Private Passions

Dan Pearson discovered his passion for gardens very young, building landscapes for his toy trolls out of stones. He's now one of our most influential landscape designers, with work ranging from private gardens around the world - including Chatsworth - to the 600-acre Tokachi Forest Garden in northern Japan, and gardens in Manchester and London for the Cancer charity Maggie's. He's written five books, presented several television series, and exhibited at Chelsea six times, winning awards each time - last time, for Best in Show. He's known for his painterly naturalistic planting, or to put it more simply, he likes to create landscapes which look wild, and ancient. He says, "the way I garden is to let things go almost to the brink of being lost".In Private Passions, Dan Pearson talks to Michael Berkeley about his love of wild plants, and the influence of a very neglected garden of a house he lived in as a child. He reveals how his gardens for cancer patients and his encounters with the people he's met there have changed his sense of what a garden means. He talks too about the way in which music inspires his landscape designs; he loves music which creates a sense of wide open space. Choices include Estonian composer Arvo Pärt; 12th-century polyphony; Spanish guitar music; the Bulgarian Trio Bulgarka and Moondog. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Lindsey Davis is best known for her series of historical crime stories about a laid-back amateur sleuth called Marcus Didius Falco. Set against the turmoil of the 1st-century Roman Empire, the books are witty, gritty and hugely entertaining. She's also written stand-alone novels about Ancient Rome, and about the English Civil War.The recipient of many awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement, Lindsey writes a book a year, but has still found time to be the Chair of the Society of Authors and Honorary President of the Classical Association. Lindsey talks to Michael Berkeley about her introduction to music as a schoolgirl in Birmingham, her passion for symphonic music and her decision to introduce a new, feisty female protagonist to succeed her beloved Falco.Her music includes works by Schubert, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak and - appropriately - Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

As part of Canada 150, a week of programmes marking the 150th anniversary of the founding of the nation, Michael Berkeley talks to Canadian novelist Madeleine Thien.Born in Vancouver, she is the daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants to Canada and her writing explores the history of the Asian diaspora. She is the author a short story collection 'Simple Recipes' and the novels 'Certainty', 'Dogs at the Perimeter' and 'Do Not Say We Have Nothing' -about musicians studying Western classical music at the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s and about the legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Scotiabank Giller Prize 2016 and the Governor General's Award 2016. Her books and stories have been translated into 23 languages.Madeleine talks to Michael about the history of Western of classical music in China and its suppression during the Cultural Revolution. Countless instruments were destroyed, including more than 500 pianos at the Shanghai Conservatory. The bravery of its director, He Luting, a Debussy scholar, in resisting the Red Guards was an inspiration to her as she wrote the book and she chooses a piece of his music.She tells Michael how her love of music was reborn as she listened to Bach whilst writing Do Not Say We Have Nothing, and we hear Bach's music played by the Chinese pianist Zhu Xiao Mei. She also chooses music from fellow Canadians Glenn Gould and Leonard Cohen. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3CANADA 150: a week of programmes from across Canada, marking the 150th anniversary of the founding of the nation and exploring the range and diversity of Canadian music and arts.

Michael Berkeley talks to Patsy Rodenburg, the most highly acclaimed voice teacher of her generation, about the music she loves. Patsy Rodenburg has worked with pretty much every actor you can name, including Judi Dench, Ian McKellen and Daniel Day Lewis. They all testify to the huge impact she has had on their careers and performances. Among the many companies she's worked with all over the world are the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she continues to teach drama students, as she has done for more than 20 years, at the Guildhall School of Music and the Michael Howard Studios in New York.Patsy tells Michael about her passion for helping everyone - actors, singers, children, business leaders and even prisoners - find their own natural, strong voice, a frequently moving and liberating experience. Among her choices is music by Sibelius, Strauss, Bach and Philip Glass.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBc Radio 3.

Nishat Khan is one of India's finest musicians; born into a dynasty of famous sitar players, he first went on stage with his father and uncle when he was only seven. Since that first appearance in Calcutta in the 1970s, he has performed worldwide, collaborated with all kinds of musicians, from Philip Glass to Gregorian choirs to Django Bates, and composed both for the BBC Proms and for Bollywood films. He's here in Britain to appear at the Aldeburgh Festival this June, fresh from recording the soundtrack to a Bollywood movie. In Private Passions he talks to Michael Berkeley about the musical family he grew up in - he started playing the sitar before he could even walk. He explores too the spiritual meaning of music within this tradition and its power to reveal the voice of God. And he shares his excitement at discovering Western classical music, still very much a minority taste in India. Nishat Khan's choices include Bach's B Minor Mass; Bruckner's 8th Symphony; Mozart, Manuel de Falla; Britten's "Sea Interludes"; and sitar music played by his father and uncle. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Michael Berkeley talks to the award-winning theatre director Ivo van Hove about his musical passions.The director of Amsterdam's prestigious Toneelgroep theatre, Ivo works all over the world, notably with the New York Theatre Workshop and at the Barbican in London. Equally at home with Sophocles, Shakespeare and contemporary American drama, he won huge acclaim for his stripped-back production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, and his recent A View From The Bridge with the Young Vic won, among many other awards, two Oliviers and two Tonys.Ivo talks to Michael Berkeley about working with David Bowie on his musical Lazarus; about the close working and personal relationship with his partner, the designer Jan Versweyveld; and the dramatic decision he made to leave law school at the age of 20 to pursue a life in theatre. His musical choices reflect the emotional intensity and sparse aesthetic of his directing style, with pieces by Brad Mehldau, Webern and Ligeti, as well as songs by Rufus Wainwright and Joni Mitchell. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Bettany Hughes talks to Michael Berkeley about the music that's shaped her family life, and the music she's come to love during her travels as a historian.Bettany has more than 50 radio and television documentaries to her name, many about ancient history and she's also a prolific writer, a Research Fellow at King's College London and has been honoured with numerous awards including the Norton Medlicott Medal for History and the Fem 21 International Journalism Award for her 'exceptional contribution to the international coverage of the place of women in societies past and present'.She's the author of three bestselling books, the latest of which is 'Istanbul', a decade in the making and over 800 pages long, which brings to life 3000 years of action-packed history in that great city.She talks to Michael about the importance of visiting the places she writes about and the joy of discovering music such as shepherds' calls in Greece and gypsy music in Istanbul. Bettany's interest in women's history is reflected in music by a 9th-century female Byzantine composer, and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. And she tells a touching musical story which shaped the history of her own family.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Jane Goodall was only twenty-four when in she went to live among the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park in Tanzania, and she went on to spend more than 55 years there. She has done more than anyone else to transform our understanding of chimpanzees - and beyond that, her work has raised questions about how we treat these highly intelligent primates, and indeed about the rights of all animals. Now in her early eighties, she's on an extraordinary mission travelling round the world to protect chimpanzees from extinction.During a rare stay in Britain, Jane Goodall talks to Michael Berkeley about her life and ground-breaking discoveries. She reveals that the chimpanzees she lived with also had a darker side, and were sometimes violent, stamping on her. She remembers difficult times after the kidnapping of some of her workers, and the death of her second husband - and how music sustained her, and transformed her view of the world.Music choices include Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and Richard Burton reading the Dylan Thomas classic "Under Milk Wood'. She also introduces some very excited chimpanzee speech, and speculates about what kind of music chimpanzees enjoy.

Gabriele Finaldi, the Director of the National Gallery, talks to Michael Berkeley about his artistic and musical passions.When Gabriele Finaldi took up his post as Director of the National Gallery in the summer of 2015, one of the first things he did was to install a piano in the corner of his office. He grew up in a musical household in Catford in South East London, the son of a Neapolitan father and half-Polish, half-English mother. Early in his career he was a curator at the National Gallery, specialising in Italian and Spanish paintings and he was involved in major and memorable shows such as Seeing Salvation and Discovering the Italian Baroque. In 2002 he was appointed Deputy Director of the Prado in Madrid, where he worked until his return to the National Gallery. Gabriele takes Michael on a musical and artistic journey though Britain, Italy, France and Spain and chooses music by Ravel, Messiaen, Puccini and Britten, as well as a 17th-century Neapolitan serenade and a spine-tingling piece of flamenco. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

It's not easy starting out to make a living as a writer, and A.L. Kennedy began with one of the most challenging jobs ever: as a puppeteer and clown, chasing children around a field in Fife with a loud horn. Thankfully it didn't take long before she left the day job behind and established her reputation as one of our most original voices, the author of 17 books - novels, short story collections, non-fiction - and talks and plays for stage, radio and television. She's also, on and off, a stand-up comedian - so that early training as a clown wasn't wasted. In Private Passions she tells Michael Berkeley about growing up in Dundee, and discovering that she could escape on the overnight bus to Stratford and the theatre, which made everything in life more bearable, more alive. Glenn Gould is one of Kennedy's heroes, and we hear him playing Bach; but we also hear Gould's speaking voice in a radio documentary about the Canadian North. Other choices include the Venetian baroque composer Franceso Cavalli, and Josquin des Prez. We hear John Adams too, with a yearning love aria, and a commemoration of Auschwitz composed by the New York Jewish composer Osvaldo Golijov. There's Gaelic folk music to end, re-interpreted by a group of contemporary Scottish singers. So, a wonderfully eclectic list of choices, and - we clear up the mystery of her name, and find out why Alison Louise Kennedy became "A.L. Kennedy".Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.