, and Regis Chair of Psychiatry at King's College London. An interest in unexplained symptoms and syndromes has led to many years of research in areas such as Chronic Fatigue and Gulf

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30:17

Hildegard Bechtler

Private Passions ·

2017/10/08

As part of the BBC's opera season, designer Hildegard Bechtler talks to Michael Berkeley about her favourite music and some of the twenty-seven operas she has worked on all over the world.Hildegard is one of our most prolific and successful theatre and opera designers. Born in Germany, she moved to Britain aged eighteen, and very quickly established herself first in film, then in theatre and opera. Her style combines wit and invention to deliver minimalist style with maximum impact. She has designed

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30:23

Maurice Riordan

Private Passions ·

2017/10/01

Maurice Riordan is a poet much preoccupied with time - how time suddenly stands still, or speeds up, or loops you back in dreams to childhood - in his case, to the countryside of County Cork where he grew up. It's a theme he's explored in four prize-winning collections of verse, alongside translations and a series of anthologies - including an anthology of very early Irish poetry, scribbled by Irish monks in the margins of Latin texts. In his day job, he's professor of poetry at Sheffield Hallam

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33:33

Stephen Poliakoff

Private Passions ·

2017/09/24

Stephen Poliakoff made his mark as a playwright very early; he began writing plays as a schoolboy and got first review in The Times when he was only seventeen. At the age of twenty-four he became writer in residence at the National Theatre and he's also written for the RSC. But it's as a television scriptwriter and director that Poliakoff is now best-known, with series such as "Shooting the Past", "Dancing on the Edge" and recently, "Close to the Enemy". Some of our very greatest actors - Maggie

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35:27

Sebastian Barry

Private Passions ·

2017/09/10

Sebastian Barry's great-grand-father was a traditional Irish musician, who played on the wooden flute and piccolo. His mother was an actress at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin; his aunt Mary O'Hara had a huge career as a singer and harpist with her own series on the BBC. Little surprise then that Sebastian Barry's writing is musical in the widest sense; full of the rich music of everyday speech. It's an impressive body of work: fourteen plays, two volumes of poetry, and nine novels. Two of his novels,

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37:15

Michael Craig-Martin

Private Passions ·

2017/08/27

Michael Craig-Martin is one of our most influential artists, celebrated for his huge black and white wall drawings and intensely coloured paintings of everyday objects, as well as his installations, sculpture, and computer-generated works. A pioneering conceptualist, he's always provoking questions about what we understand to be art.Born in Dublin in 1941, Michael Craig-Martin grew up in the United States but returned to Britain in the 1960s where he's lived and worked ever since. He's had numerous

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38:10

Vivien Duffield

Private Passions ·

2017/08/13

Dame Vivien Duffield is one of our leading philanthropists, and her passion for the arts - and particularly opera - is reflected in her giving. Her Foundation, the Clore Duffield Foundation, has supported the Royal Opera House, the Tate, the Royal Ballet, the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Southbank Centre and The National Children's Museum. It all amounts to more than 200 million pounds over the last fifty years. In 2008 the Prince of Wales presented her

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33:09

Nick Davies

Private Passions ·

2017/08/06

Nick Davies is an expert in the art of deception - as practised by the cuckoo. He has spent his career studying that deceiving, murderous bird, and living in woods and wild gardens, even up in a mountain hut in the Pyrenees. He's a hugely influential scientist: since the late 1970s he's really helped define the field in behavioural ecology, and he's Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Pembroke College. But really, as he tells Michael Berkeley, he's happier

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34:42

Shirley Hughes

Private Passions ·

2017/07/16

A chance to hear a programme recorded in 2017 with Michael Berkeley talking to the children's author Shirley Hughes, who died in February this year. On her ninetieth birthday, Shirley Hughes, the creator of many of our best-loved and most enduring children's books, talked to Michael Berkeley about her musical passions. In a career spanning nearly 70 years, Shirley wrote as many books and illustrated nearly two hundred. She was the first winner of the Book Trust Lifetime Achievement Award, twice won

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33:53

Dan Pearson

Private Passions ·

2017/07/09

Dan Pearson discovered his passion for gardens very young, building landscapes for his toy trolls out of stones. He's now one of our most influential landscape designers, with work ranging from private gardens around the world - including Chatsworth - to the 600-acre Tokachi Forest Garden in northern Japan, and gardens in Manchester and London for the Cancer charity Maggie's. He's written five books, presented several television series, and exhibited at Chelsea six times, winning awards each time -

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34:42

Lindsey Davis

Private Passions ·

2017/07/02

Lindsey Davis is best known for her series of historical crime stories about a laid-back amateur sleuth called Marcus Didius Falco. Set against the turmoil of the 1st-century Roman Empire, the books are witty, gritty and hugely entertaining. She's also written stand-alone novels about Ancient Rome, and about the English Civil War.The recipient of many awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement, Lindsey writes a book a year, but has still found time to be

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34:19

Canada 150: Madeleine Thien

Private Passions ·

2017/06/25

As part of Canada 150, a week of programmes marking the 150th anniversary of the founding of the nation, Michael Berkeley talks to Canadian novelist Madeleine Thien.Born in Vancouver, she is the daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants to Canada and her writing explores the history of the Asian diaspora. She is the author a short story collection 'Simple Recipes' and the novels 'Certainty', 'Dogs at the Perimeter' and 'Do Not Say We Have Nothing' -about musicians studying Western classical music at

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34:01

Patsy Rodenburg

Private Passions ·

2017/06/18

Michael Berkeley talks to Patsy Rodenburg, the most highly acclaimed voice teacher of her generation, about the music she loves. Patsy Rodenburg has worked with pretty much every actor you can name, including Judi Dench, Ian McKellen and Daniel Day Lewis. They all testify to the huge impact she has had on their careers and performances. Among the many companies she's worked with all over the world are the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she continues to teach drama

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31:00

Nishat Khan

Private Passions ·

2017/06/12

Nishat Khan is one of India's finest musicians; born into a dynasty of famous sitar players, he first went on stage with his father and uncle when he was only seven. Since that first appearance in Calcutta in the 1970s, he has performed worldwide, collaborated with all kinds of musicians, from Philip Glass to Gregorian choirs to Django Bates, and composed both for the BBC Proms and for Bollywood films. He's here in Britain to appear at the Aldeburgh Festival this June, fresh from recording the

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39:02

Ivo van Hove

Private Passions ·

2017/06/04

Michael Berkeley talks to the award-winning theatre director Ivo van Hove about his musical passions.The director of Amsterdam's prestigious Toneelgroep theatre, Ivo works all over the world, notably with the New York Theatre Workshop and at the Barbican in London. Equally at home with Sophocles, Shakespeare and contemporary American drama, he won huge acclaim for his stripped-back production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, and his recent A View From The Bridge with the Young Vic won, among

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