Private Passions

BBC Radio 3
undefined
Jul 15, 2018 • 34min

Paco Peña

Paco Peña first started playing the guitar at the age of six; it was his older brother's guitar, and since there were nine children in the family, all living in two rooms in a crowded house in Córdoba, he had a ready-made audience right from the beginning. He made his first professional appearance at the age of twelve, and toured through Spain before moving to London in the 1960s, where he found himself sharing concerts with Jimi Hendrix. Over the last fifty years, he's established a world-wide reputation as a pre-eminent master of flamenco guitar. He's a composer, too, of both a requiem and a mass in flamenco style. In Private Passions, Paco Peña takes us back to the Spain of his childhood; this was only a few years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and he describes the country he was born into as "fragile and tortured". He talks too about making a living as a musician on the Costa Brava, where he met his wife, and about what it was like to arrive in London in the 1960s, a time when flamenco guitar was relatively unknown. Music choices include Mozart, Beethoven, de Falla - the Argentinian composer Eduardo Falú - and Bach, the composer Peña always listens to before going on stage to perform. He includes too the track he regards as flamenco at its quintessential best, by singer Camarón de la Isla and guitarist Paco de Lucía. And he gives away a few trade secrets about how to master passionate flamenco strumming - it involves painting your fingernails with glue. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke.
undefined
Jul 8, 2018 • 34min

Adjoa Andoh

The actor Adjoa Andoh talks to Michael Berkeley about her passion for theatre, opera, and the music that reflects both her English and African heritage.Whether you're a regular at the National Theatre or Old Vic, prefer your entertainment on the big screen, or like to curl up on the sofa in front of Dr Who or Casualty (or - even - with the radio), you'll be familiar with the work of Adjoa Andoh. The daughter of a history teacher and of an exiled Ghanaian journalist, she was heading for a career in the law before making a dramatic switch to acting, and has scarcely been out of work since. Her recent theatre work includes playing the exiled Black Panther leader in Assata Taught Me at The Gate, and Casca in Nicholas Hytner's highly acclaimed production of Julius Caesar at the Bridge Theatre.She chooses music by Vaughan Williams, Rimsky-Korsakov, Bernstein, Puccini, Britten, and the African musician Dade Krama - music which reflects joyous moments in her life but also the challenges she's faced: growing up mixed race in rural England in the 60s and 70s, forging a career as an actor without a drama school training, and speaking up about being the mother of a transgender child. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
undefined
Jun 24, 2018 • 36min

Kim Moore

Kim Moore won the prestigious Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize this year for her first poetry collection, "The Art of Falling", and is still only in her thirties. The judges described her prize-winning collection as "thrilling: language at its most irresistible and essential". But however thrilling, poets need to make a living, and Kim Moore's day job has been as a trumpet teacher, in Cumbria where she lives. She's also conducted brass bands. In Private Passions, Kim Moore explores her musical passion for brass, from Handel's Messiah through to Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, taking in the Grimethorpe Colliery Band on the way. She tells Michael Berkeley how she started writing, and about her sequence of poems exploring a dark and abusive relationship. She reflects too on the influence of her father's job as a scaffolder, and how a fear of falling and images of falling haunt her work. And there are some true confessions about what it's like to play the trumpet in a bandstand with one dog and the drunk who slept there the night before. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
undefined
Jun 17, 2018 • 35min

Miranda Krestovnikoff

As part of Radio 3's week in the forest, Michael Berkeley talks to wildlife presenter, President of the RSPB and accomplished musician Miranda Krestovnikoff.She's dived with sharks, shown viewers how to eat roadkill, and searched for mammoth bones in the North Sea. The co-presenter of ten series of Coast, Miranda's also a regular on The One Show and Radio 4's Costing the Earth. As well as the RSPB she's involved in numerous other environmental and wildlife charities. She tells Michael about staying up all night waiting for pine martens in a Scottish forest, and a frightening experience diving with sharks. But she's also a talented musician - a flautist, pianist, and singer who plays with the New Bristol Sinfonia and sings in choirs in the city. We hear a recording of Miranda singing a Duruflé motet with the Bristol University Singers and from other composers whose music she has performed - Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Rachmaninoff, whose All Night Vigil was played at her wedding. And we hear a piece that combines her love of music and birds - Martinů's Sonata for Flute and Piano - the piece that inspired her as a young flautist and which also features the song of a nightjar. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3In midsummer week, Radio 3 enters one of the most potent sources of the human imagination. 'Into the Forest' explores the enchantment, escape and magical danger of the forest in summer, with slow radio moments featuring the sounds of the forest, allowing time out from today's often frenetic world.
undefined
Jun 10, 2018 • 35min

Richard Smith

Dr Richard Smith heads an organisation called Patients Know Best, and having been editor of the British Medical Journal for most of his career, he now enjoys stirring things up in a provocative weekly blog there. Among his targets: the sinister power of drug companies - and the not unrelated tendency of doctors to over-treat illnesses like cancer. When he's not stirring things up at home, Richard Smith is in Bangladesh, working for a charity trying to prevent the terrible human loss caused by infected drinking water. He has also worked as a television doctor and at one point answered readers' letters for Women's Realm.In Private Passions, Richard Smith tells Michael Berkeley about his strong belief that doctors and patients collude to hide the truth about disease and death, and explains why he gives a talk called provocatively: "Death: the Upside". He reveals too how music has sustained him at crisis points in his life. Choices include Bach's cello suites, the Stan Tracey Quartet, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Haydn, Deborah Pritchard, and sacred music by the medieval composer Hermannus Contractus.
undefined
May 27, 2018 • 30min

Peter Florence

The Hay Festival began in 1988 with 250 people in a field in mid Wales. Thirty years later, the crowd has swelled to more than quarter of a million - 265,000 people are expected to turn up this year over ten days - and it's still in a field in mid-Wales. But the Hay Festival has also grown into an international brand, with spin-offs across the world in Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Segovia.The Festival founder, Peter Florence, has been running it all that time; he started it with his parents - his father was a theatre manager for Sam Wanamaker. Legend has it - and Peter confirms this - that it was partly funded by winnings from a poker game. In Private Passions, he looks back over the lessons of the last thirty years, and reveals how he has grappled with censorship when staging festivals in Hungary and Mexico. Peter Florence's music list reflects a passion for Bach and Mahler, and for the oud player Anouar Brahem. He chooses Handel's Sarabande, made famous by the film Barry Lyndon, and Sarah Vaughan singing "The Man I Love", which he describes as the sexiest song in the world. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
undefined
May 20, 2018 • 35min

Elisabeth Luard

Michael Berkeley talks to the food writer, artist and journalist Elisabeth Luard about her favourite music and the memories it conjures up of the joys and tragedies of family life. The winner of the Guild of Food Writers Award for Lifetime Achievement, she has written more than twenty cookbooks, including European Peasant Cookery, Flavours of Andalucía, and A Cook's Year in a Welsh Farmhouse. And her compelling series of memoirs documents the joys and appalling tragedy she's experienced as a mother; the delight she found in living abroad with her young children; and the ups and downs of her long marriage. The latest is Squirrel Pie: Adventures in Food Across the Globe.Elisabeth tells Michael about her childhood growing up in embassies in South America and her return to school in England and a very special choir master. She chooses flamenco music that reminds her of her life in rural pre-tourism Andalucia bringing up her four young children.We hear Elisabeth's friend Christopher Logue reading from his poem War Music, and music by Mozart and Beethoven - and we hear a song which was special to Elisabeth's daughter Francesca, who died in her twenties.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
undefined
May 6, 2018 • 34min

Lubaina Himid

For Lubaina Himid, winning the Turner Prize is recognition for thirty-five years of work as a painter, curator and installation artist. Her work is witty, vibrantly coloured, and provocative; in her most famous work, "Naming the Money", she filled galleries with more than a hundred huge and very beautiful cut-outs of African figures from the past - the forgotten black servants and musicians who were brought back by their slave-masters to live in Britain in the 18th century. Lubaina Himid herself was born in Zanzibar, Tanzania, but came here as a baby, first to Blackpool and then to London. She now lives in Preston, where she's Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire. She was awarded an MBE for services to black women's art. She says "My work is a mixture of humour, celebration, optimism and fury. I want to challenge the order of things."In Private Passions, she talks about how winning the Turner Prize has changed her perspective, and about how she creates a musical soundtrack to her installations. She pays tribute to her aunt, who played the violin and brought music into the house, and talks honestly about how difficult it was to make a living as a young artist. Musical choices include Bellini, Bruch, Janacek, and Nina Simone. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
undefined
Apr 22, 2018 • 34min

Anne Sebba

Michael Berkeley's guest is Anne Sebba, the best-selling biographer of iconic women including Wallis Simpson, Winston Churchill's mother Jennie, Laura Ashley, and Mother Teresa.Her most recent book tells the stories of the women of Paris in the 1940s. She follows the lives of housewives, Resistance fighters, shop girls, prostitutes and celebrities, all the time examining the big, small - and often impossible - choices people have to make in wartime. And we hear part of an operetta composed by one of these women, imprisoned by the Nazis at Ravensbruck.Anne tells Michael about her controversial biography of Wallis Simpson in which she claims that we should have more understanding of her situation and more admiration for her as a person - and she argues that Wallis married Edward with great reluctance.We hear Artur Rubinstein playing Rachmaninov, which brings back memories for Anne of interviewing him when she was a young journalist, and she chooses music by Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Verdi. A passionate advocate for the celebration of women's lives and talents, Anne chooses performances by Robyn Archer, Maria Callas and Margaret Fingerhut.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.
undefined
Apr 8, 2018 • 33min

Phyllida Barlow

The artist Phyllida Barlow shares her passion for music that reflects her sculpture, in its defiance of convention and delight in surprise. For years Phyllida Barlow was so desperate for people to see her sculptures that she would leave them on the street or in disused factories; or she would install them in friends' houses, using pianos and ironing boards as plinths.Initially overlooked by museums and galleries, she was in her sixties when she found widespread recognition - in the last decade she's been invited to exhibit all over the world, and has became a Royal Academician, a CBE, and the recipient of numerous awards. Her 2014 exhibition at Tate Britain was unforgettable - she filled the cavernous Duveen Galleries with huge, gravity-defying pieces made out of timber and scrap materials which appeared to be about to topple over or to be on the point of collapse. And in 2017 she received the ultimate accolade of representing Great Britain at the Venice Biennale.She talks to Michael Berkeley about finding success in later life, how she juggled life as a teacher, artist and mother of five, and the challenges of constructing monumental installations. She chooses music by Birtwistle, Wagner, Janacek, Webern, and Messiaen, pieces which reflect her fascination with size, scale, texture and unexpected beauty. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

The AI-powered Podcast Player

Save insights by tapping your headphones, chat with episodes, discover the best highlights - and more!
App store bannerPlay store banner
Get the app