Episodes

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20080730Mary Ann Kennedy talks to Son de la frontera about their particular style of flamenco.

Lucy Duran presents an edited tribute, recorded at this evening's Proms Plus event at the Britten Theatre, to Radio 3 World Music Americas Award winner Andy Palacio, a singer and guitarist from Belize who died earlier this year. She is joined by Palacio's producer Ivan Duran and Chair of the Awards Jury Rita Ray.

Lucy Duran presents a tribute to Radio 3 World Music Americas Award winner Andy Palacio.

20080812Artist Akram Zaatari explores the photographic archives of Studio Shehrazade - half a million images that document 50 years of life in southern Lebanon through the lives of the people of Saida. Both surprising and revealing, Shehrazade's archive tells stories of Lebanese society, its underlying tensions and changing conventions since the 1950s.

Artist Akram Zaatari explores the photographic archives of Studio Shehrazade in Lebanon.

20080813Andrew Brown explores the slave-raiding culture of the Viking-era British isles.
20080815Conductor Pierre Boulez discusses Janacek's works with 2008 Proms director Roger Wright.
20080821Richard Foster takes a light-hearted look at energy saving and the great British summer.
20080907Peter Hill Nigel Simeone and Pierre Audi discuss Messiaen's opera Saint Francis of Assisi.
20080909From his apartment overlooking the Kremlin, playwright and director Stephen Poliakoff's father had a first-hand view of the events of the Russian Revolution. Poliakoff tells Susan Hitch about his father's experiences as a youth in Russia, and looks at how his family history and some of the greats of Russian literature, from Dostoevsky to Chekhov, have influenced his own work.

Susan Hitch is joined by playwright Stephen Poliakoff to discuss Russian literature.

20080913A story by celebrated author and screenwriter Deborah Moggach, written especially to mark the occasion of the 2008 Last Night of the Proms.

It is the morning after the Proms grand finale and a woman wanders through a London park, musing about a very different type of concert she attended at the Albert Hall 40 years before, when she was a young woman.

When she discovers a forgotten mobile phone among the rubbish, she scrolls through the menu, piecing together information and forming a picture of its owner - a young woman who has a horse riding lesson later on that day. She contemplates tracking this stranger down and meeting up to find out what they both have in common.

A story by the author Deborah Moggach, centring on a Last Night of the Proms reminiscence.

20080918With BBC Singers chief conductor David Hill and associate composer Judith Bingham.
20080919Petroc Trelawny and guests discuss the portrayal of conductors in BBC TV's Maestro series.
20081113Stephen Johnson explores the parallel lives of Rachmaninov and Stravinsky as Russian emigres, and selects some highlights from the 2008 BBCSSO Russian Winter series.

Like many other Russian migrants, Stravinsky and Rachmaninov ended up in Southern California in the 1940s and were near-neighbours in Beverly Hills. They dined together once and Rachmaninov followed up that meeting with a gift of Stravinsky's favourite honey. It might have become a good friendship, but Rachmaninov was already terminally ill. It is unlikely, had he lived longer, that he would have influenced Stravinsky's music, but the reverse is not necessarily true given the neo-classical tendencies in Rachmaninov's later work.

Stephen Johnson explores the parallel worlds of Rachmaninov and Stravinsky.

20081210In a programme from the foyer of St David's Hall, Cardiff, Petroc Trelawny is joined by Messiaen scholars Christopher Dingle and Caroline Rae to celebrate the composer's centenary day.

They ask whether it is time to reassess our view of the composer, whose interests in nature and religious beliefs have been focused on to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Plus Messiaen at the organ, performing the movement which he totally reworked from the orchestral version of L'Ascension.

From St David's Hall, Cardiff, Petroc Trelawny chairs a discussion on Messiaen.

20090108Catherine Bott discusses what 2009 has in store for the BBC Symphony Orchestra. It's going to be a busy year with concerts at the Barbican, touring and the BBC Proms.

She talks to Jiri Belohlavek, the BBCSO's chief conductor and David Robertson, principal guest conductor, along with the orchestra's general manager Paul Hughes.

Catherine Bott looks at what 2009 has in store for the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

20090906Simon Halsey joins Penny Gore to discuss why singing matters.
20090909The Visitors' Book, by Sophie Hannah.
20090918From the foyer stage at St David's Hall, Cardiff, Petroc Trelawny discusses the art of 'period performance' on modern instruments.

Plus news from the United States on ground-breaking research on the musicians who first performed Haydn's masses, a report from Eisenstadt on the work known originally as the Mass for Troubled Times, and how Lord Nelson made his mark on musical history.

Petroc Trelawny discusses 'period performance' on modern instruments.

20091009Jan Smaczny on Martinu's symphonies. Plus the BBC Symphony Orchestra 2009-10 season.
20100911Musical contributions from N Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Salford and Hyde Park in London.
20101013Rossini's return to Paris in the 1850s led to an Indian summer of composition for him, with the composition of the pieces he dubbed 'My Sins of Old Age'. And yet this wasn't just an Indian summer of composition. Hand-in-hand with this went Rossini's social life and his famous 'Saturday Soir退es' at his apartment in Paris. Many of these 'Sins of Old Age' were written for performance at these soir退es or other salons throughout Paris. Rossini's reputation as a gourmand also held true at these events with his gastronomic legacy still being felt in the dishes he inspired. Igor Toronyi-Lalic explores Rossini's role in the salons of mid-19th century Paris and the legacy of these salons today.

Producer: Rosie Childs.

Igor Toronyi-Lalic explores Rossini's role in the salons of mid-19th century Paris.

20101105What's hot and what's not in Paris this autumn? Journalist Agn耀s Poirier divides her time between London and the French capital and is ideally placed to report on the most coveted tickets on both banks of the Seine. Is the so-called 'beacon exhibition' at the Grand Palais, 'Claude Monet 1840-1926' all it's cracked up to be? At the other end of the artistic scale, Agn耀s learns more about the French national obsession with 'BD' - bande dessin退e or strip cartoon at a show in the Biblioth耀que Forney. And - parlons gastronomie - no report from Paris could possibly be complete without news of the culinary arts... a new bistro that, says Agn耀s, 'marries conviviality with political utopia...' Bon appetit!

Producer Simon Elmes.

Agnes Poirier reports on big autumn events in Paris, including exhibitions and a new cafe.

20101126The American poet Emily Dickinson was very reclusive and spent most of her adult life in her room in Amherst, Massachusetts where, after her death, her extraordinary poems were discovered. When Aaron Copland was composing the settings of her poems that are being performed in this evening's concert, he spent many hours there trying to capture something of the spirit of Emily Dickinson. Someone who knows the room well is the poet Fred D'Aguiar, who lived in Amherst for several years. In tonight's Twenty Minutes he reflects on Emily Dickinson's room, the place where he himself writes, and the significance of 'The Poet's Room'.

Fred D'Aguiar reflects on the room in which Emily Dickinson wrote her poetry.

20130720Roger Parker chairs a round-table discussion about Verdi's idea of God, the Church and Religion.

The Four Sacred Pieces were Verdi's final work and he said he wanted to be buried with the manuscript of the Te Deum. But Verdi was an agnostic, who refused to accompany his wife to church, and his religious music was described as 'opera in ecclesiastical clothing'.

In Verdi's God, Roger Parker and his guests explore the composer's spiritual life and its impact on his music, relationships and politics. Taking part in the discussion are Flora Willson from the University of Cambridge, who takes a special interest in the culture and society of Italy in the 19th century, and one of the pre-eminent Verdi conductors of today, Semyon Bychkov, whose performance of the Requiem was a highlight of the 2011 Proms season, and who will be bringing to bear his experience of the religious music in Verdi's operas and the operatic element in his religious music.

These three great Verdi experts will attempt to answer a very difficult question: who was Verdi's God?

Roger Parker, Flora Willson and Semyon Bychkov explore Verdi's attitude to religion.

1934 In History20090717Historian Juliet Gardiner analyses the political, social and cultural events of 1934 using clips from the BBC sound archive of the period.

She uses the archive to take us through the story of Ramsay MacDonald's national coalition, the Gresford Disaster (one of the worst tragedies in Welsh mining history) and, in passing, the expeditions to Antarctica, the beginning of road-safety advice with the Belisha beacon and the impact of literature and architecture in that year. This history contextualises the world in which Delius, Elgar and Holst end their days and into which Maxwell Davies and Birtwistle are born.

Historian Juliet Gardiner analyses the political, social and cultural events of 1934.

32 Fouettes20110815Any ballerina preparing the role of Odette/Odile in Swan Lake will be acutely aware that, as well as a long evening of intense dancing, they'll be facing one of 'those' theatrical moments.

The execution of 32 'fouettes en tournant', spins requiring the dancer to move from a flat foot to a point and turn a complete 360 degrees, is a massive physical and psychological challenge.

So how can you stop it preying on the mind and disrupting the rest of your performance? Is it one of those frustrating showpieces that have crept in to performances as part of the less savoury 'showing off' element of theatrical performance and become a crude measure of an artist's ability?

These theatrical Everests also crop up in opera and classical theatre.

Hamlets know that huge chunks of their audience will be measuring them on their ability to deliver the famous soliloquies; opera singers playing roles like the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Magic Flute or the Calaf in Puccini's Turandot are horribly aware that one climactic moment - Holle Rache and Nessun Dorma respectively - will decide the success or failure of their evening's work.

Samantha Bond, who trained as a ballerina herself, is joined by the former Royal Ballet principal Deborah Bull and the celebrated actor Sir Derek Jacobi to discuss their experience of scaling these theatrical summits.

They might be a stumbling block for the successful performance, but, equally, they might be the difference between the very good performer and performance, and the truly outstanding.

More particularly, their importance is bound up with the business of what an often very well-informed audience expects of its performers.

Clear the bar, jump through the hoop of flames and you are sovereign of all you survey, re-establishing the magic of theatrical show.

Fail and, like the ice dancer who has clattered to the floor after failing to land the triple toe loop, you have to pick yourself up and re-assemble the audience's trust and involvement in the performance.

Producer: Tom Alban.

Samantha Bond leads a discussion about the mixed blessings of theatrical challenges.

A Country Doctor2009111920100319 (R3)Story about a weary doctor called out at midnight in a blizzard to attend to a young boy.
A Darker Shade Of Green20121025How 1930s novelists and composers used the pastoral mode to address the legacy of WWI.
A Dill Pickle20080804By Katherine Mansfield. An excerpt from the story of two former lovers meeting again.
A Herball For The 21st Century20120731A genuinely mysterious story of a 17th century memorial bust, which 'disappeared' during the London Blitz only to be rediscovered seventy years later, leads the popular gardening writer and broadcaster Anna Pavord to celebrate her botanical hero, the sadly neglected William Turner.

According to the popular gardening writer and broadcaster Anna Pavord, the 16th century botanical writer William Turner has been neglected for far too long. It is her belief that his 'New Herball' - the first plant book ever to be written in English - deserves much wider recognition today. She tells his story in the garden of the church where he is buried in the City of London - St Olave's, Hart Street - linking it in with the more recent and genuinely mysterious tale of the memorial bust of his son, Peter, which disappeared from the same church during the Blitz, only to re-emerge 70 years later.

As the church restores this bust, Anna explains why she hopes that its reinstallation will create the opportunity to remember not just the younger but also the older Turner, and all he has done for gardeners past and present.

Producer: Beaty Rubens.

A mysterious discovery prompts Anna Pavord to celebrate her botanical hero William Turner.

A History Of The Interval2011051020120123 (R3)We know that the dramatists of Ancient Greece presented their work in a festival that lasted days and was both competitive and religious. But, following the inexorable horror of Oedipus's tragedy, did the audience have a break? Some dramas of the Middle Ages actually began in the interval, inasmuch as they were performed during pauses in the liturgy. Shakespeare's plays were originally performed without a break, though members of the audience came and went as they pleased. But by the middle of the 19th century full curtain calls were taken at the end of the first act. Today, at Glyndebourne, no matter how urgent the drama, the performance stops long enough for everyone to have a full meal and a snooze, before returning to the opera. But the National Theatre's current production of 'Frankenstein', which lasts two hours, is played straight through, to the discomfort of some of those not forewarned.

In this interval feature the writer and broadcaster Paul Allen explores the interval itself. He talks to a conductor, a director, performers, a bar person and audience members to find out how and when the interval came about; its purpose, physical, social and economic; and its dramatic and musical effect.

Producer: Julian May.

Paul Allen on the history of the interval, from Ancient Greece to today's concert halls.

A Marginal History20110114Justin Champion rummages through public and academic libraries to see how the defacing of books over centuries of reading sheds light on the history of reading and information.

We've all been brought up to believe that writing in books is literary sacrilege: small children are still told off for colouring in their own books. How many hearts have sunk when opening a library book to find biro underlining, marginal commentary, or plain simple abuse?

The rules and regulations of public libraries sternly outline the penalties and punishment for such crimes. The modern obsession with the unmarked book has been famously broken by a few notorious readers: Joe Orton and his partner, Kenneth Halliwell, served a four month sentence for defacing library books. In 1959 they began a two year campaign of stealing and defacing books from the Islington public library, then smuggling them back into the stacks, where they shocked and appalled patrons and staff alike.

Surprisingly though this passion for the clean page is a recent cultural attitude: it is a consequence of the increasing commodification of the trade in second hand and rare books - books without marks simply command a greater price. Book dealers used to crop marginalia from their titles to increase their value.

In the past it was different: annotating, marking, and including marginal comments was approved and encouraged. There were handbooks explaining the best way of doing it. Historians of the book have only very recently recognised that these marks in books are the surviving traces of how real readers encountered books.

In A Marginal History, Justin Champion and Bill Sherman look in the margins of some of the intriguing books and manuscripts in the British Library's collection to shed light on this practice of marking books.

Historian Justin Champion scours the marginalia of books in the British Library.

A Nice Pair Of Handstitched English Shoes20110728In 1886, Vincent Van Gogh visited a Paris flea market and bought a pair of worn-out boots. They didn't fit. So he painted them instead.

Writer Ian Sansom investigates the artistic, cultural and philosophical history of shoes - from God instructing Moses to take off his sandals in front of the burning bush, to the cult of the Louboutin - and goes in search of a nice pair of handbenched English shoes.

He explores the Freudian shoe, fairy tale shoes, Van Gogh's boots (as interpreted by Heidegger and Derrida), Holocaust shoes, Jesus sandals, killer heels and poems and images of people traipsing and fleeing.

Producer Sara Davies.

Writer Ian Sansom reflects on the literary significance of footwear.

A Postilion Struck, By Lightning20130806The author Ian Sansom has been waiting 50 years to be struck by lightning. It is a noble aspiration for a writer: hoping that the electrical bolt of inspiration will hit and that the next book will be easy.

But is it really ever like that?

Here Ian Sansom and the Wireless Mystery Theatre explore the life of a writer and the nature of inspiration.

Ian Sansom and Belfast's Wireless Mystery Theatre reflect on writing and inspiration.

A Russian Bloomsbury2011080620120118 (R3)Lesley Chamberlain explores the 'aesthetic Bolsheviks,' the modernist artistic community of 1920s Moscow and Petersburg who embraced socialism. These 'Bloomsberries' were leading intellectuals before and after the revolution. They lived unconventionally, guided by a love of pleasure, a sexual openness and a passionate formal interest in art. The critic (and later reluctant secret policeman) Osip Brik and his dancer wife Lili were the social centre of the group. The poet Mayakovsky and the photographer Rodchenko were key figures too. For a year or so the future was bright. Then it arrived in the dark shape of Stalin.

Producer: Tim Dee.

Lesley Chamberlain on the 'aesthetic Bolsheviks', a 1920s Russian artistic community.

A Soundscape Of Colour: The World Of Alun Hoddinott (1929-2008)20090123Donald Macleod presents a profile of Welsh composer Alun Hoddinott.
A String To Your Bow20100817Join Andrew McGregor as we step inside the bow maker's workshop, following the master craftsman who needs to be engineer, woodcarver and silversmith. We reveal how precision and technical skill are only the foundation of the art and examine the modern day issues facing bow makers - such as how Pernambuco, a rare Brazilian hardwood which has been used in the making of string bows for over 250 years, has been driven to the point of extinction. With insights from violinists Rachel Podger and Daniel Hope we discover the difference a good bow can make and how the bow continues to evolve today.

Andrew McGregor explores the intricate craft of making a violin bow.

A Tale Told, By Moonlight20090529By Leonard Woolf. An English novelist visiting Ceylon falls in love with a prostitute.
A Walk Around Camden20110325Thousands of visitors flock to Camden Market in London each weekend. It is one of the capital's most popular visitor attractions. Likewise the streets of Camden Town vibrate with energy on Fridays and Saturdays, as revellers enjoy the music and nightlife.

Many associate Camden's enduring appeal with the 1960s counter-culture movement. But 'rough around the edges' Camden has a rich cultural heritage, as Alan Dein discovers in A Walk Around Camden.

Alan Dein explores the rich cultural heritage of Camden Town in London.

A Warning To The Curious, By M.r. James20110613A classic spine-chiller by M.R. James, the 'father' of the modern ghost story, set on the windswept Suffolk coast, in which an amateur archaeologist pays the ultimate price for his curiosity.

In 'A Warning to the Curious', an amateur archaeologist from London, arrives in the seaside town of Seaburgh to search for the legendary silver Crown of Anglia which is believed to be hidden along the sandy shores of the North Sea. His research uncovers the tale of the late William Ager, the guardian of the crown, which leads him to unearth the ancient relic on a remote beach. However, having made his discovery, he becomes convinced that he is being followed, and desperate to escape the ghostly presence, decides his only hope is to return the crown to the desolate beach where it was unearthed - with tragic and terrifying consequences.

M.R. James (1862-1936) was a writer and scholar whose ghost stories are widely regarded as some of the best in English literature. He spent much of his childhood on the East Anglian coast, and the fictional town of 'Seaburg', in which this story is set, is based on the Suffolk coastal town of Aldeburgh.

Read by Alex Jennings.

Produced and abridged by Justine Willett.

Alex Jennings reads M.R. James' ghost story set on the windswept coast of East Anglia.

A Woman Without A Country20100823'I saw her that spring between the third and fourth races at Campino with the Conte de Capra - the one with the mustache'

John Cheever's classic short story is about a young woman whose moment of scandal in suburban America causes her to flee to Europe, starting with Genoa. But she later turns up at all the best watering-holes across the continent. She is restless. She is homesick. Then a momentous decision to return to America seems best for her, until that song is heard at Idlewild Airport...

The story of a young American woman, who graces the

best watering holes of Europe, ever restless...

Read by Nathan Osgood

Producer Duncan Minshull.

John Cheever's story about a young American woman who graces Europe's glamour spots.

Almost Like Literature20100219A talk by Robert Hanks on what George Orwell called 'good bad books' - novels (loosely interpreted) that set out to entertain, but which one way or another do something rather more impressive. Some books that might be mentioned:

1. The Daffodil Affair by Michael Innes (1942). On the surface, The Daffodil Affair an extravagant and elaborate detective story-cum-thriller, set against the background of the Blitz and featuring, alongside Innes's regular protagonist, the intellectual Inspector Appleby, a mathematical horse, a witch-girl, a paedophilia-obsessed policeman and a tribe of Amazonian headhunters. But Innes was also J. I. M. Stewart, author of the final volume of the Oxford History of English Literature and a leading authority on modernism; and under this novel's fantastical surface is a portrait of a civilisation suffering a collective nervous breakdown, retreating from war and the threat of apocalypse into superstition - a portrait that drew inspiration from T. S. Eliot and in its turn inspired Graham Greene.

2. Gamesmanship, Oneupmanship and Lifemanship by Stephen Potter (1947-52). Most people wouldn't regard Potter's trilogy (I do not speak of Supermanship - the Godfather Part III of his oeuvre) as a novel at all; they take the form of a set of comic manuals on achieving sporting and social success. But the books do almost everything you demand of a sophisticated novel: there are vividly drawn characters (Gatling-Fenn, Godfrey Plaste of 'Plaste's Placid Salutation', the obnoxious Odoreida); there is plot - there are far too many plots, in fact - and incident; and there is a thoroughly modern and promiscuous mingling of the real and the fictional. Above all, there is an over-arching satirical vision - Potter is a moralist, who detects and despises in our a society a willingness to believe that being good is only a matter of persuading other people you are good.

3. The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff (1956). It's a truism that historical novels say more about the time they're written than the time they supposedly portray: and Rosemary Sutcliff's novels together form one of the most vivid meditations on what it meant to be British in the years after the Second World War. Dawn Wind and The Silver Branch, set in the dying years of the Roman Empire, are about the agonies of imperial retreat, seen from the point of view of a colonial power; The Shield Ring, about a colony of Vikings in the Lake District holding out against the Norman yoke, sees colonialism from another angle: in the era of the Malaysian emergency, the Mau-Mau rebellion and the first stages of the Vietnam War, it is a sympathetic portrayal of asymmetric warfare. But it is also, in an age when 'You've never had it so good', a lament for a people exhausted by conflict, resigning themselves to a new world that promises to prove infinitely drearier and more wearing than the old.

4. Saturn's Children by Charles Stross (2008). On the one hand, it's a fast-paced space-opera about a sex-robot zipping about a solar system denuded of human life - and what's a girl to do without the man for whom she's been hardwired to go weak at the titanium knees? On the other hand, it's an examination of free will and the difficulty of human existence in a universe where god is dead; it's a warning of the emptiness and hostility of the galaxy beyond our doorstep; and it's a beehive of allusions, from The Perils of Pauline to Isaac Asimov via P. G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler.

5. Swamp Thing, issues 21-64, by Alan Moore (1983-87). To begin with, the Swamp Thing was a scientist, Alec Holland, transformed by radiation into a dripping green monster, part man, part vegetable, haunting the swamps of Louisiana: then along came Alan Moore, a Northampton-born writer, best known for writing science-fiction strips in the British comic 2000AD, to reinvent the Swamp Thing as a spirit - often a vengeful one - of the earth. Over the next four years, he transformed a moderately popular American horror comic into a wildly inventive, ironic, mystical contemplation of nature, sexuality and the necessity of evil; and with a cast of fully-realised characters and a rhythmic, descriptive prose style, he transformed the understanding of what comics could do.

A talk by Robert Hanks on good books that are not literature.

Among Animals And Plants20101217Andrey Platonov is perhaps the greatest Russian writer to have written of the worst years of Stalin's dictatorship. Robert Chandler, his translator, introduces a major lost talent. Platonov's novels (like The Foundation Pit) and stories (like Among Animals and Plants) tell of a whole country undergoing extraordinary changes. The impact of revolutionary upheaval is registered by Platonov in his remaking of the very language of his storytelling. In a world where utopia was promised the masses as they toiled in ghastly conditions in fear of what they thought let alone what they said or did, language is set adrift. Platonov noticed this and made stories from the terrfiying new world that manage to sound as if the world itself had been started again. 'Scum' Stalin wrote on the manuscript of one of Platonov's stories and he near disappeared from view and wasn't published properly in Russia until after the end of the USSR. And only now is he arriving in English, but his is a revelation worth waiting for.

Rober Chandler introduces the work of Russian writer Andrey Platonov.

An Interview With Neil Tennant20131025To accompany BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking festival in Gateshead, Philip Dodd talk to the singer Neil Tennant who grew up in the fishing port of North Shields and went to a Catholic school in Newcastle. He talks to Philip about the influence of the North East on his career, which began in publishing and magazines. Last year the Pet Shop Boys performed at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics and they have just returned from a tour which has taken them to 29 countries.

Producer: Neil Trevithick.

Singer Neil Tennant, who grew up in North Shields, talks to Philip Dodd about his career.

Angelology20111223This is the time of year when we are surrounded by images of angels, many looking rather benevolent, friendly musical creatures, or appearing as sweet chubby cherubs.

But in the biblical tradition angels are rather more alarming, and there is a strange and wonderful hierarchy of heavenly creatures to be found, including those with four faces (human, ox, lion and griffin), huge shining beings with flaming swords, and those with no human aspect whatsoever, looking like great wheels covered in eyes. And as for cherubs - well, Thomas Aquinas believed Lucifer to be a fallen angel of that very rank.

The Revd Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James's, Piccadilly, takes a look at the heavenly host in all its strange and alien glory. Christmas cards may never be the same again.

The Rev Lucy Winkett explores traditional images of angels.

Are You Musical?20120728Are you 'musical'? Tchaikovsky's Pathetique and the making of the modern homosexual...

In a scene in E. M. Foster's novel, 'Maurice', a group of pre-war Cambridge undergraduates enjoy a performance of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony on a pianola in one of their rooms. Later on, Maurice Hall, the hero, learns that the composer was gay. In the novel, the music of Tchaikovsky, like the literature of Ancient Greece, becomes a private symbol of male homosexuality to be shared and understood by a group of like-minded initiates.

Other writers and artists felt the influence of the composer too. A group of social radicals embraced Tchaikovsky and his music as an instance of how creativity and sexuality were intimately linked. The popular use of the word 'musical' to mean 'homosexual' shows just how intimate this link was.

In this interval feature, the writer and musicologist Dr. Philip Bullock looks at what was known about Tchaikovsky in Britain before the Great War, tracing his changing reputation through popular biographies, programme notes and the gay subculture of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

Producer: Emma Kingsley.

Exploring how in Edwardian Britain Tchaikovsky became a symbol of male homosexuality.

Are You Sleeping, Brother John20130523Fr耀re Jacques' is among the most widely-known songs on earth - existing in a huge variety of languages, from Finnish ('Jaako Kulta') to Mandarin ('Liang Zhi Lao Hu'). Its origins, meaning and influence on global musical culture belie its childish simplicity; it's been used as a political protest song, an emblem of 'la bonne France' after the Second World War, and is parodied today by schoolchildren in playgrounds across France. Even Gustav Mahler famously referenced the rhyme in his First Symphony, transforming it into a minor-key funeral march, and warping the song's flavour of innocence and childhood.

Peggy Reynolds takes us on a journey through the lavish lifestyle of snoozy Dominican friars at Matins, the blood and gore of the surgeon's table, and the religious persecutions and migrations of the 17th century.

Peggy Reynolds explores the story of the children's song Frere Jacques.

Arne's Olympic Flop20120528Piers Burton-Page tells the story of Thomas Arne's lost opera L'Olimpiade.
As I Went To Walsingham20090227Sean Street is joined by Eamon Duffy, Professor of the History of Christianity at Cambridge University, to tell the story of the Norfolk village of Walsingham and explore its reputation as 'The English Nazareth'. Its name was given to the famous song of Pilgrimage As I Went to Walsingham.

Through music, poetry, prayers and 16th-century accounts, they explore the historical and contemporary significance of pilgrimage, and also talk to monks, pilgrims, shopkeepers and the landlord of the pub that once was set on fire - by pilgrims. The duo also visit the site of Richeldis' original shrine, the Slipper Chapel - where people still come today to cast off their shoes to complete their journey barefoot - and the Anglican shrine with its replica of the Holy House.

Walsingham first came to prominence in 1061, when Richeldis de Faverches, wife of the lord of the manor, was taken in a vision to Nazareth and commanded by the Virgin to build a replica in Norfolk of the Holy House of the Annunciation. Just under a century later, Augustinian canons built a priory beside the 'Holy House' and the cult of Walsingham grew up, with visits from monarchs such as Edward I, Queen Anne and Henry VIII.

Sean Street and Eamon Duffy go to Walsingham, a place of pilgrimage for almost 1,000 years

Auld Fergie20080719Philip Hammond explores the friendship between composer, pianist and teacher Howard Ferguson, and composer Gerald Finzi, 100 years since the Northern Irishman's birth. With particular reference to their extensive and revealing correspondence, published in 2001, he also assess their place in British musical life. With contributions from leading Finzi biographers Diana McVeagh and Stephen Banfield, and Ferguson's Musical Exectuor Hugh Cobbe.

Ferguson was a highly versatile musical figure, who, as a pianist, performed in partnership with Dennis Matthews and violinist Yfrah Neaman; as a composer, his well-regarded orchestral and chamber works were taken up by performers such as Kathleen Ferrier and Henry Wood. Later on in life, he focused on editing a wide range early keyboard music as well as teaching at the Royal College of Music, where his pupils included Richard Rodney Bennett and Cornelius Cardew.

Philip Hammond explores the friendship between Howard Ferguson Gerald Finzi.

Ba Ba Ba Bum: The Art Of The Riff20080728Beethoven's Fifth Symphony boasts the most famous riff in the classical canon. Curate, keyboardist and Radio 3 reviewer Richard Coles investigates the power of the repeated phrase, talking to classical and film composer Jocelyn Pook about how she conjures, finds and uses them, and to musician Tom Robinson, who has written a few, about the importance - and the burden - of the riff to him. Richard also ponders whether there is much difference in musical intent and practice between the opening of Beethoven's Fifth and the opening of Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple.

Richard Coles investigates the power of the riff, looking at Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

Bach On Screen20100212The music of Bach has inspired film makers as far back as the silent era up to the present day. Film historian Professor Ian Christie traces the composer's impact on films including The Battleship Potemkin, Disney's Fantasia of 1940, which featured Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and the switched-on synthesised Bach of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.

During World War Two the morale-boosting Listen To Britain short films were accompanied by Myra Hess playing Bach at the National Gallery, the nationality of the composer notwithstanding. The timelessness of the music detached viewers from its German heritage.

In 1964 Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew, an interpretation of the life of Christ based on the writings of the Apostle Matthew, combined Bach with Billie Holiday to towering effect while Daniele Huillet and Jean Marie Straub's famous film biography of the composer told through his wife's journals, Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, transported the film to soaring heights.

Christie celebrates Bach's influence on film through genres and generations and also considers how mood and performance enhance the stories on screen.

Cinema historian Professor Ian Christie explores the impact of Bach's music on film.

Ballet And Musicians20120822Catherine Bott challenges balletomane Jonathan Keates and former prima ballerina Deborah Bull to argue with the contention, shared by a number of orchestral musicians, that the clatter, sound and fury of dance isn't always an asset when it comes to the performance of ballet music. Is a Prom which puts the music centre-stage actually the best way to appreciate the composer's work? Or on the contrary, denuded of its dance narrative, athleticism and movement does the music struggle for impact?

Fierce argument, irreverent anecdote and engaging enthusiasm are all in the mix as Catherine risks the wrath of the ballet world.

Catherine Bott and guests on the benefits of ballet music without accompanying dance.

Barcarolle20101125Polly Samson's new short story about a frustrated piano tuner captures in exquisite detail the pressures of growing up as a child prodigy.

Richard's career as a concert pianist was cut short when he suffered a terrible case of stage fright. He now tunes pianos for a living but still dreams of performing Chopin's Barcarolle in front of an audience.

Polly Samson is one of Britain's finest contemporary short story writers. Her new collection, Perfect Lives, comes out in November.

Reader: Rory Kinnear is currently playing Hamlet at the National Theatre.

Abridger: Viv Beeby

Producer: Gemma Jenkins.

Polly Samson's new short story about a pianist whose career was cut short by stage fright.

Bard Of Ireland, Irish Melodies20080720Robbie Meredith marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of the Irish poet and musician Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies. This collection of songs reverberated for over 100 years after their first publication and, according to some, came to define not only Irish music by also the sentimental and romantic Irish character. With contributions from Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, musicologist Una Hunt and biographer Ronan Kelly.

Often compared in style to contemporaries like Walter Scott and Robert Burns, Moore was regarded as one of the most important poets of his era. Moore used melodies from traditional Irish music collections, collaborated on arrangements and added his own patriotic and popular lyrics, and as a result gained himself the title 'Bard of Ireland'.

Robbie Meredith marks the 200th anniversary of Irish poet Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies.

Bartok And The Good Master20100822Before a performance of Bartok's Canatata Profana, the writer Meg Rosoff recalls The Good Master, a classic children's novel by the Hungarian-American writer Kate Seredy.

Kate Seredy wrote The Good Master after she emigrated to America. A vivid evocation of life on the Hungarian plains at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is also a lament for the end of a traditional way of life which Bartok himself explores in his music. The writer Meg Rosoff loved the book as a child and remembers in particular the attractions of a simple, seasonal lifestyle - horse-riding, spinning and weaving, country fairs and gypsy dancing, cooking and feasting - to a girl such as herself, who grew up in the suburbs and shopped in supermarkets. Returning to the book as an adult, she finds new depths in it and new links with the powerful music of Bartok.

Reader: Christine Kavanagh

Producer: Beaty Rubens.

Meg Rosoff celebrates a Hungarian children's classic novel by a contemporary of Bartok.

Bath Festival20070521Petroc Trelawny talks about the Bath Festival with Artistic Director Joanna MacGregor.
Beastly London20090802Richard Foster explores the exotic animals of London's past, including lions in the Tower, an elephant with toothache in the Strand and a camel dancing on London Bridge.

In Darwin's day, before the roar of traffic drowned the streets of London, it might well have been possible to hear the roar of jungle animals. From medieval times, the city has been home to exotic captive creatures from around the world. Many were presented to kings and queens as symbols of royal power, while others were tortured and killed for the entertainment of a bloodthirsty public.

Richard Foster learns about the exotic animals found in London in Darwin's time.

Beethoven's Double Bass20080926At the heart of Beethoven's Choral Symphony is the famous recitative dialogue between double bass and orchestra. It's a moment that lies at the heart of the double bass player's repertoire and, according to bassist Rodney Slatford, was inspired by perhaps the greatest bass player of them all, Domenico Dragonetti.

With the help of Dragonetti's diaries and other memorabilia he has collected over the years, Rodney puts forward the case for putting a Dragonetti footnote into the story of the creation of Beethoven's masterpiece.

How Beethoven's Choral Symphony was inspired by double bass player Domenico Dragonetti.

Bernardo Buontalenti, The Florentine Potter20080731Exploring the work of Bernardo Buontalenti, who produced the first European porcelain.
Bittersweet Symphony20120509Symphonies are a lot of work to write. Too much. One has to have something really appalling happen to one, that lets loose the fount of inspiration.' (William Walton)

Walton can be a composer who divides opinion but his First Symphony is generally acknowledged as a masterpiece. But what was his 'appalling' inspiration for this turbulent and deeply felt work?

Louise Fryer visits some landmarks of Walton's 1930s London and talks to Walton expert Stephen Johnson and conductor Andrew Litton to tell a story of love, heartache, struggle and triumph.

Louise Fryer investigates the inspiration behind Walton's powerful First Symphony.

British Wagnerism20130728Simon Russell Beale explores the impact of Wagner on fin-de-siecle British culture.
Bulba20110128Anna Reid, author of Borderland: a journey through Ukraine, looks at the Taras Bulba story and the way it plays out in the current uneasy relationship between Ukraine and Russia.

Gogol's longest short story about the Zaparozhian Cossack educated in Kiev and leading the charge against the mighty Polish empire was often seen as a seminal Russian work. The Cossack culture of Zaparozhia is now well and truly Ukrainianised. Indeed it was the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko who was the first to set it to music, writing his opera well before Janacek's version. But since the fall of the Soviet Union the Bulba story has achieved even greater significance. The latest of several film versions of the story was a Russian-funded affair filmed in Ukraine. It caused some controversy at its release last year. Anna looks at all these responses and attitudes to Gogol's story and using readings and musical illustrations she argues that this fictional Cossack tale provides important insights into today's Ukraine.

Producer: Tom Alban.

Writer Anna Reid explores the influence of the Taras Bulba story on modern Ukraine.

Candide20081004Martin Handley explores the themes of Candide.
Celebrating St Nicolas20081218Louise Fryer retraces the genesis of Britten's St Nicolas, talking to some of those who took part in the premiere at Lancing College in 1948, as well as more recent performers, to find out how it came to be written and how it stands up today.

The cantata is one of Britten's most creative and inventive scores, bringing together amateur and professional forces, parts for the audience to sing, as well as giving a highly theatrical treatment of its subject matter, creating a model that Britten drew upon in many later works.

Louise Fryer uncovers the story behind Britten's cantata St Nicolas.

Chance Would Be A Fine Thing20101022John Sessions reads Chance Would be a Fine Thing, an unpublished short story by Anthony Burgess about two middle-aged women and their ill-fated experiments with Tarot cards.

The story was discovered among the author's unpublished papers in Monaco after his death in November 1993. Written in the early 1960s and partly inspired by T.S. Eliot's Aristophanic melodrama, Sweeney Agonistes, Burgess's story is about two middle-aged women and their ill-fated experiments with Tarot cards.

Burgess himself was fascinated by the idea of cartomancy (or predicting the future with cards). He designed his own set of Tarot cards for domestic use, and, when working as a schoolmaster in Oxfordshire in the 1950s, he disguised himself as 'Professor Sosostris the famous clairvoyant' and told fortunes at a village fete.

Although he is best known for his full-length novels such as A Clockwork Orange, Earthly Powers and Inside Mr Enderby, Anthony Burgess was frequently attracted to the short story form. He wrote more than 40 short stories throughout his literary career. A volume of his Collected Short Stories, edited by Andrew Biswell who has written a biography of Burgess, is due for publication in 2013.

John Sessions reads Chance Would be a Fine Thing, an unpublished story by Anthony Burgess.

Chance Would Be A Fine Thing20110831John Sessions reads Chance Would be a Fine Thing, an unpublished short story by Anthony Burgess about two middle-aged women and their ill-fated experiments with Tarot cards.

The story was discovered among the author's unpublished papers in Monaco after his death in November 1993. Written in the early 1960s and partly inspired by T.S. Eliot's Aristophanic melodrama, Sweeney Agonistes, Burgess's story is about two middle-aged women and their ill-fated experiments with Tarot cards.

Burgess himself was fascinated by the idea of cartomancy (or predicting the future with cards). He designed his own set of Tarot cards for domestic use, and, when working as a schoolmaster in Oxfordshire in the 1950s, he disguised himself as 'Professor Sosostris the famous clairvoyant' and told fortunes at a village fete.

Although he is best known for his full-length novels such as A Clockwork Orange, Earthly Powers and Inside Mr Enderby, Anthony Burgess was frequently attracted to the short story form. He wrote more than 40 short stories throughout his literary career. A volume of his Collected Short Stories, edited by Andrew Biswell who has written a biography of Burgess, is due for publication in 2013.

John Sessions reads Anthony Burgess's short story Chance Would be a Fine Thing.

Children Of The Revolution20100730Lesley Chamberlain tells the stories of some of the millions of children displaced by the Russian Revolution. The impact of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Civil War and above all the Famine of 1919-21 not only devastated the Russian population but left millions of children without care. An American relief organisation put the number at five million as early as 1918. Through the 1920s unofficial Russian estimates rose to as much as nine million. This figure was put forward by the Culture Commissar Lunacharsky who was among many top Soviet dignitaries of the day who, away from the front line of revolutionary politics, tried to relieve the problem of the gangs of sick and feral children who were in evidence across the country. Leading figures in the campaign to do something about the 'bezprezornye' included the wives of leading Bolsheviks Lenin, Zinoviev and Kalinin. Many troubled articles appeared in the Soviet press through the 1920s. The sting in the tale of this story is the use Communist ideology made of children in general and the feral children in particular. While investing heavily in the image of the child as the promise of a golden future, the more ardent ideologists felt that 'the deserted children, not having grown up in family homes, and therefore free of bourgeois ideas of morality, offered magnificent human material for the work of creating a new Communist generation.' These were the words of the only observer of the situation ever to have written a book about the subject, an emigre and former Duma member from tsarist days, Vladimir Zenzinov. Zenzinov, a friend of the novelist Nabokov, wrote the book in his first years in exile. This talk brings this subject to the attention of British audiences for the first time.

Lesley Chamberlain tells the stories of children displaced by the Russian Revolution.

Clandon Park, Surrey20130317Katie Derham is joined by Antiques Roadshow expert Lars Tharp and the National Trust's curator at Clandon Park Katherine Sharp on a tour of Clandon Park, a Palladian mansion built just outside Guildford in the 1730s as a lavish entertainment space for the wealthy Onslow family. Its treasures include the Marble Hall itself, as well as a luxurious state bed, some stunning 18th-century wallpaper, an orchestra of Meissen monkeys, and a richly decorated grotto.

Katie Derham, Lars Tharp and Katherine Sharp take a tour of the treasures of Clandon Park.

Concerning Franklin And His Gallant Crew20100520It was on this day, 20th May in 1845, that Lord Franklin's ships the Erebus and Terror cleared the mouth of the Thames on their voyage to find the Northwest Passage. A traditional song recounts the story 'of Franklin and his gallant crew' and through this Julian May explores Franklin's fateful, indeed fatal, voyage, and reveals how folk song, as well as beautiful and inspiring, can be history.

With a hundred seamen he sailed away

To the frozen ocean in the month of May

To seek that passage around the pole

Where we poor sailors do sometimes go.

The ships were lost (the wrecks are still to be located) - with all hands.They were locked in the Arctic ice. Eventually the crew abandoned them and headed overland to Great Slave Lake, almost 1,000 miles away. They all perished on the journey; before they died they resorted to cannibalism.

Through cruel hardship his men did go

His ship on mountains of ice was drove

Where the Eskimo in his skin canoe

Was the only one who ever came through.

Recent discoveries have revealed that they may have been early victims of modern food packaging. Franklin's expedition was the first to rely on tinned food and it appears their supplies were shoddily manufactured and sealed with lead solder, which poisoned them. The French navigator, Aubert Bellot, set out in search of Franklin, and disappeared too. Lady Franklin also paid for an expedition to search for her husband, but that failed and what really happens remains a mystery.

And now my burden it gives me pain

For my long lost Franklin I'd cross the main

Ten thousand pounds would I freely give

To know on earth that my Franklin do live.

Julian May's interest was kindled when he heard someone singing the song which tells the story with extraordinary vividness and accuracy. He went on to research both the history and the song itself. The narrator is aboard a ship and dreams 'concerning Franklin and his gallant crew'. Some think the author was Lady Franklin herself. The song is sung by many people - for instance England's foremost folk musician, Martin Carthy - and it has inspired artists in other disciplines, such as Michael Donaghy, who incorporates it in a poem.

On the anniversary of their setting sail Julian May traces story of Franklin and his gallant crew story through the song, via Greenwich, where there is a monument to Bellot, the National Maritime Museum, which recently mounted an exhibition about the Northwest passage that included items recovered from Franklin's expedition, and an interview with Martin Carthy, who sang the song that so intrigued him.

In Baffin bay where the whale-fish blow

The fate of Franklin, no man may know;

The fate of Franklin, no tongue may tell,

Where Franklin along with his sailors does dwell.

Produced and presented by Julian May.

Julian May on Lord Franklin's voyage to the Northwest Passage and the song about it.

Concert Number One20121114For the 90th anniversary of BBC radio, Simon Elmes celebrates music broadcasting pioneers.
Cosmic Scotland20130802To tie in with tonight's Prom which includes Naresh Sohal's new BBC commission The Cosmic Dance performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Janice Forsyth is joined by Scottish novelist A L Kennedy and actor Maureen Beattie to illuminate ideas about the universe from a uniquely Scottish perspective. Including readings from Edwin Morgan's poetry, which often traces the relationship between Scotland and the universe, as in his landmark work From Glasgow to Saturn.

Janice Forsyth, AL Kennedy and Maureen Beattie discuss the universe from a Scottish view.

Czeslaw Milosz: Poet-witness20120316To complement a concert featuring Lutoslawski's Double Concerto, poet Fiona Sampson considers the poetic mission of his exact contemporary, Czeslaw Milosz, through a selection of poems from his most haunting collection, Rescue (1945).

The Lithuanian-born, Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet and novelist Czeslaw Milosz was arguably the twentieth century's pre-eminent poet-witness. He was to see his home country invaded, witness the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, the destruction of the ghetto, the doomed uprising of the Poles against the Germans, and the Soviet clamp-down in Poland and Lithuania.

Milosz saw it as his poetic responsibility to give voice to the dead and to the still-suffering - 'What is poetry which does not save / Nations or people?' (from his poem, 'Dedication')

But importantly, he saw his task not as an elegist, but as a poet who should keep the dead alive and remind the living of earthly joys. The defining theme of his poetry is a sense of the writer's responsibility to humankind: 'I attend to matters I have been charged with'.

Presented by Fiona Sampson

Produced by Emma Harding.

Fiona Sampson considers the work of the Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz.

Dance Of The Daleks20100724How do you make a sink-plunger seem scary? Matthew Sweet, who spent the Saturday tea-times of his youth peering at the television from behind the sofa, time-travels through Doctor Who's 47-year history to investigate the weird and wonderful soundworld of its incidental music. He talks with some of the composers who have contributed, in very different musical styles, to the enduring success of the programme over the decades.

Matthew Sweet investigates the weird and wonderful incidental music of Doctor Who.

Dance To The Music20081205Ballet expert and former dancer Deborah Bull explores the relationship between music and dance, with the help of music director of the Royal Ballet Barry Wordsworth and professor of dance research at the University of Roehampton Stephanie Jordan. And, with many new ballets in the West being created from existing music, contemporary composer Graham Fitkin explains the role for composers of dance in the 21st century.

Deborah Bull explores the relationship between music and dance, from Tchaikovsky to today.

David Thomson20110304A talk on the life and work of radio producer and writer David Thomson by Tim Dee. Thomson, who died in 1988 wrote brilliant and original books on hares and seals and made radio programmes on the same subjects. He also wrote three separate volumes of an autobiography - one set in Nairn, one in Ireland and one in Camden Town. His books are still known, some of his radio programmes survive in the BBC archives, but his achievements, Tim Dee (also a radio producer and writer on the natural world) argues, deserve to be more widely celebrated.

Tim Dee celebrates the life and work of radio producer and writer David Thomson.

Day Of Wrath20100129The Dies Irae chant originated in the 13th Century and served as a potent reminder of the impending Day of Judgement, much feared in the Medieval mindset. For centuries, it held its place in the Requiem Mass, but with the dawning of the Romantic age in the 19th Century, Hector Berlioz employed the melody of the chant in his Symphonie Fantastique and began a secular trend which was to preoccupy and fascinate composers. So, Liszt revelled in its macabre associations in his Totentanz and Rachmaninov incorporated the distinctive four-note motif into many of his works. When the Dies Irae became an optional part of the Requiem Mass in the mid-20th Century, its grim foreboding found a new home in horror film scores, perhaps most famously in Wendy Carlos' electronic rendition of the melody in the opening sequence to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

Sara Mohr-Pietsch traces the journey of this chant with the help of Jeremy Summerly, David Nice and David Huckvale and discovers that the ear-worm of the Dies Irae is hard to shake off.

Sara Mohr-Pietsch on music from across the centuries inspired by the Dies Irae chant.

Denglisch No More?2010061820100810 (R3)Award-winning German broadcasters Thomas Franke and Gesine Dornbluth explore the seemingly unstoppable rising tide of English language being used today in German, and recent - not entirely successful - attempts to mount a resistance.

When Deutsche Bahn, the German railway operator, announced in February that no longer would their stations have 'Kiss and Ride Zones' or offer a 'Call-a-Bike' service, it became a minor international news item. Because, for generations now, contemporary German has become littered with forms of English words. And they're not just those ubiquitous neologisms such as 'Handy' for mobile phone and 'Beamer' for projector. Says Thomas 'in daily German you find a 'dating agentur', where 'singles' are looking for partners, um ein 'Date' zu haben. If they are successful they maybe have a 'candlelightdinner' and later they hopefully practise 'safer sex'. In the morning they go to the 'Back shop' around the corner to buy bread.' And, he adds, when he recently called someone at the topically Germanising Deutsche Bahn, his secretary regretted that he was 'in einem Meeting'. So much for new German brooms.

Producer Simon Elmes.

Thomas Franke on the growth of English language being used today in German.

Dimanche2011041520120425 (R3)In Dimanche by Ir耀ne N退mirovsky a mother and daughter confront the vagaries of love, and womanhood. Dimanche is selected from Ir耀ne N退mirovsky's, Dimanche and Other Stories which is the first collection of her short stories to appear in English.

Ir耀ne N退mirovsky is best known for her celebrated novel series, Suite Fran瀀aise, which was first published, posthumously, in French in 2004. She was born in Kiev in 1903, the daughter of a successful Jewish banker. In 1918 her family fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became an established novelist. When the Germans occupied France during WWII she was prevented from publishing her work. She died in Auschwitz in 1942.

Her novels, Suite Francaise, Dolce and Fire in the Blood have all been serialised on Radio 4.

Reader Emma Fielding.

Translated by Bridget Patterson.

Abridged and produced by Elizabeth Allard.

Irene Nemirovsky's story of a mother and daughter confronting the vagaries of love.

Dr Rowan Williams On Dostoevsky2008082020090409 (R3)The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams discusses Dosotoevsky, his literary hero.
Dracula's Guest20120418The great Irish writer Bram Stoker died 100 years ago today. Celebrated now for his great gothic masterpiece, 'Dracula', in his lifetime he was best known as the stage manager of the stage actor Henry Irving.

In commemoration of his centenary, this high-gothic tale, set in the Austrian Alps, features the enigmatic Count himself.

Reader: Bertie Carvel.

Abridged and produced by: Justine Willett.

Bram Stoker's classic story featuring his great gothic creation Count Dracula.

Dusk Walk20100908'Walking at dusk means walking at the magic hour of transformation and metamorphosis, that charged time when the underworld opens up, the mysterious time of transition, of hauntings and sightings. The French call dusk l'heure bleue, and it can be the most beautiful time of day...'

The novelist Michele Roberts closes the iron gate behind her and takes to the streets of Kiev, as things are starting to lose their daytime definition. It's still boiling though, as darkness comes. And in the next half hour she encounters packs of dogs, inspirational saints and pretty girls boldly dressed for their own evening stolls.

It all happens on the streets of Kiev.

In this specailly commissioned essay, novelist Michele Roberts

takes to the streets of Kiev, to find out what happens in the transforming

hour of dusk...

Producer Duncan Minshull.

Novelist Michele Roberts takes to the streets of Kiev to observe the city at dusk.

Edwin Morgan20101209Edwin Morgan was considered Scotland's national poet. He lived almost his entire life in Glasgow, and much of his poetry reflected his love of the city. Morgan's work also stretched beyond the city boundaries, and his imagination took him around the world and into the realms of science and space travel.

Edwin Morgan died in August 2010, and this programme is Liz Lochhead's tribute to the man and his work.

Liz Lochhead presents a tribute to the late Morgan, regarded as Scotland's national poet.

Elgar And Bantock In Birmingham20130821Edward Elgar was first Peyton Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham, and he was succeeded in 1908 by Granville Bantock. Elgar's stint wasn't much of a success, his lectures were considered embarrassing. By contrast Bantock held the post for more than 20 years and made Birmingham into a real centre for music. Fiona Clampin tells the story of the passing of this chair from one to the other illustrated with the extensive collection of letters written by both men held in the archives of the Elgar Birthplace Museum near Worcester and material from the University of Birmingham's special collections.

Producer: James Cook.

Fiona Clampin tells the story of two Birmingham professors of music: Elgar and Bantock.

Elgar's Coronation Ode20120713Stephen Johnson explores Elgar's Coronation Ode.
Entertaining Toscanini2012072520130412 (R3)Many of the world's great conductors have stood on the podium in front of the BBC Symphony Orchestra but perhaps none has been quite as starry as Arturo Toscanini who conducted them in the 1930s. Suzy Klein sifts through memos and letters preserved at the BBC Written Archive Centre to reveal the BBC's attempts to lure the great man back to its Symphony Orchestra for a series of concerts in 1938.

As the Maestro's visit grows closer, memos, telegrams and letters begin to fly, exposing a range of preoccupations among the Corporation's top brass. Will Toscanini be tempted away from the BBC to American rivals, the NBC? Why won't the temperamental Maestro meet the King and Queen? And, most curiously, what sort of party would Toscanini be willing to attend? Among the BBC staff expending their efforts on these important questions are Director General Sir John Reith and his Director of Music, Dr Adrian Boult. Including contemporary recordings with the BBC SO conducted by Toscanini and readings of primary-source, never-before-broadcast material from Jonathan Keeble.

David Papp, producer

First broadcast in July 2012.

Suzy Klein explores the drama engendered by Toscanini's visits to the BBC SO in the 1930s.

Entrance To The Underworld2009081420100526 (R3)High Pasture Cave on the island of Skye is one of an entirely new category of archaeological site - shedding light on the life, death and thinking of Iron Age people. It's marked by fire and feasting. In mid-winter, sacrifices of as many as 50 piglets could be made, their bones deposited in the cave, along with many other gifts for the gods, even what are possibly the bone pegs from a lyre. But there was also death here, in this cave with its underground stream. The bones of a woman, a very young baby and a foetus were offered up, covered by stones on a ritual stairway to the depths. The foetal bones had been mixed with the bones of a fetal pig. Isotope analysis showed that the woman and the babies were related. Archaeologists have long been puzzled about the fate of the Iron Age dead. What light can the cave, its offerings and its underground stream shed on this mystery?

Historian D mhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart of Edinburgh University's Celtic department explores the site with archaeologist Steven Birch. Fraser Hunter, a curator of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and Orcadian archaeologist Martin Carruthers, help us understand the fascinating lives and afterlives of our Iron Age ancestors. We'll also hear music on replica Bronze age instruments from Scottish musicologist John Purser.

Domhnall Uilleam Stiubhart explores the High Pasture Cave on the island of Skye.

Everything's Ok20080119Travelling conductor Gheorghe Iliu receives curious family telegrams.
Eyeing The Spymaster20090410Poet Alison Brackenbury explores John de Critz's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery of Sir Francis Walsingham, whose writings composer Judith Bingham incorporated in her work See and keep silent. She responds to the famous spymaster with a new piece, illustrated by some of Walsingham's own writing, that reveals his importance and captures his character.

Walsingham developed the subtle art of international espionage in the service of Elizabeth I. He was very successful, uncovering the Throckmorton and Babington Plots. He maintained contacts as far afield as Aleppo and pioneered 'secondary spying' - sending diplomats to one foreign court whose real purpose was to gain information not about that country's intentions but those of others who also had delegations there.

Poet Alison Brackenbury responds to John de Critz's portrait of Sir Francis Walsingham.

Faberge's Eggs20080801John Rowe reads an extract from Toby Faber's new book about jewellery designer to the Romanovs Carl Faberge, in which he explores the inspiration behind the designs of the famous Faberge eggs.

The setting is early 20th Century St Petersburg, where we travel to Faberge's workshop, meet the man as he instructs his workers and hear from famous tourists who visited him at this time, including British diplomat Harold Nicolson and Consuelo Vanderbilt. The extract captures the edgy excitement of the period - the artistic community is thriving, St Petersburg is rivalling Paris on the global stage and yet signs of the growing dissatisfaction with the ruling elite are emerging.

An extract from Toby Faber's book about the inspiration behind the famous Faberge eggs.

Falstaff: The Bad Man We All Need20101008Before the broadcast of Elgar's 'Falstaff' Paul Allen, who is writing a book about the character, reflects on the fascination of composers and writers with this larger than life figure.One of the first composers to use Falstaff as a subject was the much-maligned Salieri. Nicolai, Verdi, Vaughan Williams and Elgar followed. What makes a character who's not even the official protagonist of two of the three plays he's in so irresistible? Paul Allen finds the answer in two contemporary plays where Falstaff reappears under a different name and in different circumstances: Alan Bennett's 'The History Boys' and Jez Butterworth's 'Jerusalem'. In this illustrated talk he argues that Falstaff, perhaps Shakespeare's greatest invention, is the bad man we all need in order to grow up, to be - in the broadest sense of the word - educated. But there is a price to be paid for this attachment to the young. Falstaff must always die .

prod: Julian May.

Paul Allen on the fascination of composers and writers with the figure of Falstaff.

Farewell Symphony, By Stephen Wyatt20090910Richard Briers plays Haydn in a short play about the last days of the composer's life. In May 1809, as French troops take Vienna, Napoleon arranges for one of his officers to visit Joseph Haydn.

Joseph Haydn ...... Richard Briers

Johann Elssler ...... Ben Askew

Nannerl ...... Annabelle Dowler

French Officer ...... Matt Addis

Written by Stephen Wyatt

Directed by Jeremy Mortimer.

Feeding The Bears20130901In the interval to his Big Bear Hunt at the Proms this afternoon, writer and former Children's Laureate Michael Rosen pursues his ursine quarry from the world of music into the real-life beary environment of Whipsnade Zoo at feeding time. He hears from Steph Baker, Whipsnade's 'bear presenter', the grizzly facts of bear-life and from visitors about the eternal fascination the animals hold for humans.

Writer and former Children's Laureate Michael Rosen explores the world of bears.

Fiddler In The Tower20111026Award-winning British violinist Daniel Hope visits the Tower of London with violin, and tells the little-known story of German/Brazilian Fernando Buschman (1890-1915) the virtuoso violinist and engineer held and executed there when charged with espionage in World War One.

Buschman's wartime existence comprised of a string of still-born entrepreneurial adventures from aircraft design to cheese and vegetable export, with, allegedly, spying on the Royal Navy also thrown in! His big love was his violin and when, in 1915, he was arrested and condemned to face a firing squad at the Tower he asked for his instrument to be brought to his cell. The night before his execution Buschman played away, the violin echoing and keening round the Tower.

In the Chapel of the Tower at night-time, beside the tombs of famed Tower victims Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Sir Thomas More, Daniel performs the music Buschman played, tries to fathom what motivated this man and imagines himself facing those final fated hours.

* This is the first time the story has been told on the BBC.

* Daniel performs especially for the programme the Sarabande from Bach's D Minor Partita BWV1004, Braga's Angel's Serenade, and music from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci - all works Buschman had with him at the time.

* Daniel interviews Bridget Clifford of the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London, and Dr Nicholas Hiley of the University of Kent puts in context German espionage at the beginning of World War I.

* Daniel Hope is still searching for Buschman's violin and would welcome any clues.

Daniel Hope tells the story of Fernando Buschman a violinist executed for spying in WWI.

Fiesta20081024A portait of the Fiesta del Pilar, a traditional celebration held annually in the Spanish city of Zaragoza in honour of the country's female patron saint. Held on October 12, the date is also marked across Spain as Dia de la Hispanidad, a national celebration of Columbus's discovery of the Americas.

We hear the various elements of this year's celebrations, from the religious processions, to the bands, bullfights, fireworks, flamenco dancing and the traditional parades of gigantes y cabezudos, featuring carnival figures made of papier mache.

A portait of the Fiesta del Pilar, a celebration held in the Spanish city of Zaragoza.

Final Exposure2008081420090128 (R3)Journalist Christine Finn explores the private world of late British landscape photographer Fay Godwin, who left London in 1995 and moved permanently to the family's former holiday home in a remote, secret location on the Sussex coast. Godwin found a new direction for her work and introduced colour for the first time.

After her death in 2005, Godwin's family offered her considerable archive to the British Library. Finn, the first journalist to be allowed to visit, was shown round Godwin's home by her friend film-maker Maggie Taylor, gaining an insight into the power of the place that inspired Godwin.

Christine Finn explores the private world of British landscape photographer Fay Godwin.

Fresh Bait, By Joe Dunthorne20130531An original story by Joe Dunthorne, about two Welsh non-identical twin sisters.
Friedrich Nietzsche's Horrible Music20130830The awe-inspiring thinker who declared 'God is dead' was also, unexpectedly, a composer.

The first time Richard Wagner heard a composition by his closest friend he had to leave the room, crying with laughter. The leading conductor of the day dismissed Nietzsche brutally. 'Several times', von Bülow wrote, 'I had to ask myself: is the whole thing a joke? You yourself describe your music as 'horrible'- it is, actually, more horrible than you realise ...

And yet, Tom Service discovers, the music written by the young philosopher is not all that bad.

The author of Also sprach Zarathustra produced piano pieces, songs and even sketches for symphonies. Had he not been comparing himself with the greatest living composer, he might well have pursued a career as a professional musician. Instead he became the philosopher who shaped the modern world.

Produced by Hannah Sander.

Tom Service finds out about the music composed by philosopher Friedrich Nietszche.

From Buddenbrooks2011082220120919 (R3)An enormous brick-red, boiled ham appeared, strewn with crumbs and served with a sour brown onion sauce, and so many vegetables that the company could have satisfied their appetites from that one dish.

Lebrecht Kroger undertook the carving, and skillfully cut the succulent slices, with his elbows slightly elevated and his two long forefingers laid out along the back of the knife and fork. With the ham went the Frau Consul's celebrated ' Russian jam' - a pungent fruit conserve flavoured with spirits.

From Thomas Mann's classic German novel, set in the mid 1800s, comes this evocation of a sumptuous dinner party, presided over by old Johann Buddenbrooks and his son, the Consul. Father and his cronies stand for the Old Order, whilst the Consul sees change in the wind. Whatever, the family are close and much merriment is had, even when Dr Grabow is called to deal with a pressing case of... well, what exactly?

Read by Adrian Scarborough.

Translated by HT Lowe-Porter.

Producer Duncan Minshull.

First broadcast in August 2011.

Adrian Scarborough reads from Thomas Mann's classic novel set in the mid-1800s.

From Neptune To Nixon20120905Adrian Mourby examines the history of the operatic plot - from gods and emperors, kings and queens, to lovers, lowlife, terrorists and presidents

With expert commentary from eighteenth century opera specialist Dr Suzanne Aspden, music historian Roderick Swanston and music journalist Shirley Apthorp.

Adrian Mourby examines the history of the operatic plot.

Fruits Of The Pomegranate20110530The potent symbolism of the pomegranate in contemporary poetry in which this most exotic of fruits has taken on a range of new meanings.

In Classical mythology, the only food that Persephone was unable to resist in the dark halls of Hades was six seeds of the golden-red pomegranate. From this story came the explanation for the division of the year into death-like winter and fertile summer, and the common symbolism of the pomegranate as a fruit of fertility, love and resurrection.

This is the story on which the poet Algernon Swinburne drew in 'The Garden of Proserpine'. In turn, Vaughan Williams was inspired to compose his version, the world premiere of which is being performed in the second half of this evening's concert.

During this interval, Beaty Rubens explores a whole new range of meanings which the fruit of the pomegranate has assumed over the last few decades. With extensive illustrations from the poetry of Eavan Boland and Mimi Khalvati, Sarah Maguire, Dunja Mikhail and Zulfikar Ghose, she looks at the way that this fruit has come to represent bloodshed and a powerful sense of exile and longing for home, particularly amongst poets born in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.

Along the way, she also tells a story of a pomegranate tree grown in a small garden in Oxfordshire and of how the ruby-red seeds of the fruit continue to inspire a thriving sense of optimism.

Producer: Julian May.

Beaty Rubens explores the potent symbolism of the pomegranate in contemporary poetry.

Gallery Going20110807Lesley Chamberlain looks at people looking at paintings. Last year Tate Modern had six million visitors. It was the biggest tourist attraction in the country. Why is gallery-going so popular? Art has shifted from being the material of high culture towards art as provocation. It still speaks to experts but its real attention is on the responsive passer by. Why should this be so and does it matter?

Producer: Tim Dee.

Lesley Chamberlain explores why people look at paintings in galleries.

Going Underground201307042013 marks the 150th anniversary of the London Underground, and to celebrate this illustrious milestone, Twenty Minutes explores the lesser-known music of the tube - not just the buskers and the classical music in ticket halls, but the strange music of the machinery involved in the world's first underground railway. Train enthusiast Petroc Trelawny experiences the compelling and sometimes overwhelming soundworld of the tube, with writer Jonathan Glancey and Robert Elms.

Petroc Trelawny experiences the compelling sounds of the London Underground.

Goodbye, Goodbye20120813Amanda Root reads Elizabeth Taylor's 1954 tale of forbidden love - of a very English kind.

When two lovers vow never to see each other again, they believe it is for ever. But one summer's day, in a Brief Encounteresque meeting on a summer's beach, they are reunited. But, with the woman's children playing nearby, simmering emotions must remain hidden.

Reader: Amanda Root

Abridged and produced by: Justine Willett

Writer: Elizabeth Taylor Elizabeth Taylor (1912-75) was a British novelist and short story writer, now regarded as one of the most underrated of British writers. Kingsley Amis described her as 'one of the best English novelists born in this century'; Antonia Fraser called her 'one of the most underrated writers of the 20th century'.

Amanda Root reads Elizabeth Taylor's tale of forbidden love.

Grinke Recalled20110518A personal celebration of the hugely charismatic violin teacher, Frederick Grinke - perhaps the single most influential figure in 20th century British string playing

Before Fiona Sampson became a poet and Editor of Poetry Review, she was a foundation scholar at the Royal Academy of Music and almost became a professional violinist. Like many other top fiddle players of her generation - the leaders of the Alberni, Arditti, Coull, Fairfield and Earle Quartets to name but a few - she was taught by Frederick Grinke, known and loved as a teacher long after ill-health stopped him performing.

A hundred years on from Grinke's birth, Fiona Sampson recalls her own experience of this special teacher-pupil relationship, and explores how one great teacher can produce an artistic genealogy which transmits musical understanding down the generations.

Producer: Beaty Rubens.

Fiona Sampson with a personal tribute to influential violin teacher Frederick Grinke.

Ham House, Surrey20130324Katie Derham is joined by Lars Tharp and curator Victoria Bradley for a tour of Ham House.
Handel Week, The Mouth Of The Lord20090414A discussion about the real meaning of the text Handel set in Messiah.
Handel's Henry V20110825Ruth Smith explores the parallels between Rinaldo and Shakespeare's Henry V.
Happy Endings20090220Paul Allen explores the allure of the happy ending, looking at the story of the Prokofiev's original version of Romeo and Juliet with composer Gerard McBurney and dance critic Debra Craine. The composer's intended ending of the ballet saw the lovers survive, but Stalin wouldn't countenance this and it was never publicly performed until 2008.

Sonia Massai, Reader in Shakespeare Studies at King's College, London, examines why for 150 years the only version of King Lear theatregoers saw was Nahum Tate's version - in which the old king and Cordelia both survive.

Should a classic always remain untouched, or do such stories have a life - and endings - that can change with the times, tastes and expectations?

Paul Allen explores happy endings, looking at Prokofiev's original Romeo and Juliet.

Happy Families20110901AL Kennedy writes: 'It's the summer of 1971 and I am in Paris with my parents. It's a time of firsts. I've never met people who don't speak English before: I'd worked out that people in my house speak differently from people in my school who speak differently again from the people in my home city, but French is another thing entirely - I'm not sure if human beings are always going to suddenly become incomprehensible. It's my first - and I hope only - major loss of teeth. My milk teeth are dropping out in handfulls, usually whenever I eat a baguette, which I'm doing a lot. These are also my first baguettes, but I don't take against them - I just accidentally swallow a lot of teeth and find - as we sit on the boulevards and I smile gappily - that Parisians love nothing better than a gappy little kid. I am doted upon with regularity, just for grinning. We are a middle class family - anxiously so, given that both my parents weren't born that way - so we have to engage in strenuous educational activities. This might be pleasant if it weren't so hot, we didn't get lost so often and my father were not biologically unable to ask for directions. I grow used to long, long marches between pale walls and pavements, all humming with heat. I get thirsty. My parents are uneasy with each other because they are always uneasy with each other. If they are not uneasy, they will fight. The French seem nicer and kiss each other a lot. I also get drunk for the first time - France being the land of rhum babas and rhum baba being one of the few things I say in French at this stage. It wasn't a happy holiday, my parents didn't have a happy marriage and have not endeared the institution to me - but Paris was wonderful and has been ever since.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

AL Kennedy recalls her first holiday abroad, aged six, arriving in Paris with her parents.

Haydn And The Enlightenment20090603Haydn joined the Masonic Lodge Zur wahren Eintracht in Vienna in 1785, but he was not a member for very long, and was reputedly not particularly interested in Freemasonry. Dermot Clinch investigates Haydn's connections with Masonic ideas, and talks to scholars of the 18th century Enlightenment, including Professor David Schroeder who feels that the Enlightenment had a strong influence on the composer's music.

Dermot Clinch looks at the influence of Freemasonry and the Enlightenment on Haydn.

Haydn And The Enlightenment20091023Haydn joined the Masonic Lodge Zur wahren Eintracht in Vienna in 1785, but he was not a member for very long, and was reputedly not particularly interested in Freemasonry. Dermot Clinch investigates Haydn's connections with Masonic ideas, and talks to scholars of the 18th-century Enlightenment, including Professor David Schroeder, who feels that the Enlightenment had a strong influence on the composer's music.

Dermot Clinch explores the influence of Enlightenment ideas and Freemansonry on Haydn.

He Played It Left-hand20100820After losing his right hand in the First World War the pianist Paul Wittgenstein commissioned several composers to write pieces specifically for the left hand, including Ravel, whose Concerto for the Left Hand is performed in tonight's Prom concert. But why, as 10% of the population is left-handed, should it take such a loss for composers to consider doing this? Why (especially as the incidence of left-handedness is even higher among musicians) are musical instruments designed by right-handers, for right-handers?

The novelist Louise Doughty is left-handed and she feels this has had considerable bearing on her becoming a writer. There is a preconception that left-handers are more creative than most of the population, more likely to develop as artists. Louise enquires into the truth of this, talking to Chris McManus, Professor of Psychology and Medical Education at University College London and an expert on left-handedness and asymmetry.

She meets the pianist Chris Steed, who commissioned a left-handed piano, and tries the instrument herself. She considers how left-handedness is not merely mechanical but an approach to the world - a world which pays scant regard to left-handers. Popular opinion even discriminates against left-handness, it being historically associated with evil, and depicted as such in art. Why should Christ sit 'on the right hand of the Father'?

David Bowie's guitarist alter ego Ziggy Stardust 'played it left hand' and this marked him out as special. And Louise hears from the late Robert Sandall about how the great originality of Jimi Hendrix as an electric guitarist was due to his being left-handed.

Producer: Julian May.

Novelist Louise Doughty investigates the influence of left-handedness on creativity.

Her First Ball20110526Her First Ball' by Katherine Mansfield opens with Leila, a young unsophisticated country girl, nervous but excited on her way to her first formal ball with more cultured relatives.

Written in the tempo of a waltz, Mansfield conjures up the dreamlike, fairytale atmosphere of the ball, which is suddenly shattered when an older, fat dancing partner warns Leila that this is the beginning of the end of her young life, that now she will merely age, regretting her lost youth and beauty. For a moment, the magic is broken, but when another handsome young partner whisks her away, she returns to the thrill of the moment, to the joy of being young and free.

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is widely considered one the masters of the short story, her much acclaimed stories include 'The Garden Party' and 'Bliss'. She was brought up in colonial New Zealand but moved to Britain in 1908 where she led a literary bohemian life among the influential writers of the time.

Reader: Fenella Woolgar

Produced by Justine Willett.

Katherine Mansfield's story charting the heady thrill of a young woman's first formal ball

Herschel Grynszpan, The Forgotten Assassin2012080120130501 (R3)Michael Tippett's oratorio A Child of Our Time was partly inspired by the story of Herschel Grynszpan, a young Polish-German Jew whose assassination of Nazi foreign service officer Ernst vom Rath in Paris on 7 November 1938 provided the excuse for the vicious pogrom that became known as Kristallnacht.

Despite his key role, Grynszpan remains an obscure figure. He was taken into French custody and remained alive throughout much of the war, a prisoner in various Nazi institutions. But his ultimate fate is unknown.

This feature tells the intriguing story of 17 year old Herschel Grynszpan and speculates on his fate, and on why his name has been largely forgotten by history.

Contributors: David Cesarani, Ron Roizen, Gerald Schwab and John Najam.

Readings by Susie Riddell, Joe Sims and Patrick Brennan.

Produced by Emma Harding.

The story of Herschel Grynszpan, whose actions provided the pretext for Kristallnacht.

Holst's School Days20100115Petroc Trelawny visits St Paul's Girls School in Hammersmith, West London, where Holst taught music from 1905 until his retirement in 1934. In his music room overlooking Brook Green, the composer wrote some of his most famous works, including The Planets and Brook Green suites. The school still reveres its eccentric teacher as recent music students testify and one of Holst's own pupils, Margaret Eliot, recalls what Holst was like as a teacher and a man. And there is revealing archive from Holst's composer-colleagues and friends, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells, as well as from Holst's late daughter, Imogen.

Petroc Trelawny visits St Paul's Girls School in West London, where Holst taught.

Horrible Histories20110730When Terry Deary wrote his first Horrible Histories book in the nineties, little did he know that he would spawn a monstously successful childrens' publishing brand. Now translated around the world, Terry's anarchic history books with titles like 'Awesome Egyptians', 'Groovy Greeks' and 'Vile Victorians' are on the bookshelves in kids' bedrooms everywhere.

The historian, Professor Justin Champion meets the creative team behind the successful TV series of the books who are staging their first Prom concert based on the TV show. Joining Terry and Justin to discuss the popularity of the programmes are Caroline Norris, the exec producer, comedy writer and Horrible History lyricist, Dave Cohen and the composer, Rich Webb who has penned such classics as the Charles II rap and the viking rock anthem - literally!

Producer: Sarah Taylor.

Justin Champion talks to the creators of the children's TV series Horrible Histories.

How To Play A Cactus20120817As the BBC Proms marks John Cage's centenary, Robert Worby explores the adventures undertaken by performers tackling his music, with contributions from Ilan Volkov and John Tilbury.

John Cage re-defined what a performance could be: experiments with silence, everyday objects as instruments, early electronics, chance procedures and irreverent subterfuge. As performances are mounted around the world to mark John Cage's centenary Robert Worby - himself a noted interpreter of Cage's music - goes behind the scenes of rehearsals as the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov rehearse for performances of Cage's works in Glasgow and at the BBC Proms.

He explores the adventures they undertake tackling the unusual requirements of pieces such as those to be heard at this evening's Prom, listening-in to the orchestra's interpretation of scores generated from the marks on a star chart in 'Atlas Eclipticalis', John Tilbury's meticulous piano manipulation for the Concerto for Prepared Piano and Ilan Volkov's solo performance of 'Child of Tree' for amplified cactus plants.

Robert Worby explores the adventures undertaken by performers tackling John Cage's music.

I Predict A Riot20130516Ivan Hewett explores the myths that surround the infamous first performance of the Rite of Spring.

The scene that surrounded the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring on 29 May 1913 in Paris has been described as 'a battleground', a 'full-scale riot' and the aftermath of 'an earthquake' that had struck the Th退 tre des Champs-ɀlys退es. Ivan Hewett tries to unravel what really happened.

Ivan is joined by Professor Stephen Walsh, who holds a Chair in Music at Cardiff University, and has written extensively about Stravinsky, and by Professor Esteban Buch, Director of Studies at the ɀcole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Both have contributed to a new volume of essays published to coincide with the anniversary of the first performance of the Rite of Spring.

Ivan Hewett explores the myths that surround the first performance of The Rite of Spring.

I Will Wear The Green Willow20130817The second half of this afternoon's Prom concert begins with the Willow Song from Otello. But it is not Verdi's, nor Shakespeare's work. The song Desdemona sings is a folksong of some antiquity. Its earliest appearance in print was in1583, when Thomas Dallis included the tune in his Lute Book. Willow, Willow is one of a number of folksongs that Shakespeare knew well and incorporated into his plays. His audience knew them, too, and understood their motifs and symbols. Dr Fay Hield, ethnomusicologist and singer, explores the way the willow as a badge of forsaken love appears in traditional song - remember Steeleye Span's hit All Around My Hat? - with quotations and musical illustrations drawn from recordings and performed by her and Jon Boden, fiddle player and singer with the hugely successful folk big band, Bellowhead.

Producer: Julian May.

Fay Hield explores how the willow as a badge of forsaken love appears in traditional song.

I'm Sorry I Killed Your Fish2010042320110429 (R3)Shostakovich's Fifth symphony was published with the tag 'A Soviet artist's reply to justified criticism,' and was widely seen as an apology to Stalin authorities for his opera Lady Macbeth. Russian apologies are very different from English ones. Overwhelmingly the most common way for a Russian to apologise is to say 'forgive me': a formulation that demands forgiveness from the listener. English apologies, by contrast, almost always use the word 'sorry': a word full of ambiguity since it expresses regret but not necessarily culpability.

The ambiguity has frequently been exploited by Anglo-Saxon politicians who have apparently apologised for historic wrongs which they were not responsible for.

Poles use the formula: 'I apologise' - what linguists call a 'a performative' - which is situated somewhere between the English and Russian formula. Eva Ogiermann from Portsmouth University is a Polish linguist, fluent in all three languages; she has carried out extensive research in how people apologise in the three languages. In one scenario she asked people how they would apologise for letting a neighbour's pet fish die while supposedly looking after them. A typical British apology is 'Some of your fish died while you were away. I fed them an everything but turned up one day and some had died' (admitting facts but denying responsibility) or when accepting blame only using careful formulation such as 'I think I might not have fed them properly'. Russians and Poles would tend to the more florid, such as 'I neglected your fish. I know now that there is nothing to be done', or 'I have not lived up to your trust'.

Using many other scenarios, not just fish, Eva Ogiermann constructs a complete typology of apology, and argues that the differences are more than linguistic - they reflect different notions of politeness in the respective cultures. The British emphasise 'negative politeness' - not encroaching on someone else's space. Russians are far more interested in 'positive politeness' - making the hearer feel good about themselves.

Linguist Eva Ogiermann considers how different cultures apologise and what this means.

In Memoriam 193420090725David Owen Norris looks through the newspapers of 1934 to find out how obituary writers and the public responded to deaths of Elgar, Holst and Delius.

Much was made of the importance of Elgar's contribution to English music. Henry Wood wrote to The Times, saying 'he was such a mighty figure that one cannot think of him dead. It is the greatest loss to music that could have possibly happened, and a loss from which this country will take many years to recover, for there is no one else to touch him'. A telegram was also sent by the King and Queen to Elgar's daughter proclaiming their 'true sympathy in your bereavement'.

The deaths of Holst and Delius later in the year attracted far fewer newspaper inches but Delius's death did make the front page of the Daily Express, unlike Elgar's. Opinion at the time was divided over Holst and Delius's contribution to British music and in Delius's case, much was made of his blindness and loneliness. The tabloids at the time reported that 'tragic' Delius was buried without a funeral but when David explores contemporary accounts, he reveals that even back in 1934, one shouldn't always believe what one reads in the newspapers.

David Owen Norris the response to the deaths of Elgar, Holst and Delius in 1934.

Incident On Lake Geneva2012090620130404 (R3)'On the banks of Lake Geneva, close to the small Swiss resort of Villeneuve, a fisherman who had rowed into the lake one summer night in the year 1918, noticed a strange object in the middle of the water...'

In Stefan Zweig's famous story, translated by Anthea Bell, a man clings to driftwood out on the lake. When he's brought ashore the townsfolk react to his arrival in different ways. Just who is he, this stranger, talking in an odd language?

Reader Dermot Crowley

Producer Duncan Minshull.

Stefan Zweig's story about the discovery on Lake Geneva of a man clinging to driftwood.

Inextinguishable20130222Lucy Caldwell's new short story takes its inspiration from Carl Nielsen's Symphony No 4 and is about the deep consolations that music can bring.

Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast and currently lives in London. She has published two novels, Where They Were Missed (2006) and The Meeting Point (2011). The Meeting Point was awarded the 2011 Dylan Thomas Prize. Lucy is also a playwright whose stage plays have won numerous awards including the George Divine Award and the Imison Award. In 2011, Lucy was awarded the prestigious Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for her body of work to date. Lucy's third novel, All the Beggars Riding, was published in January and will be Book at Bedtime on Radio 4 in March 2013 .

Producer: Elizabeth Allard.

A specially commissioned short story by Lucy Caldwell about the solace that music brings.

Inside The Orchestra20100807Horn player and humourist Ian Fisher reveals what really happens off the concert platform.
Inside The Revolution200911121989: Twentieth Anniversary

Nick Thorpe, the BBC's Central Europe correspondent, reads from his book '89: The Unfinished Revolution, with excerpts from audio tapes he made in the final days of communism in Prague and East Germany.

Having moved to Budapest as a peace activist three years earlier, Thorpe spent 1989 'revolution-hopping' - reporting on the dying days of communist regimes among the people of Budapest, Prague, East Germany and Romania.

He recounts his experiences in the heart of the revolutions in the former Czechoslovakia and East Germany - from Prague's famous student protests to the Leipzig church where the East German revolution kick-started, providing a moving insight into the people and places behind the protests. And he gives a unique view of the environmental problems facing both countries, including the wood-carvers in the Ore Mountains for whom communist policies had had a disastrous effect on the local forest.

BBC correspondent Nick Thorpe reads from his book '89: The Unfinished Revolution.

Janacek's Beliefs20110715The first concert of the 2011 Proms features a performance of Leos Janacek's 'Glagolitic Mass'. The liturgy he chose to set was in Old Church Slavonic, rather than Latin, and Glagolitic refers to the script in which it was written.

But that Janacek should compose a mass at all is strange. He declared himself an atheist refused to, as he said, 'even go into church to shelter from the rain' and he dismissed organised religion as 'concentrated death. Tombs under the floor, bones on the altar, pictures full of torture and dying. Rituals, prayers, chants - death and nothing but death. I don't want to have anything to do with it'.

But he had grown up in an Augustinian monastery where he took charge of its choir. That's a musical legacy not easily jettisoned. In the letters he wrote to Kamila Stosslova he refers to God constantly, to her Jewish God and his Catholic one. Janacek's letters to Kamila document the impassioned relationship between the 74 year old composer and a married woman 37 years younger. He emerges as something of a pantheist, seeing something of God in every living creature.

The playwright Paul Allen has used these 'Intimate Letters' in a monologue he has written, premiered recently by Daniel Evans. In the interval feature before the performance of the Glagolitic Mass in the first Prom Concert of 2011 Paul explores the contradictory nature of Janacek's beliefs, with readings from the 'Intimate Letters' and a contribution from Janacek's biographer, John Tyrrell.

Producer: Julian May.

Paul Allen explores the contradictory nature of Janacek's beliefs.

Jonathan Harvey And The Ircam Factor20080819To coincide with its first visit to the UK, Sara Mohr-Pietsch explores the work of IRCAM, the French organisation dedicated to contemporary musical research and production, hearing the music and thoughts of composer Jonathan Harvey as well as various musical personalities associated with it. With Gilbert Nouno, one of their finest electronic musicians/technicians, director Frank Madelener, composers Sally Beamish and Martin Suckling, who attended the IRCAM workshops in Glasgow, as well as Hugh MacDonald, formerly the director of the SSO.

The programme features Harvey's second string quartet as well as excerpts from Mortuos Plangos, Bird concerto for pianosong and Wagner Dream.

Sara Mohr-Pietsch explores the work of IRCAM, the musical research and production house.

Ivan Hewett looks at the career of Edgar Varese, one of the musical world's great outsiders, with reminiscences from his friends and colleagues. Varese was a very original musical figure, following no school and recognising no tradition. His music outraged his contemporaries, and even today his works have the capacity to astound listeners.

Ivan Hewett looks at the work of Edgar Varese, one of the musical world's great outsiders.

Judas20120810Judas is a name synonymous with betrayal and evil. Remembered for his act of betrayal that set in motion the story of the Passion, Judas the man is himself only briefly sketched in the Gospels and the Church portray him simply as a figure of hate. Richard Holloway explores the myth of Judas Iscariot and discusses some of the many representations of the character in history and fiction including Philip Pullman in his novel The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ; Anthony Payne in Elgar's Apostles; and historian Herb Krosney in the apocryphal Gospel of Judas.

Presented by Richard Holloway.

Richard Holloway explores the myth of Judas Iscariot and his depiction through the ages.

Judith Weir, Songs And Texts20080120Judith Weir talks to Iain Burnside about her songs and the texts she likes to use.
Judith Weir: Stories From Life20080118A self-portrait of Judith Weir in words and music.
Jung's Red Book20100904Bidisha looks at Carl Jung's remarkable Red Book, recently made available to the public for the first time, in which he developed his theories and also created a beautiful work of art.

The early part of the 20th Century was a time of great spiritual, intellectual and artistic upheaval in Western Europe. In Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Anton Webern and Alban Berg, whose music we will hear in the second half of tonight's Prom, were rewriting the rules of classical music. Sigmund Freud was practising psychoanalysis in Vienna, and Jung was developing his theories of analytical psychology; the two worked closely together for several years.

Europe was heading for the First World War and on the eve of the war Jung had an almost catastrophic spiritual crisis which led him to enter in to a long and complex period of self-analysis.

Jung recorded his psychological experiments on himself in a beautiful manuscript which he called Liber Novus (the New Book). Bound in red leather, it became known as the Red Book.

The Red Book contains fine calligraphy, with illuminated capital letters like a medieval manuscript. Jung also created several full-page paintings - some fairly naturalistic, others which appear to be abstract patterns. Jung used these images to help him analyse his own unconscious and to develop some of his most important theories in analytical psychology.

The Red Book remained hidden by Jung's family after he died, first in the family home then in a Swiss bank vault. It was not until late in 2009 that a facsimile of the Book was finally published and made available to the public.

Bidisha talks to Professor Sonu Shamdasani, Editor of the published edition of the Red Book, and to the artist Bettina Reiber about this extraordinary artefact.

Bidisha on Carl Jung's Red Book, where the psychiatrist recorded experiments on himself.

Katharina Wolpe20130123Distinguished pianist and teacher Katharina Wolpe talks to Martin Handley.
Kenny Taylor, My Northern Lights20090903A programme following Kenny Taylor, a Highland-based writer, musician and broadcaster as he sits outside his house, watching the night sky, contemplating the science, myth and magic of the Northern Lights.

Kenny is passionate about natural history but is also obsessive about auroras. He has travelled from Alaska to Scandinavia to seek them, but enjoys a huge northern view from his highland garden, which boosts the chances of dancing sky appreciation at home.

Following musician and writer Kenny Taylor as he contemplates the Northern Lights.

Kew Gardens2011091420110814 (R3)
20120820 (R3)
Lindsay Duncan reads Virginia Woolf's classic story celebrating the link between nature and humanity set on a sweltering summer's day in Kew Gardens .

'One couple after another with much the same irregular and aimless movement passed the flower-bed and were enveloped in layer after layer of green blue vapour, in which at first their bodies had substance and a dash of colour, but later both substance and colour dissolved in the green-blue atmosphere. How hot it was! So hot that even the thrush chose to hop, like a mechanical bird, in the shadow of the flowers. Instead of rambling vaguely the white butterflies danced one above another, making with their white shifting flakes the outline of a shattered marble column above the tallest flowers.'

Likened to an impressionist painting, memories are stirred and snapshots of lives filter through the gentle hum of the garden as couples flit like butterflies past Kew's sumptuous flowerbeds, their conversations dissolving into flashes of colour, shape and movement into the steamy atmosphere.

Author: Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as one of the foremost literary figures of the twentieth century, one of the greatest innovators in the English language.

Reader: Lindsay Duncan

Producer: Justine Willett

First broadcast in August 2011.

Lindsay Duncan reads Virginia Woolf's sumptuous story of a sweltering summer's day at Kew.

Konstantin Melnikov2008121120091106 (R3)Iain Glen reads Bruce Chatwin's story of his trip to see the architect Konstantin Melnikov
Land Of Music20090729To mark a Proms 2009 concert by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra from Bavaria, Scottish-born horn player Fergus McWilliam reports on the respect classical music still commands in Germany, and on the riches of regional music-making in a country which still has around 130 symphony orchestras and numerous chamber ensembles.

After decades playing with the Berlin Philharmonic, where he also sits on the orchestra's board, Fergus is these days less surprised by the abundance of classical bands in Germany. And he says that still it's only the very best that boast the very best conductors and standards. Joining him to discuss the depth of talent and sheer exuberance of the country's classical output are the principal conductor of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra Jonathan Nott and veteran Berlin music critic Klaus Geitel.

Fergus McWilliam discovers just why music-making is so rich and so revered in Germany.

Learning To Swim2010083020110930 (R3)Taking his children to swimming lessons, Ian Sansom calculates that he has probably spent more time taking them to swimming lessons over the years than he has spent reading to them, playing with them or tending to their maths homework. What does it all mean? Of course it's useful as a means of avoiding drowning. In a very few cases it might result in a satisfying career path. It's an enjoyable leisure activity, and a way of keeping fit. But Ian suspects there's something more to it, and his reflections lead him to speculate on the wider meaning of swimming, on the many instances of significant swims and swimmers in film and literature, and on some of the figures who have swum through the pages of our literary canon. Taking his cue from WH Auden, Ian finds analogies between the act of swimming and the act of poetic organisation, and recognises in other writers and philosophers the impulse to swim as an escape into the imagination.

Writer Ian Sansom reflects on the role of swimming in life and literature.

Left High And Dry20130227In 18th-Century Italy, the craze for castrati singers reached its zenith and the boundaries of vocal music were changed for ever. Thousands of pre-pubescent boys underwent the risky operation of castration to preserve their pure, high voice in the hope of finding fame and fortune as a celebrated virtuoso.

For 1% of those boys, like Senesino, the gamble paid off and their families secured a comfortable future. But what of the remaining 99%?

Left High and Dry charts the rise and fall of the castrati to paint a portrait of Italian society at a time of extraordinary change. Looking beyond the well known tales of on-stage diva antics and off-stage sexual prowess as relayed by the likes of Casanova, Mary King explores the contradictory role that the church played in denying, encouraging and protecting the castrati; the economic climate that encouraged families to effectively sell their sons into a life of music and the changes brought about by the Risorgimento which sounded the death knell for the castrati.

Presented by vocal coach and voice expert Mary King, artist in residence at the Southbank Centre and director of Voicelab.

Vocal coach and voice expert Mary King charts the rise and fall of the castrati.

Leopold Mozart's Violin Treatise20130212Cliff Eisen traces the history of Leopold Mozart's influential violin treatise of 1756.
Let The Peoples Sing20111016Louise Fryer explores the Let the Peoples Sing competition and talks to participants.
Let's Do The Timewarp Again20080727Science-fiction writer Justina Robson explores the many meanings of Doctor Who.
Light Music-roger Roger20091013Martin Handley talks to Barry Wordsworth about light music. Plus the Roger Roger revival.
Little Episode2013012420130121 (R3)Katherine Mansfield, which sheds new light on one of the most painful periods of her life. Rejected by her musician lover while pregnant, Mansfield married for convenience, but subsequently lost her baby.

In this story, the young Yvonne has married for money, but encounters her great love at a piano recital. Despite having become something of a pillar of society, she can't help but try to rekindle the romance.

The story will be introduced by Dr Gerri Kimber, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Northampton, and co-editor of Mansfield's collected stories.

Abridged and produced by Justine Willett

Reader: Morven Christie is an acclaimed actor in film, theatre and TV. Her most recent TV roles have been in the highly acclaimed comedy series Twenty Twelve, and the drama series, Hunted.

Actress Morven Christie reads a newly-discovered story from 1909 by Katherine Mansfield.

Live From Vienna20100101Behind the scenes at the New Year's Day Concert, presented from Vienna by Brian Kay.
Lizzie's Tiger20120629'The tiger walked up and down, up and down; it walked up and down like Satan walking about the world and it burned. It burned so brightly, she was scorched.'

It is 1864, and the Borden family are living in a poor way in River Fall, Massachusetts, when, one day, the circus comes to town. Defying her grave undertaker father, the squat, square infant, Lizzie Borden, who will one day take an axe to her parents, slips out illicitly to the circus. Dazzled by the bawdy sights and sounds around her, the four-year-old girl finds herself in the animal enclosure. A magnificent tiger is pacing up and down his tiny cage, when, for one extraordinary moment, their eyes meet, and Lizzie's destiny is sealed...

Angela Carter died 20 years ago, and is remembered as one of the great literary figures of the 20th century. 'Lizzie's Tiger', one of the last pieces she wrote, was originally commissioned for BBC Radio 3, and published posthumously in a collection, American Ghosts and Old World Wonders. It is one of her many short stories in which she reimagines the lives of certain historical figures; in this case the young life of the notorious Lizzie Borden, who would one day be tried for murdering parents.

Reader: Debora Weston

Abridged and produced by: Justine Willett.

In Angela Carter's story a circus tiger shapes the destiny of the notorious Lizzie Borden.

Making Friends20130320Laura Dockrill celebrates the first day of Spring with a new short story about a young woman making a fresh start at a home for the elderly.

Laura Dockrill is the author of two short story collections and has been described by The Times as one of the UK's top ten literary talents. She has performed her work on all of the BBC's national radio networks, including readings on Radio 3's The Verb and Radio 4's Afternoon Reading slot.

Reader: Laura Dockrill

Producer: Robert Howells.

Story about a young woman making a fresh start at The Spring Meadow Home for the Elderly.

Matryona's House2008112120090619 (R3)Stephen Critchlow reads Alexander Solzhenitsyn's short story from 1953, centring on Matryona, an impoverished but generous peasant woman living in a remote Russian village called Peatproduce. The narrator describes how, after serving a ten-year prison sentence, he takes lodging with Matryona, who endures her drab life with cheerfulness and fortitude, until tragedy strikes.

The story's depiction of the miseries of village life, essentially unchanged by Communism, offended Soviet critics in its 'pessimism'.

Stephen Critchlow reads Solzhenitsyn's short story about an impoverished peasant woman.

Mazepa20110204Marina Frolova-Walker explores two very different aspects of 17th Century Cossack Hetman Ivan Mazepa: a historically important and controversial figure who continues to cause friction between Russia and Ukraine; and muse to a wealth of 19th century romantic artists, including Byron, Victor Hugo, Delacroix, Tchaikovsky and Liszt. Includes extracts from Byron's epic poem read by Sam Dale.

Marina Frolova-Walker explores two very different aspects of Cossack Hetman Ivan Mazepa.

Memories Of Messiaen20080806As part of the Proms's celebration of Olivier Messiaen's 100th anniversary in 2008, three of the his former pupils, Pierre Boulez, Tristan Murail and George Benjamin, recall their studies with him. As well as being one of the most important composers of the 20th century, Messiaen was one of the foremost teachers of composition, and in his famous classes in Paris he taught many of the most prominent contemporary composers.

Pierre Boulez, Tristan Murail and George Benjamin, recall their studies with Messiaen.

Mendelssohn20090730Louise Fryer and guests discuss the life and works of Felix Mendelssohn.
Mendelssohn At Buckingham Palace20090509Sean Rafferty visits Buckingham Palace's picture gallery to discover details of the various visits Mendelssohn made to the royal residence to see the young Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, among whom he was a favourite. Aided by the deputy surveyor of the Queen's works of art, Jonathan Marsden, who has researched the composer's visits, Sean views excerpts from Mendelssohn's and Victoria's letters and journals, and finds out why he was so popular there.

With recollections of the rooms they stayed in, the music played, the works of art the composer saw and gifts exchanged in the form of the Scottish Symphony dedication and Victoria's ring. There are also accounts of Mendelssohn's improvisational skills and the shared interests among the three of them, including Shakespeare and British history.

Sean Rafferty finds out about Mendelssohn's visits to Buckingham Palace.

Michael Goldfarb On 9-1120110905Michael Goldfarb gives a personal recollection of where he was on September 11, 2001.
Michael Longley At 7020090719The renowned Belfast poet and professor of poetry for Ireland celebrates his seventieth birthday in 2009 with a look back over his life, reading a poem from each decade, including Wounds, his World War I homage to his father, Ceasefire, written after the IRA ceasefire in 1994, and Cloudberries, his most recent Scandinavian inspired love poem.

The renowned Belfast poet and professor of poetry for Ireland celebrates his 70th birthday

Michelangelo The Poet20090515Mario Petrucci, who was Radio 3's first poet in residence, looks at the original Italian manuscripts and surveys the various translations to reveal the qualities of the 300 or so sonnets and other poems that Michelangelo wrote, asking what drew Shostakovich to them. He discovers a writer of considerable range, formal accomplishment and intelligence, qualities which are considered as marking his genius as a visual artist.

When he died in 1564, Buonarroti Michelangelo was regarded as one of the leading poets of his age, a great lyrical voice. But his colossal achievement in other fields has cast a shadow over his contribution to literature. Yet, down the generations, major artists such as Wordsworth have always engaged with his poetry.

Mario Petrucci considers the much-neglected poetry of Michelangelo.

Miklos Radnoti: Poet Of My Heart2009081820091211 (R3)Actress and writer Mia Nadasi discusses the life and work of celebrated Hungarian poet Miklos Radnoti, who died in 1944. His life ended tragically when he was killed by the Nazis as his labour unit was driven on a forced march from a camp in Serbia to Austria. When his body was later exhumed, a notebook of poems was found hidden in his clothing containing some of his greatest and most memorable poems.

Like most Hungarians of her generation, Mia remembers studying Radnoti's poems at school, and her imagination being fired both by the story of his sad and premature death and by the revolutionary, tender lyricism of his writing.

The talk includes readings of some of Radnoti's most moving poetry.

Actress and writer Mia Nadasi discusses the life and work of Hungarian poet Miklos Radnoti

Miles And Me20121017Working with Miles Davis, meeting him, seeing him perform or just listening to his music; all these have made profound impressions on fellow artists. The jazz saxophonist Soweto Kinch speaks to musicians their 'Miles moment', finds interesting reflections on him in the archives and considers his own relationship with the enigmatic Davis who once said, 'If you could understand everything I say you'd be me.

Producer: Julian May.

Soweto Kinch explores the profound impressions Miles Davis made on his fellow artists.

Monsieur Rose2010042920100818 (R3)In Monsieur Rose by Irène Némirovsky a well heeled Parisian is forced to flee and leave his old life behind as chaos and panic gather pace at the onset of the second world war. Monsieur Rose is selected from Irène Némirovsky's collection Dimanche and Other Stories which is the first collection of her short stories to appear in English.

Irène Némirovsky is best known for her celebrated novel, Suite Française which was first published, posthumously, in French in 2004. She was born in Kiev in 1903, the daughter of a successful Jewish banker. In 1918 her family fled the Russian Revolution for France where she became an established novelist. When the Germans occupied France during WWII she was prevented from publishing her work. She died in Auschwitz in 1942.

Read by David Horovitch

Translated by Bridget Patterson.

Abridged and produced by Elizabeth Allard.

Irene Nemirovsky's story about a dislocated Parisian at the onset of the Second World War.

Moon Enterprises Inc And The Door2009043020091002 (R3)Two playful stories by award-winning writer Michael Kruger about eccentric grandfathers.
Moscow During The War2011082320121010 (R3)Sasha Dugdale unpackages the official Soviet myths which helped sustain the Russian people during World War Two and celebrates the personal poetry which later gave a more truthful reflection of their experience.

Linking in with the twentieth century Russian music in the first part of the concert, the poet and translator Sasha Dugdale explores how the Soviet government promulgated a complex blend of truth and lies in order to sustain the Russian people during the darkest hours of what they called The Great Patriotic War.

Drawing on oral testimony, journalism and broadcasting, she considers the continuing psychological impact of these stories on the Russian people, even today.

By contrast, Sasha celebrates the poetry which was written at the time and which provides a more truthful picture of real Russian heroism.

Readers: Gerard McDermott and Elaine Claxton

Producer: Beaty Rubens

(Repeat).

Sasha Dugdale on the official Soviet myths that sustained the country during World War II.

Mouche2010081220110916 (R3)Bill Nighy reads a summery tale of love and friendship by Guy de Maupassant.
Move Over Darling...20090809Sarah Walker explores the personal and sometimes intense world of the piano duo. When performers spend so much time sitting side by side, musical and personal relationships can collide.

Kenneth Hamilton describes the historical roots of the piano duet and looks at how two pianos can be better than one, and six even better. Professional duo partners Katia and Marielle Labeque talk about the perils of practising (having once driven their neighbour Dirk Bogarde to distraction), Isabel Beyer and Harvey Dagul reminisce about a shared life of nearly 60 years together at the piano, and Simon Crawford-Philips and Philip Moore discuss the business of finding the right instruments.

Sarah Walker reveals the world of the piano duo, where music and friendships collide.

Moving Pianos20090717A behind-the-scenes peek at the process of moving pianos onto the stage of the Royal Albert Hall during the BBC Proms - and what can go wrong.

A Victorian building, live broadcasts, large audiences, hot television lights, world-class performers and instruments each worth in the region of 100,000 pounds all add to the pressure on the team moving multiple pianos at the Proms. Various people involved in the extensive preparations that hopefully ensure a glitch-free night share the secrets of their trade.

Nothing fazes Julian Rout, the specialist piano removal company that moves 15,000 pianos each year. But Proms co-ordinator at the Royal Albert Hall Jacqui Kelly is having sleepless nights despite the minute-by-minute plans she has been making.

Ulrich Gerhartz deals with the challenge of matching and preparing four pianos and ensuring that they stay in top condition throughout the Proms season - but even when he turns up at the Royal Albert Hall for a quiet session at dawn, he finds a cohort of vacuum cleaners already hard at work.

A behind-the-scenes peek at the process of moving pianos onto the stage during the Proms.

Mozart The Englishman20110101'I am, you know, an out and out Englishman!'

So declared Mozart in a letter to an English friend. Mozart visited London when he was 8 on a concert tour, staying for nearly a year, and picked up a liking for English manners and dress which he retained for the rest of his life.

Historian Sarah Lenton traces Mozart's development as an Englishman, placing it in the context of his English tour, his English friends and pupils, his father's passion for England and the impact of Anglomania on 1790s Viennese culture as a whole.

Historian Sarah Lenton explores the influence of England and the English on Mozart.

Multiple Pianos20090809Sarah Walker explores the world of multiple pianos and talks with performers from Prom 33.
Music At Crystal Palace20110121Matthew Sweet takes a journey back in time to investigate the musical legacy of the Crystal Palace Saturday Concerts. Delving through the past he learns more about the once widely-celebrated conductor Sir August Manns who is argued to have changed the face of British concert-going. Speaking with experts Steve Grindlay and Sarah Lenton we learn more about how the Crystal Palace affected the development of our modern understanding of concert etiquette, orchestral management and the music we now regard as 'mainstream' repertoire.

Producer Claire Wass.

Matthew Sweet investigates the musical legacy of the Crystal Palace Saturday Concerts.

Music Planet Remix20110723Andy Kershaw picks the best of the BBC Radio 3 Music Planet series.
My First Prom20100830Whether experienced on Radio 3 or on television, or, better still, live in the vast amphitheatre of the Royal Albert Hall, a BBC promenade concert has a very special magic. The gorgeous pomp of the decorated arena, the galaxy of mushroom sound-reflectors in the dome, the mob of prommers shouting 'Heave!' in unison as the piano is shifted... all go to make up a concert experience unlike any other.

And that's before a note is played. In this interval feature, a first-time prommer threads his way through a collection of memories from performers and broadcasters, front-of-house staff and ordinary music lovers of what it was like for them on that unique occasion - My First Prom...

Producer: Debbie Kilbride.

A first-timer attends his first ever Prom concert.

Myth And Reality Of Queen Elizabeth I20090721Rana Mitter hosts a discussion about the myth and reality of Queen Elizabeth I with best-selling historian Alison Weir and literary critic John Carey.

The discussion opens the 2009 Proms Literary Festival, where writers, poets and public figures explore the cultural themes behind the season's BBC Proms concerts. Recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music.

Rana Mitter hosts a discussion about the myth and reality of Queen Elizabeth I.

National Baroque20130303Like many English country houses, The Vyne in Hampshire is a building upon which both successive owners and the wider march of history have left their mark. Originally a large Tudor establishment constructed on medieval foundations, in the 1650s it gained a classical portico inspired by Inigo Jones - the first such at any English country house - and a century later played an important role in the Gothic Revival. And the house is still full of the artefacts and mementos which John Chute, its then owner, brought back from his Grand Tour of Italy in the 1740s. During the interval of this afternoon's concert, in National Baroque, Katie Derham, in conversation with Lars Tharp, finds traces of the Baroque in this charming house and explores its fascinating history.

Katie Derham explores the history of The Vyne, a 16th-century country house in Hampshire.

National Baroque20130310Katie Derham tours Powis Castle for a closer look at its many Baroque splendours.
Ne'er Cast A Clout ...2012090420130507 (R3)'Late August when three Kestrels fly - Autumn will be dry.'

David King is something of a phenomenon in the world of weather forecasting.

Having spent the last 50 years watching the signs of nature, he believes his cross-referencing system has now reached 90% accuracy rate - up to 9 months ahead of time. His close study of the natural world around his home in Kent has enabled him to trust in sayings, some of which go back hundreds of years, and some of which he has created himself.

'If the first week of August is unusually hot, the winter will be white and long.'

To find out about how David King works and walks, David Bramwell, takes to the fields and hedgerows armed with a keen eye, a pair of stout boots and a sheaf of country weather sayings, to find out how we can all learn from the flies, ants, apples and mists to read nature better for ourselves, and which sayings are based in fact.

'N'er Cast A Clout till May is Out'

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

First broadcast in September 2012.

David Bramwell meets natural weather forecaster David King.

Next Door20080908Mark Bazeley reads Kurt Vonnegut's cautionary tale about eavesdropping.
No Conquering Hero20120719Judas Maccabeus used to be one of Handel's most popular oratorios. But in modern times it's been deplored as tub-thumping, bellicose, militaristic. It lent itself all too readily to an aryanised Nazi version, Der Feldherr. It caused distress when it featured in the 2009 Edinburgh Festival, for it appears to celebrate the wipeout of the Scottish rebels at Culloden. But when it was first performed, that rebellion was long past and Britain was in the eighth year of a draining intercontinental war against stronger, larger, more successful France. The Scottish rebellion was the most frightening of several French invasion attempts, exposing British disunity, threatening annexation to a foreign Catholic power. The oratorio was written and performed in the shadow of continual British losses against the French axis. It is suffused with grief and fear; it is an exhortation to unity and communal effort; it is a prayer for peace; in its own time, its upbeat end was rather poignant wishful thinking. And in its original form, it didn't include 'See the conquering hero comes'.

Pre-eminent Handel revisionist Ruth Smith looks at the autograph score of Judas Maccabeus, which doesn't include See the Conquering hero, and looks at contemporary newspaper accounts of the notorious (and contemporary) trial of the traitor Lord Lovat - the last man to be beheaded in England and the real reason why Handel revised the piece.

Ruth Smith uncovers the surprising truth about the many meanings of Judas Maccabeus.

Oblomov2009090120100415 (R3)Ivan Goncharov's novel 'Oblomov' was published in 1859 and depicted, in its hero, the greatest couch-potato in literature. So appealing is Oblomov's habit of never really getting up that his name has become synonymous with a sort of fatalistic laziness. So prevalent a character trope did Oblomovism become in Russia that Lenin said that three revolutions had not been able to defeat it. Lesley Chamberlain explores the book and its legacy.

Producer Tim Dee (rpt).

A discussion about Ivan Goncharov's novel Oblomov.

On Planet Hoffnung20090905Rainer Hersch, stand-up comedian and classical music specialist, remembers the brilliant and eccentric contribution to the comic side of classical music from Gerard Hoffnung.

Hoffnung, who died in 1959 at the age of 34, was a cartoonist and wit whose mocking of the solemn rituals of classical music created a sensation in the 1950s. At a time when the symphony concert was a matter of great seriousness for music-lovers, Hoffnung loved to see the funny side of those formalities. His famous cartoons took the instruments of the orchestra - and the characters of the people who played them - and sent them up mercilessly.

In 1956 Hoffnung had the idea of translating the cartoons into real life. With a combination of realisations of his weird cartoon instruments and suitably eccentric compositions to showcase them, the first Hoffnung Music Festival took place at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

Rainer Hersch delves into the BBC archives to meet Hoffnung and those who were part of those first concerts, while on the South Bank he encounters two musicians who had to grapple with these memorable, yet oddball orchestral occasions.

Rainer Hersch reviews Gerard Hoffnung's contribution to the comic side of classical music.

Our Lady Of Paris20090817By Daniyal Mueenuddin and abridged by Richard Hamilton.

This love story about bridging the cultural divide, set mainly in Paris, centres on Sohail, the young heir to an industrial empire in Pakistan, and his American girlfriend. Helen, brought up by her single mother, is working her way through university. Although the pair are deeply in love, they are culturally and socially poles apart, and when Sohail's elegant and chic mother Rafia meets Helen for the first time, a power struggle ensues.

Read by Shiv Patel.

Daniyal Mueenuddin's story focusing on the cultural divide between two people in love.

Park Life20100909Just before the BBC Philarmonic plays a Prom in the Park in Salford, the poet Anjum Malik brings to life the historic and beautiful Buile Park. Drawing on her own childhood picnics in the parks of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Bradford, she reflects on the importance of parks in city life and what Buile Hill Park means to the different cultures of Salford. Walking in the footsteps of Lowry, this first person essay recorded on location defines what the city has lost and more importantly found.

Producer: Rebecca Stratford.

Poet Anjum Malik reflects on the historic and beautiful Buile Park in Salford.

Pasternak And Creativity2008072620090319 (R3)John Rowe reads Evening by Boris Pasternak - a prose poem about a young poet found among other unfinished jottings long after the writer's death and translated for the first time into English by Angela Livingstone, research professor at Essex University.

Written in Moscow in 1910, nearly 40 years before Doctor Zhivago, Evening bears the influences of the impressionist paintings of Pasternak's father as well as the Symbolist movement in Russian poetry. It centres on a poet named Reliquimini - Latin for 'you are left behind' - and is said to suggest compassion for the things of the inanimate world which are neglected.

John Rowe reads Evening by Boris Pasternak - a prose poem about a young poet.

Paying The Ferryman20111021In anticipation of tonight's concert of Haydn's 'Orfeo ed Euridice', Paul Farley considers poetic treatments of the River Styx and the cadaverous figure of Charon, ferryman to the Underworld. He travels to Merseyside to take two rather different kinds of ferry, in the company of poets Jeffrey Wainwright and Deryn Rees-Jones. Together they explore poetry's fascination with the voyage to Hades and with the handful of mythical characters who've made the return journey.

Produced by Emma Harding.

Paul Farley considers poetic treatments of the River Styx and Charon, ferryman of Hades.

Piano20091014An extract from Jean Echenoz's best-selling French novel about a boozy concert pianist.
Piano, By Jean Echenoz20090213David Horovitch reads an excerpt from Jean Echenoz's prize-winning comic novel celebrating the life and times of a concert pianist.

Although Max Delmarc lives quietly in Paris with his wife, his life is in chaos - he has begun to fear performing and has started to drink to forget his problems. Max's cynical agent employs a minder to look after him, and a strange and touching relationship blossoms between the two as each evening, seconds before the curtain rises, there are new terrors to deal with.

David Horovitch reads from Jean Echenoz's novel celebrating the life of a concert pianist.

Pictures Re-arranged20090830Composer and producer Gabriel Prokofiev looks at arrangements of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.

The original piano suite has been arranged hundreds of times, not just for classical orchestra but for a wide range of instruments and ensembles including accordion, double bass, brass, harpischord, heavy metal band, prog-rock band, organ, percussion and synthesiser.

Gabriel comes from a family that has a close association with the piece: his grandfather, the composer Sergei Prokofiev, regularly played the original version in his piano recitals.

Gabriel looks at the enduring appeal of Pictures at an Exhibition for the composer/arranger, and considers some of the many and varied arrangements that have been made.

Playlist:

All original pieces composed by Modest Mussorgsky for piano.

Excerpts as follows:

Promenade (original version)

Sviatoslav Richter (piano)

The Sofia Recital

Philips 454 167-2 Tr 1

Catacombs (original version)

Alfred Brendel (piano)

Philips 420 156-2 Tr 13

Catacombs arr. Ravel: Berlin Philharmonic

Herbert von Karajan (conductor)

DG 469 626-2 Tr 12

Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano)

Decca 414 386-2 Tr 1

Promenade arr. Stokowski

BBC Philharmonic

Matthias Bamert (conductor)

Chandos CHAN 9445 Tr 9

Promenade arr. Ravel

Promenade arr. Ashkenazy

Philharmonia Orchestra

Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor)

Decca 414 386-2 Tr 7

Promenade arr. Ralf Hubert and Uwe Baltrusch

Mekong Delta

Zardoz Music 200212 Tr 1

Promenade arr. Isao Tomita

The Best of Tomita

RCA PD89381 Tr 7

Promenade arr. Emerson Lake and Palmer

Victory 828 466-2 Tr 3

The Great Gate of Kiev arr. Douglas Gamley

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Leonard Slatkin (conductor)

BBC recording

The Gnome arr. Emerson Lake and Palmer

Victory 828 466-2 Tr 2

Gnomus arr. James Crabb and Geir Draugsvoll

James Crabb and Geir Draugsvoll (accordions)

EMI classics 7243 5 69705 2 6 Tr 7

Bydlo arr. Elgar Howarth

The Wallace Collection

John Wallace (conductor)

Collins Classics 12272 Tr 8

Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks original version

Sergei Prokofiev - piano (piano roll)

Laserlight 14 203 Tr 11

Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks arr. Lucien Cailliet

Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks arr. Kazuhito Yamashita

Kazuhito Yamashita (guitar)

RCA RCD14203 Tr 12

Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks arr. Ralf Hubert and Uwe Baltrusch

Zardoz Music 200212 Tr 9

Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks arr. Arthur Wills

Arthur Wills (organ)

Helios CDH88017 Tr 9

Ballet of Unhatched Chicks arr. Elgar Howarth

Collins Classics 12272 Tr 10

Ballet of Unhatched Chicks arr. Isao Tomita

RCA PD89381 Tr 9

The Old Castle arr. Ravel

DG 469 626-2 Tr 4.

Pop Culture Pilgrims20110503Matthew Sweet examines the purpose of pilgrimage and how deeply rooted it is in the human psyche. As society becomes ever more secular, Matthew explores our continuing need to use places as points of focus for storytelling and connection with the past. Matthew will visit Blackpool Tower, for years a site of social pilgrimage for the working classes, to learn more about its appeal and discover if he can draw parallels with the pilgrims journeying en masse to Lourdes or Mecca.

Visitors to Abbey Road in St John's Wood, London, explain why they are drawn from all over the world to walk the famous zebra crossing, recreating The Beatles' iconic album cover of the same name. As they walk in the footsteps of the Fab Four, stories of teenage dreams, lifelong relationships with music and first experiences of travel emerge.

For centuries, Rosslyn Chapel outside Edinburgh has been entwined in myth, legend and secrecy. When it was featured in the final scenes of Dan Brown's blockbuster The Da Vinci Code hundreds of thousands of visitors descended on the village of Roslin to visit the chapel. Many came to photograph a film set but as visitors explain in their own words, this complicated and compelling building's powerful atmosphere pulls many of them in to form a much deeper relationship.

Matthew Sweet travels to Blackpool to examine the purpose of pilgrimage.

Prague Pictures20091126John Rogan reads from John Banville's book on Prague.
Prague Pictures20101001John Banville's lyrical account of his first visit to this great city in the early 1980s.
Prayer20080822By Istvan Orkeny.

Hungarian-born actress and writer Mia Nadasi introduces and reads her own translation of a moving short story by Istvan Orkeny, one of the most significant figures in post-war Hungarian literature.

Prayer is a story told by a mother who must identify the body of her dead son, an emotional journey from denial to acceptance that unfolds with quiet passion.

By Istvan Orkeny. A story told by a mother who must identify the body of her dead son.

Proms Plus: Belshazzar20080816Handel composed Belshazzar during a period when he was focusing on putting on English oratorios in London theatres. Catherine Bott presents a discussion with critic, writer and broadcaster Roderick Swanston and theatre historian Sarah Lenton exploring why Handel had turned away from Italian opera at this time, examining the circumstances of the creation of Belshazzar and its dramatic content.

Catherine Bott talks to critic Roderick Swanston about the creation of Handel's Belshazzar

Proms Plus: Cambridge University At 80020090722From the international renown of King's College Choir to the many graduates of the university's choral, music and organ scholar system, Cambridge continues to produce some of the best musicians, composers and conductors in the world. Louise Fryer hosts a discussion with past and present Directors of Music at King's College - David Willcocks and Stephen Cleobury - alongside the university's professor of music - Nicholas Cook, and composer Ryan Wigglesworth.

Louise Fryer hosts a discussion to mark Cambridge University's 800th anniversary.

Proms Plus: Il Tabarro20080811Suzy Klein discusses Puccini's opera Il tabarro with Roger Parker and Alexandra Wilson.
Proms Plus: Olivier Latry20080721Tom Service talks to distinguished French organist Olivier Latry about his role as a titulaire des Grandes Orgues at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. He also finds out about Latry's work on five continents as torchbearer for the great tradition of French organist-improvisers which stretches back to the time of Widor and Vierne.

Tom Service talks to French organist Olivier Latry about his role at Notre Dame Cathedral.

Proms Plus: Roger Norrington20080722Martin Handley talks to Roger Norrington.
Quakers Don't Sing20110828Many creative people have found a spiritual home amongst the Quaker movement in our noisy modern world but one thing seems to be missing from this most peaceful of all gatherings - music. Dame Judi Dench, novelist Margaret Elphinstone and the composer Sally Beamish contribute to a montage of thoughts, akin to a Quaker meeting discussion, and reveal their own relationships with silence and music.

A montage of thoughts on the Quaker movement's relationship to music and silence.

Ragtime To Riches20120207Abigail Williams uncovers the lost story of Walter Harding, a British-born Chicagoan ragtime pianist who amassed the world's largest collection of popular songbooks and then left them to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

In 1974 Walter Harding's gift of his extensive collection of music, drama and poetry was the largest donation ever made to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It is all the more remarkable because Walter Newton Henry Harding was not an academic, a book dealer or a millionaire bibliophile, but the son of a bricklayer from the East End of London who emigrated to Chicago in the 1900s.

Harding earned his living playing ragtime music - despite having had no formal musical education. His ability to collect on such a scale, despite modest means, was due to a lack of scholarly interest in popular music at the time, and also to the flood of books on the American market during the Great Depression.

Gradually, Harding assembled the world's largest collection of popular songbooks and miscellanies in a modest townhouse in a shabby suburb of Chicago. By the time he died, the house contained some 30,000 rare books.

The story of Harding's collection is one of obsession, and of a passionate desire to reconnect with the past through its music and writing.

Abigail Williams tells this largely unknown story with the help of members of the Bodleian Library and those who knew Harding himself, as well as with readings from the correspondence between Harding and the Bodleian, and the journalistic coverage that accompanied this extraordinary bequest.

Dr Williams is a Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford with a special interest in the Harding Collection and in 18th century miscellanies.

Producer: Beaty Rubens.

Bricklayer's son, ragtime pianist, major philanthropist: the lost story of Walter Harding.

Rain20100829Poet and archaeologist Peter Didsbury extols the joys of rain.

In trying to find the genesis of his pluviophilia, he concludes that it wasn't nostalgia for rain sheeted caravan holidays with John Buchan and Fred Astaire for company that sparked his passion.

It's no coincidence that his love of rain blossomed at the same time as his love of poetry. 'As it has a habit of doing, poetry drew out of me much that was latently there, helped to elucidate my loves. Arnold and Hopkins, in particular, released me into fertile relationships with landscape and weather which have so far proved inexhaustible.

His pluviophile's bible includes Hopkins, Pepys and Edith Sitwell, and a line from a love poem by ee cummings addressing a mistress's effortless yet powerful fragility : 'nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

He is fascinated by the idioms and dialectic variations of language used to talk about rain. Not only does it rain cats and dogs, but also stair-rods, cobblers' knives, tractors and wheelbarrows, depending on where you are in the world. In parts of Northern England it can still be 'siling down'. Peter also pays homage to the creators of another favourite word from his lexicon of rain - petrichor: the distinctive scent released when rain falls upon dry ground.

Producer: Sarah Langan.

Ravel In Paris20100802Barbara Kelly goes in search of composer Maurice Ravel in the 9th arrondissement of Paris.

The famous Sacre Coeur Basilica is a short walk up the hill, yet Paris's 9th is an often overlooked district of Montmartre. Known as the musician's quarter of the city, it's an area in which Ravel spent much of his life composing and socialising. Barbara Kelly takes a tour of the 9th to explore the connections between Ravel's music and the environment which meant so much to him.

On the way Barbara talks to the pianist Roy Howat at Ravel's first Paris home, the French pianist Anne Queffelec in the concert hall of the old music conservatoire, and the writer on French music Francois de Medicis in the Auberge du Clou - the cafe which became one of Paris' social hubs for many composers, including Ravel, Debussy and Satie, at the start of the 20th century.

Ravel's Bolero20130725Bolero is probably Ravel's most famous work, noted for its insistent repetition. It has been suggested that this repetition was not a musical device consciously adopted by the composer, but an early sign of the dementia that led to his death. An alternative view is that Bolero is an example of a musical genius simply writing under great pressure to finish a piece of music when another commission fell though at short notice.

Ravel died following neurosurgical treatment in 1937, after a period of gradual decline over a period of five years or more. His condition has fascinated doctors since the first scientific paper was written on Ravel's decline in 1948, and a steady flow of scientific papers has followed since, trying to establish a precise diagnosis and the effect his condition had on his music.

Broadcaster and writer Stephen Johnson looks at the final years of Ravel's life, and the extent to which his creativity may have been affected by the loss of his mental faculties, not just in Bolero but in his two late piano concertos.

Frustratingly, we have no brain scans or autopsy records for Ravel, so any attempt at diagnosis of his condition must be based on an analysis of clinical records and contemporary accounts from Ravel and his friends. So will we ever reach a definitive diagnosis, and be able to establish what effect his illness had on his music? And can psychiatry suggest an alternative diagnosis of Ravel's condition - and the possible effect on his music - which is not available to neuroscience?

With contributions from Ravel biographer Roger Nichols, writer and former consultant psychiatrist Eva Cybulska, and Dr Jason Warren, a neurologist at the Dementia Research Centre, University College London.

Ravel's Bolero: an early sign of dementia or a musical genius working under pressure?

Rebellion20080805Tom Goodman-Hill reads from Joseph Roth's novel Rebellion, set in Berlin after World War I
Requiem For A Garden Of Eden2009112720100916 (R3)
20120706 (R3)
Scholar and writer Professor Janet Todd stumbled across the abandoned Garden of Eden on the Venetian island of La Giudecca by accident. Curious about this lost and neglected paradise she set about discovering its magical literary past.

Created in 1884 by Sir Anthony Eden's great uncle Frederick Eden and his wife, the garden was a heavily scented romantic haven visited by a host of writers including Proust, Jean Cocteau and Henry James. It was the backdrop to countless love affairs and quarrels, passing from the Edens to Greek royalty and ending up in the hands of the eccentric Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser who preferred nettles and brambles to roses and lilies.

Today the garden is overgrown and locked. Todd's requiem to this little known jewel hidden behind high walls recalls the perfumed years when artists and aesthetes revelled in its beauty.

Janet Todd's requiem for an abandoned Venetian garden with a magical literary past.

Rimbaud In London's Desolation Row20101118In the back streets behind London's Kings Cross station, in a rather grimy street, stands the last London home of Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, the notorious poet lovers. Despite an anonymous exterior 9, Royal College Street, is both shrine and memorial to the poet lovers, who went on an orgy of drinking and debauchery during their infamous sojourn in England. Simon Callow draws on his great knowledge of the two poets, and also invites comment from Kings Cross Poet Aiden Dunn and Graham Henderson, who has devoted himself to trying to turn the house into a cultural centre.

It was here, in 1873, that the couple moved into their final home together, a garret room that would see both important literary work completed, and more than one violent argument take place. It was also the scene of the final fight that sent Verlaine, furious and wounded, to abandon his love and flee back to the Continent, where their final tragic confrontation would take place.

London was both refuge and inspiration to the two provocatures and these walls witnessed the love, turmoil and destruction that followed thier last fight.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall.

Programme about the last London home of poet lovers Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine.

Rome And The Writer's Response20090808James Woodhall discusses his own and various literary figures' responses to Rome.
Ronald Blythe In Conversation2012120420130610 (R3)In his ninetieth year, the writer Ronald Blythe, author of Akenfield, the classic oral history of East Anglian rural life, talks to Mark Cocker about his career and times. Blythe spent time working for Benjamin Britten at Aldeburgh and in the company of East Anglian artists like John Nash and Cedric Morris. The Suffolk countryside and his home which he inherited from John Nash has been at the centre of much of his writing including a long-running and much admired coloumn for the Church Times called Word from Wormingford. Recorded in front of an audience at Stamford Arts Centre theatre as part of the New Networks for Nature 2012 meeting.

Producer: Tim Dee

First broadcast in December 2012.

Writer Ronald Blythe talks to Mark Cocker about his career and times.

Ryabov And Kozhin2010050720111005 (R3)Two little boys were hunting crayfish off the wooden jetty. They were diving down under the steep bank and resurfacing, snorting out the water from their nostrils. They swam to the side of the jetty and, with triumphant cries, chucked their booty into a pail.

Ryabov waited until one of them, feeling the cold, climbed out of the lake. Hopping about on one foot, his head tilted to one side, he was getting the water out of his ear. Only then did the young boy notice Ryabov.

Is it Grandfather you want?' he asked.

In Izrael Metter's short story, the young man with the briefcase has come to a rural spot outside Moscow, in order to confront the older Kozhin, who was a 'high-up' in the police force many years back. Ryabov has come to confront him about the fate of his own father - Kozhin was responsible. But, strangely, Ryabov is unsure how to handle the situation, despite having the advantage of surprise. So what will happen?

Izrael Metter was a leading novelist, short story writer and radio satirist after the second world war, and this tale was first published in 1976. He lived for most of his life in Leningrad.

Translated by Michael Duncan

Producer Duncan Minshull.

A man confronts the former policeman who had a hand in his own father's fate years before.

Schumann's Carnaval20120604Robert Schumann would definitely be a cryptic crossword fan if he were alive today. With its subtitle 'Little Scenes on Four Notes', the piano suite Carnaval is full of musical puzzles and allusions, as well as vivid portraits of the masked revellers which inspired Schumann to write it. Stephen Johnson sets out to unearth the mysteries which Schumann buried in the piece.

Stephen Johnson tries to uncover the mysteries of Schumann's piano suite Carnaval.

Seadrift20100312Artist and film-maker Jane Darke reflects on the flotsam and jetsam of the shipping lanes that gets washed up at the bottom of her garden in north Cornwall.

Until his death in 2005, Jane shared her cove-side home with her playwright husband Nick. Together they scoured the tideline for 'wreck', that drift of wood, marker-buoys, lobsterpot tags, shoes and fishing nets, 'seabeans' - huge seedpods from the Amazon basin - and coal that the Gulf Stream regularly deposits on the Cornish coast in particular.

But for the Darkes, 'wreck' wasn't just common-or-garden driftwood; it was a seaborne crop to be harvested, stored and above all used. Their home is part-constructed from timber rescued from the sea-edge; bookshelves are crazed and seasoned planks from some freighter whose deck-cargo shifted catastrophically years ago, and the outside of the house is gaudy with floats and pennons, markers and half-legible noticeboards carried across the Atlantic from distant harbours and sea-reaches. Currents circulate such 'wreck' around the world, sometimes for years, before landfall brings these distantly transmitted 'messages' to their surprised recipients on the Cornish coast.

Nick Darke, actor, playwright and lobster-fisherman died suddenly in 2005 and since then his widow Jane has continued to add to their collection. In this programme, Jane reflects in her home on currents and the chance nature of what the tides of life bring to shore....

Jane Darke reflects on the objects washed up at the bottom of her garden in Cornwall.

Shadows20120612Tenebrae is the Latin term for shadows or darkness. The Christian religious service Tenebrae is characterised by the gradual extinguishing of candles while psalms and readings are chanted or recited, whilst in literature and popular culture, shadows have become a symbol of a peculiarly sinister darkness.

In tonight's interval feature, poet Michael Symmons-Roberts introduces his own personal reflection on the subject.

To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.' - Plato, The Republic

Shadow -

1. a dark figure or image cast on the ground or some surface by a body intercepting light.

2. shade or comparative darkness, as in an area.

3. darkness, especially that coming after sunset.

4. shelter; protection:

5. a slight suggestion; trace:.

Michael Symmons-Roberts introduces his own personal reflection on the subject of shadows.

Sho And Tell20090724Robin Thompson, the only British musican to have mastered the sho, explores this remarkable instrument, which is fascinating technically as well as visually. In each of its bamboo pipes is a free reed, similar to those in a harmonica.

The sho sounds as the player inhales as well as exhales, allowing very long runs, and as several notes can be played simultaneously it functions as both a chordal and melodic instrument.

Robin Thompson discusses the sho, a Japanese wind instrument.

Shostakovich's Symphony No 720120119Typically, listeners cry when they hear Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. It was written during World War Two and dedicated to Leningrad, the city besieged by the Germans for almost three years, with vast destruction and loss of life in the hundreds of thousands.

Since its first performance, the symphony has been seen as a symbol of resistance against the Nazis, but more recently, as the political climate in Russia has made it easier for people to speak up, accounts have suggested that Shostakovich started work on the piece before the beginning of the siege, and that therefore, it's better viewed as a depiction of brutality in general, and perhaps specifically the purges of Stalin's regime.

Shostakovich himself said, 'even before the war, there probably wasn't a single family who hadn't lost someone, a father, a brother, or if not a relative, then a close friend. Everyone had someone to cry over, but you had to cry silently, under the blanket, so no one would see. Everyone feared everyone else, and the sorrow oppressed and suffocated us. It suffocated me, too. I had to write about it, I felt it was my responsibility, my duty. I had to write a requiem for all those who died, who had suffered. I had to describe the horrible extermination machine and express protest against it.

Stephen Johnson explores the weighty and deeply emotional symbolism of the Leningrad Symphony.

Stephen Johnson explores the symbolism of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony.

Sibelius's Lost Eighth Revealed?20120717Writer and broadcaster Peggy Reynolds visits Finland for an exclusive performance and discussion of remarkable fragments, discovered last year, of what may be Sibelius's infamous lost Eighth Symphony.

Featuring performances by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by John Storgards, and discussion with Sir Mark Elder, Tom Service, Finnish Sibelius scholars Vesa Siren and Timo Virtanen, and historian Tuomas Tepora.

The most infamous lost work in 20th century music: revealed at last?

Sliding In At The Back20130131Beethoven's 5th is famous all over the world for the opening. But for Trombonists, it's the last movement that really matters. The great C major fanfare at the end of the symphony is the entry of the Trombone into the mainstream orchestral repertoire. From this moment, the orchestral sonorities of Mahler, Brucker, Verdi and Wagner suddenly become possible.

In this programme we gather together three trombone experts to talk about the life of a trombone player, and the contribution this unique instrument makes to western music. They share their thoughts on auditions, on life as an orchestra player, on instruments and composers, and on the joys and frustrations of the job.

Three trombone experts talk about the life of an orchestral trombone player.

Some Bloom In Darknesss2012021420120804 (R3)Simon Van Booy's story of unreal love is set in a silent Paris, covered with snow, where the search for love is unreal, problematic even..

His life went back to normal until one day, after almost ten years, he witnessed a violent incident at the railway station where he worked as a clerk. The desires suddenly returned, and soon enough, Sabon退's eyes burned for the girl who stood in a shop-window on his walk to work. She was very pretty. And Sabon退 assumed he had passed her many times before. but for some reason, he had never noticed her. In addition to this new passion, Sabon退 caught himself doing odd things, like talking to birds and removing his hat whenever he passed statues in the gardens.

For days, he held the image of the shop-girl in his mind..

Reader Toby Jones

Producer Duncan Minshull

First broadcast in February 2012.

Simon Van Booy's story about love, flowers and mannequins, set in snowy Paris.

Soul In The Psalms20110525Mary Ann Kennedy explores relationships between American gospel and Gaelic psalm singing.
Sound And Fury2013100320140423 (R3)How do sound designers use soundscapes and sound effects to manipulate excitement and emotion in the cinema audience?

Trevor Cox, Professor of Acoustic Engineering, visits Pinewood studios to meet Glenn Freemantle, who subsequently won an Oscar for his work on Gravity. Freemantle describes the extraordinary lengths he went to in order to re-create the soundscape of a remote desert canyon in the 2010 film 127 Hours, so that the cinema audience hears exactly what the climber trapped under a rock for 127 hours hears as he tries to escape. And he shows how to build up the sound in a creepy scene to make the audience feel uneasy.

Trevor Cox also learns how the sound of a futuristic motor bike is created in the latest Judge Dredd film - how does a sound designer create a sound that is incredibly powerful but also believable?

And there's a revealing trip to a screening room in central London to experience the very latest technology in the world of cinematic surround sound.

First broadcast in October 2013.

Trevor Cox on how soundscapes and sound effects are used to create emotion in the cinema.

Sounds Of The City20130305An audio snapshot of the city of Washington DC, captured in and around the moment of Barack Obama's inauguration for a second term as President of the United States.

From the roaring crowds of a Saturday night basketball game recorded amidst the spectators, the peace of Rock Creek Park, to the haunting melodies of street saxophonist Tim Turner, the atmosphere of the US capital is captured as the moment of inauguration approaches. Gathered by Marika Partridge of Washington's 'Hear Now' audio collective, the portrait of the city that emerges from their months of recording is vibrant, idiosyncratic and aurally involving...

Featuring music by blues harmonica player Phil Wiggins, one man band David 'Moe' Nelson, Christylez Bacon, guitar and beatbox and Tim Turner, alto saxophone.

Producer: Simon Elmes.

A portrait in sound of Washington DC created by people who live there.

Spencer De Grey20121102Matthew Sweet meets the architect Spencer de Grey, whose buildings include The Sage Gateshead, Stansted Airport and the British Museum Great Court.

The Sage Gateshead, which opened in 2004, hosts the Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival this weekend.

Spencer de Grey is Head of Design at Norman Foster's architectural practice. Joining Foster Associates in 1973 de Grey worked on the design for the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank before returning to the UK in 1981 and spending ten years working on Stansted Airport. He has also overseen the building of the Law Faculty at Cambridge, HM Treasury in Whitehall and nine City Academy schools in the UK.

He talks to Matthew Sweet about his views on architecture, his relationship with star architect Norman Foster and the design of The Sage Gateshead, whose silver curves have been likened to an armadillo, a shell, and a giant wave.

Free Thinking, Radio 3's festival of ideas, takes place Friday 2 - Sunday 4 November and is broadcast for three weeks on Radio 3 from Friday 2 November.

Matthew Sweet meets architect Spencer de Grey whose designs include The Sage Gateshead.

Stationmaster Fallmerayer2011090220120709 (R3)To accompany tonight's Prom concert of Mahler's Symphony No 1, a short story from the great Austrian writer Joseph Roth, translated by Michael Hofmann. The reader is Iain Glen.

After a terrible railway accident outside his provincial Austrian station, a married stationmaster takes care of the beautiful Russian Countess Walevska. She recuperates in his house for several days, before leaving to join her husband. But she is to leave a profound and fatal influence in the house and heart of the stationmaster.

Produced by Emma Harding.

Joseph Roth's short story about a provincial Austrian stationmaster's coup de foudre.

Stealing The Thunderer20080901In 1826, publisher John Murray II infamously tried to create a rival to The Times.
Stockhausen20080802German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who died in December 2007, was an icon of the avant-garde. Tom Service talks to Stockhausen's family, friends and collaborators - including Pierre Boulez, his son Markus Stockhausen, comedian and writer John Bird and pianist Nicolas Hodges - to find out just what it was that marked him out as such a pioneering and influential figure in 20th and 21st century music.

Tom Service talks to Stockhausen's associates to find out what marked him out as a pioneer

Stormy Weather20130718Suzy Klein with a little summer lightning for tonight's Prom, ahead of a performance of Richard Strauss's 'Alpine' Symphony, featuring as it does a tumultuous storm amongst the peaks. From Vivaldi to Handel, via Vaughan Williams, Britten and of course Beethoven, composers have used the outer limits the musical palette of the orchestra to depict one of nature's most reliable and noisy events. Featuring torrential rain, harmonic hailstones, bolts of choral lightning and howling wind...

Producer: Simon Elmes.

Suzy Klein explores composers' orchestral depictions of weather.

Stravinsky And The King's Horse2011071920120504 (R3)The infamous Paris premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is well known, but its London premiere in July 1913 was both less scandalous and more interesting. News of Stravinsky's radical score and the outrageous production of the Ballets Russes reached London quickly and created a predictable sense of excitement. Yet what made the performance particularly memorable was that just one month earlier, a young suffragette called Emily Davison had taken her own life by throwing herself under the King's Horse at the Derby.

There are intriguing comparisons between Davison's fate and that of the sacrificial heroine in The Rite of Spring, suggesting that radical politics and radical aesthetics had become strangely aligned. With the help of dance expert, Ramsay Burt and voices from the archive, Dr Philip Bullock reviews early British reaction to Stravinsky's ballets to reveal a story far less familiar than the well-documented French scene.

Dr Philip Bullock teaches Russian at the University of Oxford, specialising in Soviet literature, music and culture.

Producer: Marya Burgess.

Philip Bullock considers sacrificial links between the Rite of Spring and Emily Davison.

Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex20120515Stephen Johnson explores Stravinsky's take on the ancient tale of Oedipus Rex.
Suffolk Sounds2012082420130607 (R3)Award-winning journalist, nature-writer and Britten devotee, Simon Barnes, writes in praise of the glorious sounds of his beloved Suffolk coast which inspired Britten's opera 'Peter Grimes'.

First staged a month after VE Day, 'Peter Grimes', Britten's searing psychological drama set in a claustrophobic Suffolk fishing community was a critical and popular success which established a new kind of English operatic tradition. It was based loosely on Britten's own hometown, Aldeburgh, on the East Coast of England. It's a coast Simon Barnes knows well, with its shifting shingle beaches, sandling heaths and wide-open skies, echoing with the sounds of redshank and curlew. Here Barnes writes in praise of the landscape he's inhabited for the past few decades - a wild, rich, noisy coast, ever-changing and volatile - which can be heard throughout Britten's music.

Writer: Simon Barnes is the multi-award-winning chief sportswriter at The Times. He also writes a Saturday column on wildlife. His 18 books include three novels and the best-selling How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher. He lives in East Anglia with his family and five horses

Producer: Justine Willett.

Simon Barnes on the sounds of the Suffolk coast, which inspired Britten's Peter Grimes.

Summer Over England20100826Between the two halves of tonight's prom, poet Nigel Forde presents a seasonal reflection. Summer more than any other time of year is richly represented in the recordings held in the BBC Archive. 'Summer Over the British Isles' was a famous 1937 feature programme evoking the moment when the country could perhaps relax a little, ease its braces and its stays, and stretch out in the long grass ...and hope it wouldn't rain.

It was also a vaguely patriotic and - with hindsight - prophetic programme capturing an era that was about to be blown apart by the off-stage murmurs of war from Europe. But there's much more - Laurie Lee recalling the 'Hill Cricket' played on summer days in the Cotswold villages of his youth, Alistair Cooke describing a day at Lords and that other immortal voice of cricket, John Arlott, recalling long shadows and steepling catches. Vita Sackville-West describes the joys of great summer gardens; Henry Williamson forsakes otters to hymn the beauty of Devon and we catch the sound of conflict in 1964 when Britain's seaside became a battleground for disaffected youngsters...

Nigel Forde presents an evocation of summer, drawn from recordings in the BBC archive.

Take A Hike North20081127Writer and poet Christopher Somerville visits the Firth of Forth with Dave Richardson of traditional music band Boys of the Lough to witness dawn at Aberlady Bay, and watch as 25,000 geese rise up and fly from shore to land in squadrons across the sky. Both men have been visiting the bay for years, and out on the dunes we hear them discuss their love of this particular landscape alongside some of the poetry and music inspired by this natural phenomenon.

Writer Christopher Somerville watches the dawn migration of 25,000 geese in Aberlady Bay.

Tales From The Loft20100121It's not enough simply to be a great musician- to be a successful organist you have to have the physical stamina to climb narrow stairwells and cope with heights and you have to have an understanding of the technical complexity of the instrument you're about to play. The organ, whether in a concert hall or cathedral, is a sophisticated and intricately designed piece of musical equipment, with stops, keyboards, pedals and often miles of pipework. It all adds up to creating an instrument with as much of a personality as the people who play it.

Tales from the Loft' combines the thoughts of players and those who build instruments to evoke a picture of the many facets of the organ. Among those taking part are the international artist Dame Gillian Weir and the organ builder Kenneth Tickell, who we hear putting the finishing touches to a new organ at Lincoln's Inn Chapel in London.

A look at the organ as a musical instrument, with contributions from players and makers.

Tame Cat2011050520120113 (R3)In Tame Cat by Daphne du Maurier, a young woman returns from finishing school in Paris anticipating a happy reunion with her mother and an introduction to adult life in London society. Unfortunately, she is oblivious to how attractive she has become and the consequences that will have for her...

Tame Cat is taken from The Doll: Short Stories, the newly published collection by Daphne du Maurier. This includes several pieces recently rediscovered by an enthusastic devotee of the famous writer. Written early in her career these stories reveal the dark themes explored in the novels that made her name.

Three other short stories from this collection are being broadcast on Radio 4 on the afternoons of 3-5th May.

Reader: Morven Christie

Abridger: Richard Hamilton

Producer: Lucy Collingwood.

A newly re-discovered story written by a young Daphne du Maurier.

Telling Me Of Elsewhere, Philip Larkin And Radio20120809On what, had he survived, would be Philip Larkin's 90th birthday, the historian Sean Street explores this much-loved poet's relationship with the radio. In his poem 'Broadcast', which ends this programme, Larkin tries pick out the particular clapping of a lover in the applause of the entire audience in a 'vast' hall.

The poet was listening to a concert such as this evening's broadcast and this inspired one of the finest and most poignant poems of the second half of the 20th century. In 'Livings II' he writes that 'Radio rubs its legs,/ Telling me of elsewhere'. This 'elsewhere' is a major theme in his work and radio both an apt metaphor, and a conduit to it.

But his relationship with radio was complicated. In 'Mr Bleaney' there is a set 'jabbering', he seems to think, inanities. And Philip Larkin, when he read on the radio himself, memorably remarked that this was his first experience of speaking to such a large audience and, 'if I have anything to do with it, my last.' Though a reluctant broadcaster, Larkin was a great listener, not least to music programmes.

Using the poems, his letters, archive recordings, jazz and the thoughts and recollections of Larkin's friend and biographer Andrew Motion, Sean Street reveals the importance of of the radio and of the act of listening to Philip Larkin's life and poetry.

Producer: Julian May.

Historian Sean Street explores Philip Larkin's relationship with radio.

The Albertopolis Of The South20130825Lesley Chamberlain on Prince Albert's German recreation of Britain in the Great Exhibition
The Albertopolis Wine King20100728Live from the basement of the Royal Albert Hall, Christopher Cook tells the story of a forgotten 19th-century maverick, and takes a chance to sample a few vintage tipples from the wine club he bequeathed to the nation.

In 1874 it was decided that one of the many industrial exhibitions still being held at the Kensington Gardens site should be on the subject of wine. Submissions were invited from around the world, and flooded in. Flooded in, that is, mostly from Portugal. For reasons obscured by the mists of time nobody really heard about it, and the cellars of the Royal Albert Hall ended up stuffed with undrunk vintages. One man had an idea, Major-General Henry Young Darracott Scott, who had been the chief engineer for the completion of the hall itself: a co-operative wine society should be started to polish off the wine.

Today the Wine Society lives on, and tonight we get a chance to sample the kinds of wines drunk in 1874 with the help of Scott's successors at the society.

But there's more to this story than oenophilic extravagance. Scott was a fascinating man in his own right, and with architect Maxwell Hutchinson we discover the extraordinary challenges taken on by Scott when he had to take over the building of the Hall in its final stages.

There's a personal connection too: Scott was a military civil engineer, serving in the same regiment as Hutchinson's father. Could Scott's background explain the somewhat unusual ventilation system the hall opened with, and it's famously problematic acoustic? Look at the frieze around its dome and you'll also find a radical new form of concrete pioneered by Scott and whose secrets are still not fully understood. We get a sense of Scott's more eccentric side too. In his spare time the engineer was attempting to perfect a method of solidifying London's sewage with the aim of turning it to entrepreneurial advantage. By all accounts he didn't get further than creating an almighty stink.

And back at the hall we get a sense of a broader legacy. Scott was a key part of the process which saw money from the 1851 Great Exhibition used for the permanent benefit of everyday people through special events and shows. And it's a legacy surviving to this day, something the custodians of domes and Olympics might well view with interest.

Christopher Cook tells the story of a 19th-century maverick and wine-lover.

The Annual General Boiled Egg Panic20090831A specially-commissioned memoir from comedian and author Alexei Sayle, in celebration of bank holidays.

As the son of a train guard and union official, the Liverpool-raised Alexei has more reason than most to remember the bank holiday. It meant that the Sayle family could travel all over Europe by rail for free. But it also meant that often holidays were spent in the English seaside town that was hosting the Annual General Meeting of the National Union of Railwaymen, and the only foreign interest was provided by fraternal delegates sent from SNCF, the French railway.

Alexei recalls the cherished passes that allowed him in to all the local attractions free. He remembers the strange nature of the meetings themselves - like rock festivals 'where the stars...were balding alcoholics in ill-fitting suits, talking gibberish'. But come the annual dinner dance, they revealed themselves as sharp and fluent, masters of the jive and the waltz.

But at the age of 14, Alexei wasn't so keen on the meetings anymore, especially when the union meeting was in Southport, just a few miles from home. So he committed a daring, meaningless and highly significant act.

Specially-commissioned memoir by Alexei Sayle, recalling archetypal British bank holidays.

The Art Of Fireworks20111215Alexandra Harris, one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, gives a talk on the history of fireworks, recorded at the Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival at The Sage Gateshead in November.

Roman Candles, rockets, peonies of fire... on New Year's Eve the skies are lit up with ever more ingenious effects, but where did it all begin, and what have fireworks meant across the centuries?

Alexandra Harris won the 2010 Guardian First Book Award with Romantic Moderns. Her most recent work is a short biography of Virginia Woolf.

In her talk entitled The Art of Fireworks, Alexandra Harris draws on music, painting and literature to explore our love affair with pyrotechnics.

Alexandra Harris discusses the history of fireworks at the 2011 Free Thinking Festival.

The Art Of Light Music20090204Martin Handley discusses the art of light music with Claire Martin and the BBC CO.
The Ascent Of Mount Ventoux20120228In 1336, two brothers set out to climb a famous peak in the Provence area of France:

At the time fixed we left the house, and by evening reached Malaucene, which lies at the foot of the mountain, to the north. Having rested there a day, we finally made the ascent this morning, with no companions. except two servants.

And a most difficult task it was...

The mountain is a very steep and an almost inaccessible mass of stony soil. But, as the poet has said: 'Remorseless toil conquers all.

The poet Petrarch describes his climb of this mighty mountain, which teaches him things

beyond the merely physical. Translated by James Harvey Robinson.

Reader Carl Prekopp

Producer Duncan Minshull.

Petrarch's account of how he and his brother once set out to climb a mountain in Provence.

The Ballad Of Wash Common20110509To complement the concert from there, a lyrical evocation of the area around Wash Common, Newbury, by poet Michael Symmons Roberts, who used to live there in the 1980s.

Wash Common is the location of five Bronze Age tumuli and was also the site of one of the bloodiest battles in the English Civil War, the First Battle of Newbury. The area used to be flat open heathland, but since the 19th century, residential housing has gradually encroached on the common. Michael has written on the common, and on its near and more famous neighbour, Greenham Common, in his collections 'Raising Sparks' and 'Burning Babylon'.

Through interviews, sound and poetry, Michael conjures the landscape and the residents of Wash Common, past and present.

Produced by Emma Harding

PRESENTER: Michael Symmons Roberts is a poet, broadcaster, librettist and novelist. His poetry collections include 'Raising Sparks', 'Burning Babylon', which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, and 'Corpus', which won the Whitbread Award for Poetry. His continuing collaboration with composer James MacMillan has led to two BBC Proms choral commissions, song cycles, music theatre works and operas for the Royal Opera House, Scottish Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and Welsh National Opera. Their WNO commission - 'The Sacrifice' - won the RPS Award for opera.

Michael Symmons Roberts with a lyrical evocation of the area around Wash Common, Newbury.

The Bargain20080809By Truman Capote.

A gem from an American classic, The Bargain takes us into the apartment of affluent New Yorker Mrs Chase. An old acquaintance is due to arrive for lunch and Mrs Chase is entertaining the possibility of purchasing a mink coat from her, for her forthcoming trip to Paris. But when her guest arrives, some remarkable revelations call up hitherto unstirred emotions.

Read by Lorelei King.

By Truman Capote. An old friend is due for lunch at the apartment of New Yorker Mrs Chase.

The Barley Bird20100905In Suffolk they call the Nightingale, the Barley Bird, as its arrival coincides with the sprouting of the barley. The acclaimed nature writer, Richard Mabey, a longtime devotee of the bird, reads extracts from his new book, 'The Barley Bird', and muses on how this mysterious and elusive bird has inspired poets and musicians across the centuries. He recalls too, the famous series of annual outside broadcasts made by the cellist Beatrice Harrison and her accompanist - a nightingale in her garden.

The abridger is Sally Marmion

The producer is Di Speirs.

Richard Mabey reflects on a bird that has inspired poets and musicians - the nightingale.

The Bartered Bride And Arranged Marriages20110520Theatre director Jatinder Verma on the place of arranged marriages in Bollywood cinema.
The Bear20100726A darkly humorous tale about the personal sacrifices people make to conform by award-winning writer, Jeremy Dyson. A mysterious transformation occurs when an ambitious young lawyer, determined to make a bold statement at his office masquerade ball, turns up in a fabulous antique bear costume.

Reader: Mike Sengelow

Abridged and produced by Gemma Jenkins.

A thought-provoking story about identity by award-winning writer Jeremy Dyson.

The Bell2008072320081029 (R3)Liz Sutherland reads an extract from Iris Murdoch's famous novel.
The Captain's Apprentice2012082420130607 (R3)Roy Palmer explores the history of the traditional song The Captain's Apprentice'. George Crabbe drew on it for his poem The Borough, which in turn influenced Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes. It's basic plot, of an apprentice being taken from the workhouse and fatally mistreated, is unchanged.

This brilliant, if bleak, song was collected in Kings Lynn from the fisherman James Carter by Ralph Vaughan Williams and is still sung by folk singers. But the song dates back to at least the 18th Century and has travelled widely. Roy Palmer, an eminent authority on traditional song, explores this song, its history and influence, with the help of archive and some recent recordings. (Repeat)

Producer: Julian May.

The history of a traditional song that influenced Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes.

The Castle Moreton Jerry20090611Nicholas Shakespeare's story recalls the stange influence of Tasmania's famous fog.
The Colour Of Genius20111014Ella Spira tells the story of a forgotten American genius, a flag-bearer for gender and racial equality whose career as pianist and composer was destroyed by prejudice and a mother who sculpted her life as a genetic experiment. And what starts out as a simple story ends with an extraordinary and unanticipated connection between presenter and subject.

Philippa Schuyler's life should have been one of fame and reward. Fꀀted by composer Leonard Bernstein, her work was performed by five leading American orchestras in her teens. She was ranked alongside Aaron Copland, and is rumoured to be the subject of a forthcoming Hollywood movie starring Alicia Keys. But in reality it was a deeply traumatic career, defined by her mixed race and the mother who viewed her as the product of a genetic experiment.

For Ella Spira she is a fascinating enigma, a kindred spirit as a woman in a man's world. But can her talent ever be separated from the complexities which surrounded it, a life as a 'prodigy puppet' ruled by tarot cards and failed love affairs, and her bizarre death in a helicopter accident over Vietnam after recasting herself from black to white?

Contributions from Schuyler's biographer Kathryn Talalay and Grammy-winning conductor John McLaughlin Williams present a deeply complex figure. No wonder - her parents were a controversial black journalist and a blue-eyed Texan who believed that 'the white race is spiritually depleted and American must mate with the Negro to save herself'. Her childhood was a life of raw food, guided by the psychology of John Watson which forbade hugging and kissing, preferring whipping and slapping. She was brought up as an emblem of mixed-race America, touted as a star pianist in the likes of 'Coloured American night at the Pops', but whose concert career was deemed impractical because of her skin colour. A composition career followed, before a political career campaigning for African rights and against female circumcision, and then another diversion as a journalist in the Vietnam war.

Perhaps her life can never be completely decoded, but we get glimpses into her true personality in excerpts from her semi-fictional novels based on conflicts in the Congo and Vietnam, plus we hear the charm of her piano music rediscovered in his childhood piano stool by John McLaughlin Williams. There are glimpses into her tragic love life too, leading Ella Spira down a road which ends up intersecting remarkably with her own family history. Philippa's life turns out to be one ultimately of manipulation and tragedy, but one which holds a revealing mirror to the racial and sexual attitudes of the country which created and then damaged her.

Ella Spira tells the story of a forgotten prodigy, pianist and composer Philippa Schuyler.

The Conductor20130824'It seemed he'd been waiting all his life for the knock at the door..'

In an extract from Sarah Quigley's novel, all eyes are on Dimitri Shostakovich.

He's sleepy, bumbling around the kitchen, trying to make his morning porridge.

A knock at the door has unsettled him, but that's the least of his concerns.

Where is his wife, Nina? What is happening in his city, Leningrad?

And what about the work he has to do?

Read by Carl Prekopp

Producer Duncan Minshull.

Excerpt from Sarah Quigley's novel about Shostakovich writing The English Poets project.

The Courtship Of Mr Lyon20091204Angela Carter's retelling of the classic fairytale Beauty and the Beast, in which a father steals a single white rose from the garden of a snow-covered mansion one winter's night and is forced into a strange bargain with the extraordinary leonine owner of the house.

His beautiful daughter, with skin as white as snow, will accept the hospitality of the 'beast', who in turn will help her father regain his lost fortune. As the penniless girl settles in to her extravagant new surroundings, she can't help but recoil at the strange 'otherness' of her host as they sit down to dine each night.

But with the eventual revival of her father's fortunes and her return to civilisation, she comes to realise it was not she who needed rescuing.

Reader: Deborah Findlay.

Angela Carter's retelling of the classic fairytale Beauty and the Beast.

The Death And Life Of The Street20110816Lynsey Hanley on Jane Jacobs's influential defence of organic and unplanned city life.
The Diaries Of Sofia Tolstoy20100723Sofia Tolstoy, the wife of Count Leo Tolstoy, kept a diary for most of her life. It offers a fascinating chronicle of her marriage to the great Russian writer, and a vivid account of the trials and tribulations of her daily life. The selected extract focuses on the summer of 1897 when Sofia and Leo are approaching their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Turbulence characterizes their relationship, and while there are moments of passion and tenderness, tensions are also apparent. Leo is a demanding and difficult man, and it is Sofia who ensures her husband's needs are met. She also manages the estate where they live, and her responsibilities as a mother to her nine children are further demands on her time. However, amid the demands of daily life, she finds solace in the beautiful landscape around her, swimming in the nearby river, and more contentiously, her friendship with the composer, Taneev.

Translated by Cathy Porter.

Reader: Barbara Flynn.

Abridged and produced by Elizabeth Allard.

An excerpt from the diaries of Leo Tolstoy's wife Sofia.

The End Of Summer2008083020090925 (R3)Helen Dunmore's specially-commissioned story, read by Jonathan Firth, is set aboard a ferry where a young traveller on his way to Stockholm encounters the intriguing teenager Sophie, just as strange storm clouds begin to appear over the water. Does this just herald the end of summer or is there something more complex at work?

A story set on a ferry, where a traveller encounters the intriguing teenager Sophie.

The Fairy's Curse20090810Award-winning Northern Ireland author Lucy Caldwell explores the world of fairy tales, which she believes believes developed in her an imagination and thirst to be a writer when she read them as a child. She delves into the fantasy world of her early childhood to find that these tales play an important part in our lives and actually create, enforce and define who we are as people.

Author and playwright Lucy Caldwell delves into the fantasy world of fairy tales.

The Flirt20090727A short story by emigre Russian satirist Nadezhda Teffi. Read by Lindsay Duncan.
The Flirt20100225A secret rendezvous onboard a Volga steamboat has unexpected consequences.
The Garden Of Earthly Delights20081128Tim Healey explores the Goliards, composers of the original songs of Carmina Burana.
The Garden Of Time20100611'The garden of the villa extended for some two hundred yards below the terrace, sloping down to a miniature lake, spanned by a white bridge... Here in the garden the air seemed brighter. As was his custom before beginning his evening stroll, Count Axel looked out across the plain to the final rise...and saw that the advance column of an enormous army was moving slowly over the horizon...'

In the Garden of Time by JG Ballard, the Count manages to repel the advance of the army by magically re-arranging time - time and time again! But soon the tools that help him will no longer will work. So how

will he and his beloved wife - who is indoors, playing a Mozart rondo - manage to survive the threat,

as it marches forward, closer and closer...

Read by Allan Corduner

Abridged and produced by Duncan Minshull.

JG Ballard's story in which a dangerous rabble comes close as Mozart rings out from villa.

The Gardener20121112To commemorate Armistice Day, Sian Thomas reads Rudyard Kipling's classic story of remembrance, written out of his own grief at losing his son in the First World War, culminating on the killing fields of Northern Europe.

The Gardener' is the story of a very typical Englishwoman who nobly steps into the breach, taking on the son of her disgraced and now dead brother, who she brings up, and loves as much as is proper, before seeing him of to the war in France. On the news that he is missing presumed dead, she is numbed, living on untouched by events around her. Only on visiting his grave across the Channel, among others struggling with their grief, does she find solance.

Rudyard Kipling was one of the great English short story writers, whose own son John was killed at Loos in 1915. Partly in response to John's death, Kipling helped to set up the Imperial War Graves Commission, the group responsible for the garden-like British war graves that can be found to this day dotted along the former Western Front.

Producer and abridger: Justine Willett

Reader: Sian Thomas.

Sian Thomas reads Rudyard Kipling's story of remembrance, written out of his own grief.

The German William Morris20121005Lesley Chamberlain tells the story of German artist and architect Heinrich Vogeler.
The Ghosts Of Little Russia20090313Zinovy Zinik travels to Tottenham in north London in search of a long-forgotten community of Russian immigrants, revealing stories of xenophobia, religious and political persecution as well as anarchist plots.

He uncovers various stories including one about Russian anarchists running through the streets of Tottenham on a desperate shooting spree - an event in January 1909 that came to be known as 'The Tottenham Outrage'. The Outrage, in which a police officer and a young boy were shot dead, became a national cause celebre and prefigured the more famous Houndsditch Murders and The Siege of Sidney Street.

Zinovy Zinik uncovers the stories behind an area of London once known as 'Little Russia'.

The Global Flute Fraternity20120804James Galway, this afternoon's soloist, plays a flute made of gold - and the penny whistle. These are two extremes of this instrument. People have, everywhere and always, fulfilled their need to make music by blowing into and across a reed or a hollow bone.

Keith Waithe, the Guyanese jazz flautist and composer, has played in the Americas, Africa, India and the Far East and, on his travels, has gathered members of the flute family from all over the world. He now has 207 flutes, of bamboo, bone and even pottery.

For the interval of this matinee he takes Julian May around the collection, around the world, and around his kitchen table, telling the stories of the flutes - their provenance, their use, how he came by them - and he plays them in 'The Global Flute Fraternity'.

Keith Waithe has been a resident with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, his band The Macusi Players, performs widely and he composes for the theatre and radio. He has also made a theatre show using his collection of flutes, performed at BAC.

Producer: Julian May.

Keith Waithe gives Julian May a tour of his collection of 207 flutes from around the globe

The Great Irish Controversy: The Hugh Lane Gallery20080725William Crawley looks at the story of Hugh Lane's 39 French impressionist paintings.
The Greatest Poem Never Read20120802Danny Karlin, Professor of Poetry at the University of Bristol and editor of the complete works of Robert Browning, stands up for one of his poet's least loved and least read poems: 'Sordello'. A long story of a medieval troubadour, the poem was a complete and utter disaster on publication, set the career of its author back by twenty years, and has remained a black hole in Victorian poetry. Can anything of Browning's intentions be recovered, can the poem itself come to life at all? If we could find a way to read 'Sordello' should we? No one knows the poem better than Danny Karlin; can he convince us that we should try it?

Producer: Tim Dee.

Danny Karlin considers Robert Browning's Sordello: is it the best worst poem ever?

The Hothouse20100811A charming tale by Tove Jansson about two elderly eccentrics who develop an unlikely friendship when they tussle over a bench in the hothouse of a Finnish botanical garden. Read by Andrew Sachs, this thought-provoking story combines sharp observations about human nature with beguiling descriptions of the natural world.

Translator: Silvester Mazzarella

Abridged and produced by Gemma Jenkins

********************************************************************

A charming tale about friendship and old age by the acclaimed Finnish writer, Tove Jansson, best known as the creator of the 'Moomin' stories.

Two elderly eccentrics develop an unlikely friendship when they tussle over who gets to sit on a bench in the hothouse of a Finnish botanical garden. Although they are both solitary by nature, they begin to look forward to their weekly encounters in the hothouse and to the lively discussions that ensue.

The Hothouse' is taken from the newly published short story collection, 'Travelling Light.' Written by Jansson in 1987, this is the first time that these stories have appeared in English.

Reader: Andrew Sachs

Abridged and produced by Gemma Jenkins.

A charming tale about friendship and old age by acclaimed Finnish writer, Tove Jansson.

The Imperial Mathematician And The Moon2009120320110125 (R3)It's just over 400 years since the publication of the first modern European story of a trip to the moon - astronomer Johannes Kepler's astonishing science fiction novella Somnium (The Dream), written in the summer of 1609 in Prague. Kepler had no rockets in his dream world - he had to call on demons to overcome the immense forces of interplanetary travel, encouraging passengers to arrange their limbs carefully so they weren't ripped apart at lift off! He didn't choose Cape Canaveral but Iceland for his moon base, inspired by stories of volcanoes and lost souls. He imagined a moon world full of huge, fast-growing serpent-like creatures, but he wasn't writing the Renaissance equivalent of a B-Movie!

In 1609 Kepler was at the height of his powers, publishing his laws of planetary motion which would help take us to the moon. But he was also man with dangerous ideas. Just like Galileo, Kepler supported the new astronomy which put the Sun at the centre of the solar system, instead of a static Earth. Kepler's story was a mind-blowing thought experiment, to shift the reader's frame of reference to the Moon, so they could see that Earth never stood still. But unlike Galileo, it wasn't his own life he endangered with his ideas - it was his mother's. Bad tempered old herbalist Katharina Kepler was far too much like the Icelandic demon summoner and space-travel specialist of the story - Fiolxhilde with her astronomer son. When a neighbourhood quarrel left Katharina accused of witchcraft, people turned to manuscript copies of the Somnium and thought 'Aha! See, even her own son says so!' A horrified Kepler rushed to her rescue. Did he get there in time?

Andrew Brown on astronomer Johannes Kepler's science fiction novella Somnium: The Dream.

The Importance Of Being A Hellenist20081015By Istvan Orkeny. A story told by a mother who must identify the body of her dead son.
The Invitation20120814Invitations of whatever kind invariably create a range of emotions and challenges, both for those who issue them and those who receive them.

Here the author and critic Ian Sansom, incoming Professor of English at the University of Warwick, explores the concept of invitation from a wide range of angles including the social, philosophical, literary, musical and religious. He is inspired by a very special invitation he received earlier this year announcing ' ..... the Master of the Household had received Her Majesty's command to invite me to a Reception to be given at Buckingham Palace by The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh....

Sansom says he finds an invitation 'a complex site for the staging of human desire and human power'. Here he explores the minefield that is the etiquette around social and official invitations. He also visits St Paul's Cathedral to stand before the Divine Invitation embodied in one of the most famous paintings in the world.

Did Sansom accept The Invitation to the Palace? You'll have to listen to the programme to find out.

Producer: Martin O'Brien.

Author Ian Sansom explores the meaning and mystery of invitation giving and receiving.

The Kerry Connection20100205Professor Jeremy Dibble from Durham University visits Kenmare, Co. Kerry and retraces the footsteps of the English composer E.J. Moeran, who died in the picturesque town 60 years ago.

Moeran lived here, on and off, through the 1930's and 40's.

The folk music and beauty of the locality inspired many of his works - his Symphony in G minor was completed on nearby Valentia Island.

In this Twenty Minutes Jeremy Dibble explores Moeran's Irish connections, and includes interviews with local acquaintances as well as an archive recording of the composer's own thoughts on his adopted country, recorded over sixty years ago.

Jeremy Dibble visits Co Kerry and retraces the footsteps of English composer EJ Moeran.

The Keyed Serpent20090821James Jolly explores the troubled history of the ophicleide, one of the most idiosyncratic brass instruments ever invented. From the Greek Ophis - a serpent and Kleis - the ophicleide became popular in military bands in the late 19th century, and was utilised by Berlioz and Mendelssohn in works such as Symphonie fantastique and Midsummer Night's Dream.

Now enjoying a revival in orchestras seeking a historically accurate approach, it still divides the opinions of two Berlioz interpreters, Colin Davis and John Eliot Gardiner. Would they have it in their orchestra? With contributions and demonstrations from ophicleidists Tony George and Stephen Wick.

James Jolly explores the history of the ophicleide, an unusual brass instrument.

The Laius Complex20130313Before the performance of 'Oedipus Rex', the 'opera-oratorio after Sophocles' by Stravinsky, Paul Allen sets a millennia old injustice to rights in a provocative illustrated essay, 'The Laius Complex'.

Who, he asks, was really the guilty party in Thebes in 1000 (or thereabouts) BC? The finger has always been pointed at Oedipus, and it's true, he did kill his father and sleep with his mother. Sigmund Freud took the story and made all men feel guilty. Allen lays the blame elsewhere: who started the fight at the place where three roads meet? Laius, the father, and it's Laius, who should have a syndrome named after him.

There are many more instances of fathers killing their sons than sons killing their father in the great myths. Abraham was ready to sacrifice Isaac. In 'The Orphan of Zhao', the great Chinese epic dating back to roughly the same period as Sophocles (now being staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company), a doctor sacrifices his own son to save another baby. More recently, Rudyard Kipling drove his son Jack to enlist and fight in the First World War when he really wasn't fit.

This is emblematic of all young men sent off to war or other kinds of conflict by old men. Freud himself fell into this pattern... just why did he disinherit his son Martin when it came to the succession of fashionable psychoanalysis? Freud installed Jung as his psychoanalytic heir and even talked of formally adopting him; his son Martin never recovered, remaining erratic for the rest of his life.

Illustrated by Sophocles, James Fenton's version of 'Zhao', some Kipling, the Old Testament and Freud's biograhy biography, Paul Allen enquiries seriously, but lightly of touch, into the nature of the father and son relationship in 'The Laius Complex' .

Producer: Julian May.

Paul Allen argues that the downfall of Oedipus was the fault of his father, Laius.

The Last Days Of Summer20131014The novelist Claire Messud was commissioned by Radio 3 and Vogue Magazine to write a story about the end of summer. Her two characters, a mother and daughter, spend time on the beach at Martha's Vinyard, keenly aware that other things are ending too...

Reader, Lydia Wilson

Producer, Duncan Minshull.

Claire Messud's new story about a mother and daughter also marks the end of summer.

The Last Heretic20120825In 1612, Edward Wightman, described as the 'Jacobean equivalent of a pub bore' became the last person to be burned at the stake for heresy in England. He'd decided he was the third person of the Holy Trinity, prophesied the day of the Last Judgement and bothered the King and Archbishop of Canterbury with presentation copies of his self-scribbled books wherein he denounced the Church of England as radically corrupt and heretical.

Today we'd consider Wightman's eccentricities to be absolutely harmless. We might move away from him on the bus or block him on Twitter but we certainly wouldn't want him to be killed, and we'd be horrifed at the thought of executing anyone by burning them alive, even for the most heinous crimes. Journalist and writer Andrew Brown and Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church in the University of Oxford, look at why such cruel punishment was once accepted as absolutely necessary and how that perception changed.

The programme will include extracts from Wightman's own prophecy of the end of the world. Wightman's words are read by actor Simon Tait.

Andrew Brown and Diarmaid MacCulloch consider why we burned heretics and why we stopped.

The Life And Genius Of Michael Rabin20121211He was 'without weakness, none.' The verdict of the great violin pedagogue Ivan Galamian on one of his young students, Michael Rabin.

Rabin, who was born in New York in 1936, made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 14. To his admirers he was one of the twentieth century's greatest violinists, ranking alongside Heifetz, Oistrakh and Menuhin.

But Michael Rabin's life was marked by isolation and at times anxiety and during the early 1960s this lead to him cancelling concerts. His career underwent a revival in the late 1960s but then, in 1972, at the age of just 35, Rabin died from a head injury sustained in a fall at his New York apartment.

To mark the fortieth anniversary of Michael Rabin's death Jonathan Coffey speaks to some of those who knew Rabin best and assesses his legacy.

Jonathan Coffey explores the life and legacy of American virtuoso violinist Michael Rabin.

The Light In Darkness20120413In summer the sun barely sets, bringing long nights of partying and heavy drinking. But in Lapland, as winter closes in, the lights go on, not to be extinguished until the sun finally begins to rise again above the horizon nearly three months later. Some find the seemingly endless darkness forbidding, but others find it comforting, enjoying the way the starry blackness allows their minds to play over thoughts of the infinite...

Programme makers Hannu Karisto from Finland and his Swiss colleague Jean-Claude Kuner were shortlisted last year in the prestigious Prix Italia for their contemplative documentary feature exploring the pleasures and profound pessimism that this ineluctable seasonal flux brings on. In this English language version of the programme first broadcast by Finnish radio, the programme makers travel to the far north of the country in both seasons to catch the spirit of those 'endless days and nights'.

A documentary contemplating the 'endless days and nights' that affect Finland.

The Light In The Darkness20111201In summer the sun barely sets, bringing long nights of partying and heavy drinking. But in Lapland, as winter closes in, the lights go on, not to be extinguished until the sun finally begins to rise again above the horizon nearly three months later. Some find the seemingly endless darkness forbidding, but others find it comforting, enjoying the way the starry blackness allows their minds to play over thoughts of the infinite...

Programme makers Hannu Karisto from Finland and his Swiss colleague Jean-Claude Kuner were shortlisted last year in the prestigious Prix Italia for their contemplative documentary feature exploring the pleasures and profound pessimism that this ineluctable seasonal flux brings on. In this English language version of the programme first broadcast by Finnish radio, the programme makers travel to the far north of the country in both seasons to catch the spirit of those 'endless days and nights'.

A contemplation of the 'endless days and nights' that affect northern Scandinavia.

The Meaning Of Maturity20120524The Ripening' is Josef Suk's masterpiece. So it has overshadowed the work that inspired it - and from which Suk took his title. 'The Ripening', sometimes translated as 'Maturity', is a poem by Antonin Sova. He was a shy librarian who suffered from a spinal disease. But he was a signatory to the major modernist literary manifesto - the 'Ceskက moderna' - in 1895, and became a leading Czech Impressionist and Symbolist poet in the early part of the 20th century.

This was a time when what would soon become Czechoslovakia was in intellectual, cultural, linguistic and political ferment. Suk's composition was premiered by Vကclav Talich in 1918 while the country still awaited the Treaty of Versailles which would, after centuries of oppression, free it from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Sova was deeply affected by the death of his mother, and Suk had also suffered personal losses - his wife (Dvorak's daughter) - as well as his parents had died. So the maturity of the title might be both the country's and Sova and Suk's own ripening - Suk was in his forties when he composed the piece. Paul Allen sets the context with the aid of Czech music specialist Geoff Chew, and, examines a poem barely known in English - illustrated by a new translation of it.

Paul notes, too (in Olympic year), that Suk won a silver medal for composition at the Los Angeles Olympics 14 years later.

Producer Julian May.

Paul Allen explores the work that inspired Josef Suk's The Ripening.

The Modern Soul2011080420120622 (R3)Katherine Mansfield's story is written from the perspective of a witty female who befriends a buffoonish professor. The guests at a German pension decide to take part in a concert. Fraulein Sonia performs a theatrical dance and Herr Professor plays his trombone. The narrator describes this performance with quiet amusement and cynicism.

Katherine Mansfield applies her characteristic wit to this story, The Modern Soul, first published in the collection In a German Pension.

Read by Sophie Thompson

Produced by Lucy Collingwood.

In Katherine Mansfield's story, guests at a German pension perform in a private concert.

The Music Of Radio Times20130828The first edition of Radio Times magazine hit the bookstands in September 1923. Nine decades later, radio historian Simon Elmes discovers that music, and particularly classical music has always been a staple ingredient of its success formula.

From weekly programme notes by eminent music scholars on the major concert of the radio week, to anguished discussion of 'highbrow' and 'lowbrow' compositions, the early years of one of Britain's most successful and enduring publications were awash with music theory, argument and appreciation. 'Is Bartok mad?' launched a fierce debate on new music, while a lengthy disquisition on the Church Cantatas of Bach heralded a huge series of weekly broadcasts comprising the complete canon of the choirmaster of Leipzig.

Picture features celebrated the glamorous sopranos, contraltos and 'lady violinists' of the week, and the harpist Sidonie Goossens, still performing at the Proms in the last decades of the 20th century, was already a regular photographic favourite in its third. Meanwhile, in 1924, the celebrated diva Dame Clara Butt even went so far as to share with Radio Times readers her great musical dream: 'I would like my singing to do something to bring to pass the glorious day 'when war shall be no more'. Is it only a dream?'.

Sadly, as events 15 years later were to prove, it was.

As Radio Times reaches 90, Simon Elmes explores the musical world celebrated in its pages.

The Musical Path Through Dementia20100728For 10 years former headmaster, Edward Jones, cared for his wife as she became lost in her own world through dementia; he discovered that music was the link that continued to connect her to this world and to him. Whether it was his own self-taught piano playing or CDs of everything from Beethoven to Bob Dylan, music built a bridge to their past life: all five children had played instruments, she herself the clarinet. Music would calm her, as would reading to her - she used to be an English lecturer.

Familiar with TS Eliot's exhortation that old men ought to be explorers, Edward considered there could be no better ground for him to explore than the care of a beloved. 'In these ways I kept my wife with me. We remained very close. Most of the elements that make up the round of daily human life had been stripped away; only the essence of what had existed between us - that thing we call love - remained, and it was wonderful.

Two years after her death, Edward remembers the life and love that cannot, in Rilke's words, be 'cancelled' and continues to be grateful for the closeness her last years brought them.

Edward Jones reflects on caring for his wife through dementia and the new love they found.

The Musicians Of Ingo20090726A reading of author Helen Dunmore's atmospheric Cornish tale that will grip both adults and children, written specially to accompany 2009's Family Prom.

Inspired by the world Dunmore created in her celebrated Ingo series, the story is set on a remote Cornish island, where tales of King Arthur, ghostly lost souls and musical mer people have become part of the folklore. Music, too, is a big part of the close-knit community, with the Cornish bodhran, harp and penny whistle at the heart of its unearthly sound. One day, one of the villagers, a gifted young violinist, disappears. He is usually to be found on the beach, where he seems to take inspiration from the sea itself. When the villagers find him standing at the water's edge, his haunting violin is not the only instrument piercing the night sky - he seems to be being accompanied by the waves, or perhaps something in them.

Helen Dunmore's atmospheric Cornish short story written to accompany 2009's Family Prom.

The Ospreys Of Loch Garten20130621Nature writer Rob Cowen travels to the Abernethy Forest in Scotland, the last tract of wild Caledonian Forest, to tell the remarkable story of the rare and beautiful osprey, and their recent return to the waters of Loch Garten.

Ospreys were once a familar sight in Scotland, but were hunted to extinction in the 19th century, but since the 1950s, they have been making a tentative return to nest and fish in the Abernethy Forest.

Recorded on location at Loch Garten.

Written and read by Rob Cowen

Produced by Emma Harding

About the author: Rob Cowen is an author, award-winning journalist and outdoorsman. Growing up on the Yorkshire moors instilled a passion for the natural world that has been central in his life ever since. He is the co-author of a recent book, Skimming Stones: And Other Ways of Being in the Wild (with Leo Critchley). He has written extensively on travel and nature for The Independent, The Telegraph and The Express and currently writes a column on woodland for the Independent on Sunday. He has also appeared on BBC 2's The Culture Show and Channel 4's Time Team as a wild food expert. He now lives and writes in North Yorkshire.

Writer Rob Cowen travels to the Abernethy Forest in Scotland in search of rare ospreys.

The Pattern Of Lanes20080827An exploration of the ancient heart of the Parisian Latin Quarter through the family history that drew novelist and historian Gillian Tindall to the same streets that her great-great-grandfather discovered when he walked from Scotland to Paris in 1814 to study the new medical science flourishing in the city.

An exploration of the ancient heart of the Parisian Latin Quarter. With Gillian Tindall.

The Picture Vanishes20110821'A hundred years ago, August 1911, an Italian painter and decorator slipped from the cupboard in the Louvre where he had been hiding all night, stepped up to the Mona Lisa, freed her from her frame and left the building apparently unseen...'

The art critic and author Laura Cumming recalls the period after this infamous theft took place. Who was behind the caper? Why did France and Italy nearly come to blows? And was that face, sans eyebrows, really worth taking in the first place? She investigates in a specially commissioned essay to mark centenary of the event.

Laura Cumming tells the amazing story of

when the Mona Lisa went missing a century ago...

Laura Cumming recalls the theft from the Louvre in 1911 of the Mona Lisa.

The Planets20130807Music journalist and cultural commentator Paul Morley on finally seeing the future in Gustav Holst's 'The Planets'.

The Planets' was the first classical album that Paul Morley ever bought. As a teenager into experimental German electronic music and psychedelic rock, he expected it to take him into the realms of science fiction. But has was disappointed. It seemed irrelevant, old-fashioned, nothing to do with the future. Decades on, however, 'The Planets' has become for Morley the music of the future, for the future, and it's pop and rock that sound dated and quaint in comparison.

Written and read by Paul Morley

Produced by Justine Willett.

Music journalist Paul Morley describes finally seeing the future in Holst's The Planets.

The Pleasure Of Noise20110218A symphony orchestra can be as loud as a road drill. Although they sound as loud as each other, the noise they make can have a very different effect on the listener. The sound of a full symphony orchestra can be a visceral thrill, a physical pleasure.

Trevor Cox, Professor of Acoustic Engineering at Salford University, speaks to members of the BBC Philharmonic about making loud music - not just the sound but the thrill of playing in the orchestra. Does the excitement of creating loud music cause purely physical pleasure or is something more subtle at work?

Trevor also speaks to a rock fan and a hip hop fan about the loud music they enjoy; does it need to be constantly loud for them to derive pleasure from it?

Professor Trevor Cox of Salford University explores the physical pleasure of noise.

The Poem Of The End20130904Marina Tsvetaeva's poetic masterpiece, charting the final moments of a passionate affair in Prague 1924. Two lovers walk across the bridges of Prague, as they build themselves up to cross the final bridge - of separation.

Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) was one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century. She lived through and wrote about the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed it. In 1922, Tsvetaeva left Russia and lived with her family in impoverished exile in Paris, Berlin and Prague, where she had an affair with Konstantin Rozdevitch, a former military officer. She wrote about this relationship in several poems, including Poem of the End.

Tsvetaeva returned to Moscow in 1939. Her husband Sergei Efron and her daughter Alya were arrested on espionage charges in 1941 and her husband was later executed. Tsvetaeva committed suicide in 1941. Her work inspired a number of great poets including Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, Rainer Maria Rilke, Anna Akhmatova and Joseph Brodsky.

Written by Marina Tsvetaeva and translated by Elaine Feinstein

Performed by Imogen Stubbs and David Seddon

Produced by Emma Harding.

Imogen Stubbs and David Seddon read Marina Tsvetaeva's The Poem of the End.

The Postmaster, By Alexander Pushkin20081204Pushkin's short story about a postmaster's daughter who elopes with a hussar.
The Power Of The Ondes20080902Thomas Bloch explores the little-known ondes martenot, an instrument that features in Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony in the second part of this evening's Prom. A keyboard-like instrument with a distinctive sound, it was first built in the 1920s in France and was used by classical composers such as Messiaen and Boulez. Since its creation, other composers from the worlds of film music and pop have also written for it.

A distinguished player of the ondes himself, Thomas talks to multi-instrumentalist and ex-Pogues player David Coulter about its history, its range and power and why it has been an inspiration to composers from many different musical fields.

Thomas Bloch discusses the ondes martenot with ex-Pogues member David Coulter.

The Quiet Carriage20080903Geoff Dyer explores changing ideas of privacy, personal space and good manners on trains.
The Rain Horse20120321In Ted Hughes haunting tale, a young man returns to the landscape of his youth - no longer the green and pleasant land of his memories, but something darker, cruel and unforgiving. As the rain lashes down, he faces nature red in tooth and claw in the form of a ghostly black horse, which appears to be following him....

Infused with Hughes' muscular, poetic language, this is a powerful story both of man against nature, and a man fighting his own hidden demons.

Author: Ted Hughes was one of the greatest English poets of the 20th century, and famously the former husband of Sylvia Plath. His collections include 'Hawk in the Rain' and 'Birthday Letters'. He was Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.

Produced and abridged by Justine Willett

Reader: David Warner.

Ted Hughes's short story about a man attacked by a ghostly black horse while out walking.

The Reef20130805When Marg realises that her husband yearns for change, she agrees to a round Australia trip, and a visit to the Great Barrier Reef.

Evie Wyld's first novel, 'After the Fire, A Still Small Voice', was shortlisted for the Impac Prize, the Orange Award for New Writers and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her work has been broadcast on The Verb, The Culture Show and Radio 4's Afternoon Reading. In 2013 she was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.

Producer: Robert Howells.

Evie Wyld's short story about a couple looking for answers in the Great Barrier Reef.

The Rise Of The Cossacks20130802Alexander Kan investigates how Cossacks have been portrayed in art, literature, and music.
The Rite Of Autumn20100907The Orchestre National de France is about to perform 'The Rite of Spring', but spring is long past, the long summer of concerts is drawing to its close and the autumn equinox is a fortnight away. Doc Rowe, who since the 1960s has been recording and filming the traditions, vernacular arts, folklore, song and dance of Britain and Ireland, explores the rites of autumn. With recordings of such events and customs as the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, Punkie Night in Hinton St George, and the wild bonfires of Kent and Sussex, and talking to those involved, he reveals how people here mark the gathering dark.

Producer: Julian May.

Doc Rowe explores how in Britain we mark the onset of of autumn.

The Roma Today20090724Novelist Louise Doughty has long known that her father's family were English Romanies. She looks at the poor image and status of Romanies across Europe today, revealing a depressing story of age-old prejudice which is currently being exacerbated by anxieties about immigration and the economic downturn.

On a more positive note, she celebrates the way that Romany cultural influences, as interpreted by composers such as Ravel and Sarasate, can help to improve life for the Roma and Sinti people who are one of Europe's fastest-growing ethnic minorities.

Novelist Louise Doughty looks at the poor image and status of Romanies across Europe today

The Songs I Have Made For Thee20090829Claire Tomalin discusses the recently re-discovered songs by Muriel Herbert.
The Sound Artist20110809Sebastiane Hegarty takes a walk through our sonic environment and discusses the music inspired by natural sound.

As a sound artist, he says, he doesn't search for particular sounds, but instead immerses himself in a noise-rich world and uses what comes to him.

Out on the moors, he finds 'the gnawing of wasps on a wooden fence, the chaotic percussion of rain on barbed wire, the desolate spatial collapse of a barn door closing....Listening, like walking, allows us to discover or perhaps uncover what is already there: to apprehend the unfamiliar within the familiar.

Sebastiane introduces us to his some of his own work, and discusses the influence of other sound artists and composers including John Cage.

Sebastiane Hegarty explores the music inspired by natural sound.

The Sound Of One Hand Clapping20120224It is 40 years since American composer Steve Reich first performed his Clapping Music; his aim to 'create a piece of music that needed no instruments beyond the human body', but his fascinating experiment in phasing and rhythm was by no means the first or the last time clapping has played a part in music.

Musician David Bramwell explores the art of the clap in creating and teaching music - the most widespread forms of rhythm making across the world. He hears from Al Guerra, Miami based creator of the Interactive Metronome, a technique of clapping therapy that helps the brain damaged and uncoordinated.

At Chichester College Jazz Course, saxophonist Simon D'Souza and guitarist Dave Murrell give insight into the way rhythm is taught to the most sophisticated of musical ears - how well you think you can keep time may be challenged, while teacher and performer Lorraine Bowen brings clapping into her pupils lessons with such joy that she makes everyone wish she had been their piano teacher. Finally, world famous composer Steve Reich and Zen guru Bart Simpson aid the revelation of what the sound of one hand clapping is really like.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall.

Musician David Bramwell explores the art of the clap in creating and teaching music.

The Soviet Valkyrie20130723In 1940, the famed Soviet film director Sergey Eisenstein was suddenly invited to stage a production of Wagner's Die Walküre at the Bolshoi. Wagner was unlikely fare at this time - the Soviet Union was largely hostile to foreign art, especially that of its great political rival in Europe, Germany. Yet the signing of the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact in 1939 opened up a brief window for the oddest of reconciliations. The historian Philip Bullock considers Eisenstein's involvement in the production, and explores Russian interest in Wagner more generally, asking what happens when works of art get caught up in politics, propaganda and international diplomacy?

Historian Philip Bullock explores the staging of Die Walkure at the Bolshoi in 1940.

The Squire's Daughter2011073120130423 (R3)The Squire's Daughter appears in Alexander Pushkin's Tales of Belkin. It is an amusing story about the enmity that exists between two landowners, and the antics of their children, Aleksey and Liza.

Alexander Pushkin wrote Tales of Belkin in 1830, and in a fictional introduction to the collection, he claims that the author was a recently deceased landowner, Ivan Petrovich Belkin, who was a great collector of stories. He goes on to say that each of the five short works was told to him by various people, and that it was Miss K.I.T who recounted the amusing story of The Squire's Daughter.

The Squires Daughter by Alexander Pushkin was translated by Ronald Wilks. The reader is Hattie Morahan. The abridger and producer is Elizabeth Allard.

Pushkin's story about the enmity between two landowners and the antics of their children.

The Stone That Moved20110825Wales's first National Poet, Gwyneth Lewis was brought up with the myth of Taliesin, the sixth-century Welsh poet and shape-shifter. One wet summer holiday in Aberystwyth in the 1960s, her mother decided they should go in search of the Taliesin stone. A Celtic relative of the Blarney stone, it's said that if you sleep with your head on it, it'll either turn you into a poet or mad. Maybe even both. Gwyneth has a small black and white photo of her and her Mum standing around this undistinguished boulder imbued with remarkable powers and realises that it was an important quest for her. What else remains from that holiday? A memory of buying worthy but dull Welsh woollen capes, and falling asleep to the sound track of Shane, the best Western ever made.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis recalls a wet childhood day in mid Wales in search of Taliesin.

The Story Of The Cross20120405During their persecution under the Roman Empire, many early Christians used the sign of the fish as a symbol of faith and identity. It's said that the sign was used to mark secret meeting places or tombs and as a kind of code for identifying and communicating with other Christians. The sign of the fish - or 'icthys' - is still used by some Christians today. But it's the simple cross - two intersecting straight lines - that has come to be the dominant symbol of Christianity. In this Twenty Minutes for Easter Jonathan Coffey uncovers the story of how this most profound of symbols came into being.

Jonathan Coffey on the story of the cross and how it became the symbol of Christianity.

The Suit2009112020100806 (R3)A funny and provocative look at dress, class, ageing and the philosophical life from Ian Sansom. An eccentric and perfectly tailored feature, prompted by a visit to a gentleman's outfitters, where Ian is measured for a new suit. He's reminded of the men in his family - his working-class grandfathers trussed up uncomfortably in clothes designed for the sedentary professional classes, collected in a family album of black and white photos that brings to mind John Berger's essay, 'The Suit and the Photograph' in which Berger writes about the great German photographer August Sander. This leads on to reflections on famous suit wearers in history and literature, and to a series of thoughts about, among others, Benjamin Franklin, John F. Kennedy, Michael Nyman, Franz Kafka, and Anthony Powell.

Ian Sansom is a critic and writer of both fiction and non-fiction, whose series of detective stories featuring a mobile librarian in rural Northern Ireland has gathered fans around the world. He has previously broadcast for Radio 3 on WH Auden, his passion for concrete, his adopted city of Belfast and bibliomania.

Producer: Sara Davies.

Writer Ian Sansom reflects on dress, class and the philosophical life.

The Summer House20100811In Norway you'd call it a sommerhus, in Finland a mokki, in Russia a dacha and in Sweden a stuga. In English there is no adequate word for these havens in the forests and by the water where our northern neighbours withdraw for the summer.

Kate Clanchy, who has spent time in mokkis and stugas, reveals how these are not mere second homes for the wealthy - most people have access to one. Nor are they places of total relaxation: there are logs to be chopped, potatoes to be grown and mushrooms and berries to be gathered. The summer house is where people reconnect with the land, with nature, with each other and themselves.

She contemplates the atmosphere and the light, and the way this imbues so much of the music and writing we love, the work of Grieg, Sibelius, Chekhov, Nabokov and Tove Jansson, author of 'The Summer Book'.

Producer: Julian May.

Kate Clanchy on the importance of the summer house to people in Scandinavia and Russia.

The Sunken City20120726Welsh writer Phil Carradice investigates the legend of a lost realm submerged beneath the waves of Cardigan Bay. A well-known story in Wales, recorded as early as the ninth century, it has striking similarities with Breton stories of a kingdom drowned on account of the folly and arrogance of its citizens. Whether or not it embodies a folk memory of catastrophic inundation is debatable. But as the sea level rises and threatens coastal settlements, the tale is as relevant today as in the past.

Phil Carradice investigates a lost kingdom submerged beneath the waves of Cardigan Bay.

The Sweetness Of The Garden20110722In the Spring of 1829, Washington Irving - who'd been invited to Spain to explore newly open archive in Madrid - made as he put it 'a rambling expedition from Seville to wander among the romantic mountains of Andalusia to Granada.' America's first world-celebrated writer (and the author of such classics as 'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'), Irving was permitted to sojourn in the magnificent palace of the Moorish rulers, the Alhambra: 'Who can do justice to a moonlight night in such a climate and such a place?' The resultant 'Tales of the Alhambra' - which Irving wrote in a 'rambling set of empty, unfurnished rooms' - celebrate the enchantment of the palace, described by Arabs as 'a pearl set in emeralds' for the brilliance of its ornamentation and the lush verdure of its many gardens. The Moors were famous makers of gardens - paradise on earth, as the Prophet called them - refuge from the aridity and heat of the desert, supplied with fragrance and, above all, luxuriant in water, its sound and coolness.

In this illustrated interval talk, Graeme Fife takes us on a virtual tour of the Alhambra's famous gardens, their tiled courtyards and pools and basins of living water - using readings from Irving's 'Tales of the Alhambra', and comparing them with his own recollections and the descriptions provided by Arabic poets of the day.

Producer: Paul Kobrak.

Graeme Fife on the famed gardens of the Alhambra, through Washington Irving's writings.

The Trials Of The Chorus Master20130712This Prom has five different choruses, which is pretty remarkable even for the Proms.

In this interval feature we gather together three of the chorus masters of tonight's concert to talk about the art of the chorus master.

This is a job which requires going along to many rehearsals on wet Tuesday nights and putting up with some terrible attendances and unmusical politics. Then, after all the hard work, when the choir is drilled to perfection, in comes the star conductor and takes the glory. Is it tricky? We ask them.

Producer Geoff Ballinger.

Chorus masters reveal how the unsung heroes feel when a star conductor receives the glory.

The Trojan Horse Has Bolted20120722In the second interval of the Prom performance of 'Les Troyens' by Berlioz, Paul Allen makes the case for the cultural comeback, and continuing importance, of the Trojans. There were on the 'wrong' side in the war that bears their name, but nonetheless when the first Roman Emperor sought a cultural and ethnic ancestry for his parvenu rule, Virgil produced it for him - with the Trojans - in the Aeneid. Even the winning Greeks acknowledge Hector's heroism; he is clearly valiant and noble in Homer's depiction in the Iliad. And in 'Trojan Women' Euripides creates one of world's greatest anti-war plays.

Then, in the 16th century, the myth that English royalty was descended from the Trojan Brutus was conjured up as a way of giving legitimacy to another parvenu empire. Today an heroic race gives its name to a computer virus and is identified by trick played on it by Odysseus. But think of all the tragic heroes and heroines the Trojan side of those epics spawned: Troilus and Cressida (Chaucer and Shakespeare), Andromache (Racine), Dido (Purcell), Priam (Tippett) to say nothing of the man who gave Berlioz his first name. And there are the dodgier characters: Paris, Pandarus.

Paul Allen, with classicists Oliver Taplin (Greek), Llewelyn Morgan (Latin) and Shakespeare expert Carol Rutter, looks to all these in a cultural biography and restitution of the 'topless towers of Ilium.

Producer: Julian May.

Paul Allen examines how, despite losing the war, the Trojans have shaped Western culture.

The Visitors' Book20100906Katherine recalls the contents of an old volume when walking home in the fading light.
The Voyage2011072920120827 (R3)Indira Varma reads Katherine Mansfield's classic 1921 story set on board an overnight ferry in New Zealand, in which a young girl, Fenella, leaves her father behind to voyage into an unknown future with her sprightly grandmother.

In what is one of Mansfield's most atmospheric tales, the tumultuous night-time voyage becomes more than just a physical journey for the young Fenella.

Author: Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is widely considered one of the masters of the short story, her much acclaimed stories include 'The Garden Party' and 'Bliss'. She was brought up in colonial New Zealand but moved to Britain in 1908 where she led a literary bohemian life among the influential writers of the time.

Reader: Indira Varma

Abridger and producer: Justine Willett

First broadcast in July 2011.

Indira Varma reads Katherine Mansfield's classic 1921 story of a night-time sea voyage.

The Whale Road20080910Kathleen Jamie tries to discover why there are remains of whales all around the UK coast.
The World Orchestra For Peace20100805A profile of the World Orchestra for Peace, founded by Sir Georg Solti in 1995 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the UN. Although Solti only conducted the orchestra once before his sudden death, the World Orchestra for Peace continues to go from strengh to strength, gathering only for special occasions to promote peace and celebrate the encompassing power of music. Contributors include Lady Solti, general manager Charles Kaye and the orchestra's current conductor Valery Gergiev. We also hear from some of the players, drawn from the greatest orchestras around the world. Presented by Tom Service.

Tom Service profiles the World Orchestra for Peace, founded in 1995 by Georg Solti.

There Are Precious Things20121220A new short story by Alison MacLeod inspired by Byrd and Tallis's sacred music. Set on the London Underground's central line seasonal worries give way to a discovery of the precious things in life.

Alison MacLeod is the author of the novels The Changeling and The Wave Theory of Angels as well as a collection of short stories Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction. Her short fiction has also been published by Prospect, London Magazine, Pulp.Net and Virago. The Heart of Denis Noble appeared in the anthology Litmus and was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2011.

There Are Precious Things by Alison MacLeod.

Produced by Elizabeth Allard.

A new seasonal short story by Alison MacLeod about the precious things in daily life.

There's Something About The Cello20110811For ceramics expert Lars Tharp it was a choice between studying the cello or archaeology. To the benefit of Antiques Road Show viewers, but perhaps to the loss of the music audience, he chose archaeology.

Ever since, he's been struck by how often people comment, 'I wish I'd played the cello', with a yearning rarely displayed in connection with other instruments. Is it because its range and tone is closer to the human voice than any other instrument, or is it the heartstring-tugging repertoire that's grown up around it?

Lars seeks the answer in the company of Julian Lloyd Webber who, immediately after the interval, will be playing a newly re-discovered piece for the cello, Invocation, by Gustav Holst, followed by Elgar's universally-acclaimed Enigma Variations. And Graham Fitkin, whose newly composed Cello Concerto for Yo-Yo Ma will be premiered in Prom 61 on 31 August, discusses the merits of the cello and the problems it poses for the composer.

Lars Tharp asks Julian Lloyd Webber why the cello arouses such strong passions.

Thirsting For Music20080912Paul Bailey tells the story of the Romanian Jewish playwright, novelist and music lover Mihail Sebastian. He talks to those who knew and have written about Sebastian, who wrote a journal from 1935 to 1944 charting the days of Romania's collaboration with the Nazis, and which also detailed his love of people, the best of world literature as well as classical music.

Paul Bailey Romanian Jewish playwright, novelist and music lover Mihail Sebastian.

This Country Called Russia20130813Lesley Chamberlain tells the story of the Red Princess, Sofka Skipwith, posh supporter of the Soviet Union and personal assistant to Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

Producer: Tim Dee

Women in exile are often forced to lead brave and extraordinary lives. Sofka Skipwith (1907-1994) has been called The Red Princess. She was born Princess Dolgorouky. After fleeing the revolution with her family and ending up in London she did a series of jobs, including personal assistant to the actor Laurence Olivier and his wife Vivien Leigh. It wasn't easy to keep body and soul together, but her grand manner and her toughness carried her through. The love of her life and briefly her husband was killed at the beginning of the war. During the war in which she was active saving Jewish lives she was interned by the Nazis in occupied France. With her second husband, to whom she referred as 'my prole', she lived in the wilds of Bodmin Moor. At the same time, for many years she guided tourists on visits to the Soviet Union, of which she was a posh supporter. Never having wanted to leave her native country, she maintained a loyalty to the last. Both the British and Israeli governments recognized her wartime achievements. She wrote excellent memoirs and one of the first Russian cookery books in English.

Lesley Chamberlain tells the story of the Red Princess, Sofka Skipworth.

This Dreaming Sea20130727A new sequence of poems by Lavinia Greenlaw which trace the theme of vision through Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. Through interior monologues from the perspectives of both of the lovers, Greenlaw explores how we choose to see or not to see, and how we create what we see.

Read by Lavinia Greenlaw and David Seddon.

Produced by Emma Harding.

About the poet: Lavinia Greenlaw is the author of four collections of poetry including, most recently, The Casual Perfect. Her collection Minsk was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot, Forward and Whitbread Poetry Prizes. She has also published novels and works of non-fiction which include The Importance of Music to Girls and Questions of Travel: William Morris in Iceland. She has won a number of prizes and held residencies at the Science Museum and the Royal Society of Medicine. Her work for BBC radio includes programmes about the Arctic, the Baltic, Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop.

A new sequence of poems by Lavinia Greenlaw, inspired by Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.

This New Strange World20120830A new and specially commissioned short story by the award winning writer Clare Wigfall about Berlin, the city where she lives. Told through the eyes of a circus elephant as old as the Berlin Wall, the intertwined fates of the city and the elephant reveal strange parallels. The story accompanies this evening's Prom performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Clare Wigfall won the BBC National Short Story Award, 2008 for The Numbers, the opening story in her debut collection, The Loudest Sound and Nothing, which was well received by reviewers and critics. Clare is currently working on a second short story collection, and a novel set in British Malaya in the early half of the last century.

Clare Wigfall on writing this new story:-

'While researching this commission somehow my focus kept returning to the history of the Berlin Wall and the suddenness with which it was erected in 1961. When, by chance, I came across this same date as being paralleled with the birth of an Indian elephant called Pia who was brought over to East Berlin to perform in the GDR State Circus, I knew I'd found that strange kernel of truth from which a story could blossom. Imagining the contrasts was what intrigued me - I could picture this elephant's journey from the wilds of India to communist Germany, and the disparity she found to encounter the sequined-sparkle and magic of circus life so totally incongruous with the grey bleakness of East Berlin. Unfortunately, I don't know what happened to Pia after the Wall fell, but sadly it would appear she is now deceased. Likewise, with the demise of the GDR, its official state circus disbanded in 1990.'

Read by Ayesha Dharker

Produced by Elizabeth Allard.

By Clare Wigfall. A new short story inspired by Berlin.

Tibet On The Banks Of The Clyde20100819George Bogle - Britain's first emissary to Tibet in 1774 - struck up a remarkable friendship with the country's then spiritual leader, the Panchen Lama. He was there to try to establish trade relations with China, to help his lucrative career in the East India Company, but he also had the time of his short life, falling in love with Tibet, and Tibetans. After his death in 1781, two little girls he'd fathered by an unknown mother were sent back to his family at Daldowie near Glasgow. The family story was that they were his daughters by a high ranking Tibetan lady called Tichan. The name looked genuine and the tradition also surfaced in other families close to the Bogles. The great Tibetan scholar Hugh Richardson was convinced. But was this story true? A generation of Tibet scholars have pored over the 'judiciously arranged' (and probably censored) family records, trying to find clues to their origins. Alas the beautiful story is crumbling, but in doing so is giving us an insight into something even more important and poignant, the fate of mixed race children being sent 'home' from India to Scotland. Even with hefty dowries in landed families, they could not marry into the same class. They could have problems making a life in Scotland - emigration back out into the Empire was often their best prospect. They would be wrenched from their Indian family forever, with no thought for the grief of a mother parted from her child. Despite all this, the Tibetan wife story was perhaps a father's last gift to his daughters, hoping to make them more acceptable to his strict Presbyterian family back home in Scotland. Glasgow novelist, Louise Welsh, investigates one of the more complex and unexpected legacies of the city's imperial past.

Louise Walsh asks if the first British envoy to Tibet had two children with a local woman.

Tiny Tales20111102' When it seems we have finally decided to stay home of an evening, have slipped into our smoking jackets, are sitting at a lit table after supper, and have taken out some piece of work or game, we get up, change into a jacket, and straightaway look ready to go out... '

A reading of six pieces by Franz Kafka, translated by Michael Hoffman, that offer an exquisite study in restlessness and our need to walk everywhere...

Reader Carl Prekopp

Producer Duncan Minshull.

Six pieces by Franz Kafka exploring ideas of restlessness and our need to walk everywhere.

To Build A Fire20121126In Jack London's classic tale a man battles the bitter elements.
To Chekhov's Memory2010012220100917 (R3)By Alexander Kuprin.

Structured around 'a day in the life', this essay provides a unique contemporary perspective on Anton Chekhov in his later years. The author Alexander Kuprin paints a vivid a picture of Chekhov's life in Yalta - the regular visits from aspiring writers, his sensitivity to critics, and Chekhov's uneasy relationship with his two dogs - Tusik and Kashtan.

Alexander Kuprin was a hugely popular writer in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Tolstoy hailed him as the natural successor to Chekhov, and Nabokov styled him as a Russian Kipling - as well as writer, he was a pilot, explorer and adventurer.

Read by Ben Whishaw.

Produced by Sasha Yevtushenko.

A unique, first-hand portrait of Anton Chekhov. Read by Ben Whishaw.

Total Eclipse20090820Simon Heighes is joined by Professor Daniel M Albert, an opthalmic surgeon with a special interest in the history of medicine, to discover the story of the flamboyant English doctor who blinded the two greatest figures in Baroque music - Bach and Handel.

John Taylor was a charlatan - a charismatic, womanising practitioner who lied his way to treat popes, royalty and anyone else who could afford his high fees. He treated Bach, after the composer's failing sight prevented him from continuing to work on The Art of Fugue, performing a procedure known as 'couching' - using a needle to pierce the composer's eyes and displace his cataracts. Some months after his operation - after days filled with pain, fever and vivid hallucinations - Bach died, leaving his great work incomplete.

When Taylor was called upon to treat the eyes of London's foremost musical celebrity, Handel, he completely blinded him and the composer never wrote music again.

Simon Heighes discovers the story of the English doctor who blinded both Bach and Handel.

Tredegar House, Gwent20130331Katie Derham tours Tredegar House in Wales with Lars Tharp and the NT's Derw Thomas.
Twenty Ways To Stuff A Cat2012112320130626 (R3)In a taxidermist's studio, animals are prepared for immortality: animal heads, fish, birds, mice; in museums, natural history specimens are preserved in the name of conservation and education; in galleries, artists play with notions of life, death and the stopping of time; on a computer screen, contemporary artists create wild menageries of hybrid creatures through the process of 'animangling', or digital taxidermy. From the great bagging and stuffing fever of nineteenth century sportsmen-naturalists, and the related collections of small animals arranged in meticulously detailed scenarios to the current revival of taxidermy as art - both real and virtual - as well as the growing enthusiasm for freeze-drying a dead pet, Ian Sansom explores what the urge to stuff or otherwise preserve an animal suggests about our culture, and finds out about the intricacies of the art in an Edinburgh taxidermy studio.

Ian is a literary critic and the author of The Mobile Library detective series. He has broadcast for Radio 3 on his enthusiasm for concrete, his adopted city of Belfast, bibliophilia, swimming, the cultural history of the suit and of shoes among other subjects. His next novel, the first of a new detective series, is due out in 2013.

Ian Sansom reflects on the art of taxidermy and our need to preserve life by stuffing it.

Twists And Turns: The Shape Of Tune20080723Artist Jonathon Brown give his personal thoughts on the shape of melody over the centuries
Viva La Musica! Viva Il Duce!20090807William Ward, an authority on 20th-century Italian politics and culture, talks to historians and musicians to ask if Respighi's famously colourful Fountains of Rome, Pines of Rome and Roman Festivals are just a series of picture postcards designed to please any tourist? Or do they reflect a proto-fascist and fascist agenda?

Illuminating this little-known corner of European cultural history from the 1920s, 30s and 40s, William makes some some surprising discoveries, such as the contrast between Nazi and fascist policy, and the baleful shadow fascism's legacy still casts over contemporary Italian musical life.

William Ward investigates the effects of Fascism on Italian musical life.

Wagner In France20130804Rana Mitter and guests explore Richard Wagner's relationship with French Music and ideas.

That most German of composers, Wagner, had a consistent and interesting relationship with France throughout his life. From 1848 when he stood on a revolutionary barricade fired with the spirit of the French revolution to the rewriting of Tannhauser at the behest of the Emperor Napoleon. Indeed, the disastrous premiere of Tannh䀀user in Paris in 1861, when laughter and whistling broke out and the whole was invaded by members of the 'Jockey Club', brought the curtain down on Wagner's attempts to conquer Paris, the capital city of Opera. Professor Tim Blanning and Dr. Sarah Hibberd swap notes on Wagner's very personal Franco-German alliance.

Producer: James Cook.

Wagner's relationship with French music and ideas. Tim Blanning and Sarah Hibberd discuss.

Wajda: Voice Of A Generation20130117Ian Christie explores the career and influence of the legendary Polish film director, Andrzej Wajda,

Andrzej Wajda is one of the twentieth century's greatest filmmakers. He burst into prominence in the early 1950s with his harrowing depictions of the Warsaw ghetto under Nazi occupation, such as A Generation and Kanal. When revolution swept through the shipyards of Gdansk, Wajda charted both the pre-revolutionary Soviet era through his tale of a stakhanovite worker, Man of Marble, pursuing the story through the revolution in Man of Iron. Today, with Poland a thriving democracy within the EU, and with a generation of younger filmmakers behind him, Wajda, at the age of 86 is still at work, making final adjustments to his latest film, Walesa, chronicling the hero of Gdansk.

Ian Christie, with the help of archive recordings, charts Wajda's career, and explores the influence he has exercised on European film for sixty years.

Producer: Simon Elmes.

Ian Christie explores the life and work of Polish film director Andrzej Wajda.

Walking On Snowdon20110301'The climb becomes much steeper once you get past the barracks, and it's the moment for Rachel to ask: Is this mountain male or female? It's certainly enveloping. During the religious revivals in the early part of the twentieth century, people of Snowdonia underwent baptisms in freezing mountain lakes, swooned and fainted and spoke in tongues. But Rachel's take on the place is distinctly her own: the mountain is huge, she says...'

It is St David's Day and novelist Russell Celyn Jones

recalls a memorable climb up Mount Snowdon, when mists,

hawks and injuries beckon...

Russell Celyn Jones climbs Mount Snowdon and considers our need to walk places.

Wallace And Gromit: Feet Of Clay20120729Poet Michael Rosen visits the Aardman Studios to meet Nick Park and Wallace and Gromit.
What Childhood Of Christ?20111222Christianity is founded on the story of Jesus' birth and the three years before his death. But what happened in between? Jesus' boyhood, adolescence and young adulthood are absent from the New Testament Gospels. But early Christian communities found value in swapping stories of Christ's youth; imagining his miraculous powers in the hands of a child; rebelling in school and creating birds from clay. Helen Bond roots among the scriptures and the apocrypha for evidence of Christ's missing years and examines how this absence affects our understanding of Christ and of children. In doing so she touches on the great 19th century controversy over the historicity of Christ and whether thinking about Christ's missing years is a valid response to his humanity or a misunderstanding of the purposes of the gospel story.

Prod - James Cook.

Helen Bond analyses the Scriptures and the Apocrypha to discover Christ's missing years.

What Visions Have I Seen20130816What visions I have seen,' declares Titania on awaking from her charmed amorous slumber with Bottom in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Michael Tippett?s opera 'The Midsummer Marriage has an ancient, ritual and magical aspect. It features a character called Kingfisher, based on the mythical Fisher King, and another, Sosostris, a name that appears as a ?famous clairvoyante?with a wicked pack of cards? in ?The Waste Land?.

To complement this, in the interval of this evening's Prom performance, Steve Roud, one of the country's foremost authorities on British folklore and song, surveys the summer customs of Britain. He explains what they are and when, who is involved and suggests some meanings. His piece is illustrated with with recordings of events such as Crying the Neck in Cornwall, well-dressing in Derbyshire, and the solstice celebrations at Stonehenge.

Folklorist Steve Roud surveys the summer customs of Britain.

When Tolkien Stole Wagner's Ring20130726Tolkien always vehemently denied any connection between his Lord of the Rings and Wagner's Ring Cycle. He once said: 'Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceased'.

But there is almost certainly more to it than that. Tolkien used the same Norse legends as Wagner for inspiration in 'Lord of the Rings', but it also seems likely that he took the original idea of an all-powerful and corrupting ring directly from Wagner. So why did he deny it? Perhaps Tolkien felt the taint of the Nazi associations that surrounded Wagner's music at the time he was writing. Perhaps he simply found Wagner's conclusions distasteful. Was Tolkien's work, in fact, conceived as a kind of antidote to Wagner's take on ultimate power.

Susan Hitch explores the connections between the pair of them.

Susan Hitch explores connections between Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Wagner's Ring.

Wigmore Hall 110th Anniversary20110531In the interval of the gala concert celebrating the 110th anniversary (to the day) of its opening, Christopher Cook tells the story of the Wigmore Hall. He traces the hall's history from its beginning, as a recital room built by Bechstein's, whose showrooms were close by, to showcase their pianos, to today, when this beautiful Edwardian building is one of the most highly regarded chamber music venues in the world. Audiences love its architecture, its acoustic, and the adventurousness of its programming.

The Wigmore Hall was designed by Thomas Colcutt, who also designed state rooms on P&O liners. He loved the Renaissance, hence its alabaster and marble walls, flooring and stairway. In the First World War hostility to German businesses compelled Bechstein's to sell the hall (to Debenhams). It had had cost £100,000 to build but the hall itself, its studios, offices, warehouses and 137 pianos fetched only £56,500. It was refurbished in 2004, and every week Radio 3 broadcasts one of its concerts, live.

Great people have performed there, including Prokofiev, Poulenc and Britten and Pears - several of Britten's chamber and vocal works were given their first performances at the Hall; Jacqueline du Pr退 played the cello; the Amadeus Quartet gave many memorable concerts. Now its programming includes jazz, too.

Christopher explores the building's history and talks to musicians, and audience members, about its future, too.

Producer: Julian May.

On its 110th anniversary Christopher Cook tells the story of the Wigmore Hall.

Wild Swimmers20110818New presenting talent Rachael Kinley joins 'wild swimmer' Dave Morton as he takes her up river in the foothills of the Cullin mountain range to a magical cave, were the melt water from the mountains collects to form a fast flowing water fall.

Dave explains his love of 'wild swimming: 'After every wild swim my perspective on the world changes and always for the better. It helps me de-stress from a hectic day at work.' Inspired by Roger Deakin's book Waterlog Dave says he is addicted to finding new spots to take a dip.

Another wild swimmer from Skye, Kevin Donnelley entices Rachael into Loch Dubrachan on Skye's Sleat peninsular. Here the peaty water makes your body look golden as you swim. Myth and legend surround the Loch, a water horse - a water monster is said to inhabit its waters. Rachael swims along the bank with Skylarks overhead, passing water lillies and damble flies.

Rachael Kinley joins 'wild swimmers' in a freshwater loch on Skye.

William Byrd And Catholicism20120305The Rev Richard Coles hosts a discussion on how William Byrd survived as a recusant.
Wunderkind2009082620100402 (R3)In Wunderkind, her classic coming-of-age story, written when she was only 19, Carson McCullers explores the pressures and angsts of life as a child prodigy. Frances, a fifteen-year-old pianist, who for her whole childhood has been considered a shining musical prodigy, arrives for her lesson at her teacher's studio. Her playing has been faltering recently, while Heime, her fellow student and now rival, seems to be on the verge of an illustrious concert career. As the lesson progresses, the emotions spiral, until Frances has to face up to the fact that she might be only ordinary after all.

Carson Mccullers was one of the great writers of the American South. As a child she trained as a classical pianist but gave up her ambitions for a musical career after an emotional break in her relationship with a beloved piano teacher. In this highly autobiographical story, McCullers looks not only at the troubled life of the child prodigy, but also at the pressures and isolation of adolescence.

The reader is Madeleine Potter.

Producer: Justine Willett (Rpt).

Carson McCullers's story about the troubled life of the child prodigy.

You Only Sing When You're Winning20110910With the idea of an audience singalong becoming enshrined not only in the Proms last night traditions but also in the concert programme itself, Simon Townley tells the story of one of tonight's chosen numbers. 'You'll Never Walk alone' might have started as a Broadway hit but its hold on the national psyche has more to do with its emergence in the 1960s and 70s as the anthem of Liverpool Football club's famous Kop, the embankment at one end of their Anfield ground.

Simon recalls how, as a budding young pianist and serious minded classical music enthusiast the power of the Anfield anthem was thrust upon him while on an exchange visit to Paris. Billetted with a family of fanatical French football fans Simon made his name by predicting that their beloved St Etienne FC would come off second best on a visit to Liverpool for an important European cup tie. They did, but it was the crowd singing that astonished the young Simon.

Why 'You'll never walk alone' worked as a singalong piece, how its impact reflected the mordant wit of the football terrace and why it's appropriate that it should be picked up by a Prom audience as a piece that tells us as much about the singers as the song, is the theme of Simon's talk.

Simon Townley celebrates the Broadway and footballing anthem You'll Never Walk Alone.

Your First 181220120516Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture is well known to music lovers and is performed frequently in concert halls all over the country. It's such an established orchestral perennial that most musicians could probably play it without even looking at the music.

But all professional musicians have to start somewhere and many of them will have played in youth orchestras in their early musical lives.

Amersham Music Centre in Buckinghamshire is one of many local authority Saturday music schools around the country which nurture the talent and enthusiasm of budding young musicians. Children from the ages of 7 upwards are encouraged to sing, play an instrument and develop a love of music. Sarah Taylor has been eavesdropping on the Senior Orchestra as they prepare for their first ever performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. The conductor, Fiona Jacob and the children share their nerves and excitement as they try and master this tricky piece.

Producer: Sarah Taylor.

Children from Amersham Music Centre prepare to perform Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.

Zipper And His Father2011020220120131 (R3)Why, I asked, was Arnold's older brother never photographed?

He was named Caesar. It seemed this name had proved a burden to the boy, had set him tasks for which he was not born. He had either to be a genius or a scoundrel. With a name like that who coulde ever satify his parents?

Precisely. And when Herr Zipper, Caesar's father, decides that the boy must learn the violin all hell lets loose. The boy goes to lessons for two years before Herr Zipper makes a shocking discovery, which leads to family confrontation.

This extract from the author's famous novel about musical aspirations going comically

off course is read by Jonathan Firth.

The producer is Duncan Minshull.

Reading from Joseph Roth's novel about a father's musical aspirations for his son.