Private Passions

Over the last 20 years Mark Padmore has established a reputation as one of Britain's most outstanding tenors. His performances combine emotional power with intellectual rigour; and he's not afraid to take risks by appearing in challenging new productions. He travels the world performing repertoire that includes Schubert lieder, Handel and Harrison Birtwistle, and many leading contemporary composers have written pieces especially for his voice. What makes Mark Padmore especially fitting as an Easter guest for Private Passions is his mastery of the role of the Evangelist in Bach's St Matthew and St John Passions. In Private Passions he talks to Michael Berkeley about why there is always something new to discover in Bach's Passions, and reflects on the extraordinary fact that Bach himself only heard the St John Passion four times. He reveals - and sings - his favourite, haunting lines of Schubert. He introduces us too to other composers whose work excites him; we hear songs by John Cage and Ryan Wigglesworth and an exuberant percussion piece by the Serbian composer Nebojsa Zivkovic. And Padmore confesses that if he hadn't been a singer, he would have liked to be ... a thatcher. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Michael Berkeley talks to the director Thomas Ostermeier about his musical passions.Thomas is the outstanding German theatre director of his generation, known for his gritty realism, and for working with a close and consistent ensemble of actors. He's been a champion of young British playwrights such as Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill, as well as a radical interpreter of the classics.In 1999 - at the age of only 32 - Thomas was made Director at Berlin's prestigious Schaubühne Theatre, and his productions are staged and celebrated world-wide. He was awarded a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2011 Venice Biennale. In London he's developed a close and productive relationship with The Barbican. No one who has seen it will ever forget his celebrated production of Hamlet, a truly visceral experience, with blood, drunkenness and actors rolling around in - and even eating - the soil that covered the stage.Thomas chooses music by 20th-century composers including Shostakovich, Bartok, John Adams, and John Cage and he talks to Michael about his passion for Shakespeare, how he chooses music for his productions, and how difficult it is to get his actors to keep their clothes on. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Juliet Nicolson's childhood was dominated by secrets. She spent a lot of time - she now confesses - listening at doors, picking up the telephone and holding her breath so that nobody knew she was there. At one point she even cut a hole in her bedroom floor to spy on her mother. It was certainly a family where there were all sorts of complicated things going on. Juliet's grandmother was Vita Sackville-West; her grandfather Harold Nicolson; and her father, the publisher and writer Nigel Nicolson. Juliet Nicolson herself is the author of two works of history, one about living in the Shadow of the First World War, and the other, a study of the summer of 1911, "The Perfect Summer". She's also written a novel about the abdication of Edward VIII and most recently, a memoir, "A House Full of Daughters".In Private Passions, Juliet Nicolson talks to Michael Berkeley about how her childhood was actually the perfect training for a historian. She reflects on time, and her method as a historian of freezing time, focussing on a single summer for instance. She remembers her grandmother Vita, and discusses her brave decision to be honest about her alcoholism, and how giving up drinking gave her a new sense of clarity, and a second chance at life. Music choices include Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Dory Previn, Gershwin, and Joe Dassin. Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Thirty years ago, Vesna Goldsworthy fell in love with a young Englishman she met at a summer school in Bulgaria; she moved to England to be with him, much to the disapproval of her parents, arriving in London in 1986. Since then, she's established a reputation as a writer of great wit and originality: with her memoir, Chernobyl Strawberries; with her poetry; and in 2015 with her first novel, Gorsky, which became a best-seller and which was serialized on Radio 4. Vesna Goldsworthy is also a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. In Private Passions, Vesna Goldsworthy talks to Michael Berkeley about being brought up in Belgrade during the Communist regime. The popular idea is of an era which was grey and philistine - but in fact there was a huge amount of classical music around. And when she moved to England, her friends and family were horrified. They asked, "How could you move to a country where there is no music"? She reveals why she started writing a memoir of her Serbian childhood: because her doctors told her she was dying of cancer, and she wanted to leave a record for her son. Happily, the cancer was cured, but it taught her a lifelong lesson: not to take life too seriously. Vesna Goldsworthy's music choices include the Romanian-Serbian composer Ion Iovanovici; an Orthodox address to the Virgin by Divna Ljubojevic; the Sephardic song, "Adio Querida", by Yasmin Levy; and a popular Russian song from the Second World War. She ends with Purcell, a composer she discovered only after she moved to a country "with no music". Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Petina Gappah grew up in Zimbabwe during segregation, when black girls were not thought worthy of education. Despite this, she became a lawyer and was awarded law degrees from the University of Zimbabwe and then Cambridge, and Graz University in Austria. Moving to Geneva, she fought high-profile international cases. But all the time she had a secret life: she woke at 4am every morning to write. Petina Gappah's first short story was published online when she was 37 - and now, only 8 years later, there are two short-story collections, a novel, "The Book of Memory", several translations, with another novel in the pipeline. From the start there has been a sense of a new voice arriving - Gappah's first book won the Guardian First Book Award. Her stories are set in Zimbabwe, and they're about crime and punishment, love and family, in a deeply corrupt and divided society.In Private Passions, Petina Gappah talks to Michael Berkeley about her childhood and the experiences which gave her such determination and drive. She discusses her determination to translate George Orwell into her first language, Shona, and what "Animal Farm" says to readers in Zimbabwe. She explores too her ambiguous relationship with her homeland, and what she feels about being called "the voice of Zimbabwe". Music choices include Verdi, Bob Dylan, Mahler's Piano Quartet in A Minor, and the Bhundu Boys.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Crime-writer Peter Robinson tops the best-seller lists year after year, across the world; in fact his detective, DI Banks, is probably even better known than he is. DI Banks is a straight-talking Yorkshire-man with dodgy dress sense and a frustrated love life, and he's been solving murders in Yorkshire for some twenty years now. There are now twenty-three Banks novels, and several series on television with Stephen Tompkinson in the title role. So DI Banks is hugely popular, and central to his character is that he constantly listens to music - in the car, at home, in pubs. There's a memorable line where Robinson says of his detective - "He did his best thinking when he was listening to music and drinking wine." This, Robinson reveals, is autobiographical.In Private Passions, Peter Robinson talks to Michael Berkeley about how music inspires his best thinking and writing, and why he's on a mission to get all his readers listening to the music he loves. He even creates online playlists of the music his detective listens to - including some of the music he chooses in Private Passions. Choices include Poulenc's Sextet for Piano and Wind, Beethoven's String Quartet in C sharp minor, Takemitsu, Miles Davis, and one of Schubert's last piano sonatas. Perhaps it's no surprise that he's drawn to last works - as a crime writer, his books begin with murder. Robinson confesses though that he regrets the increasing violence of the genre, and thinks the TV adaptations of his work go too far. And he reveals why Yorkshire is always the best place to hide a body.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Sarah Lucas burst onto the art scene in the early 1990s, one of the wildest and most provocative of the Young British Artists. Her work was challenging, bawdy, revolutionary: her first solo show in 1992 was called "Penis Nailed to a Board". She challenged macho culture with sculptures such as "Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab" in which she constructed a naked female body - from a table, two eggs, and a kebab. Lucas makes sculptures from worn-out furniture, stuffed tights, fruit (particularly bananas), and cigarettes - she's a passionate smoker. In 2015 she represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, and the centrepiece with a massive yellow sculpture named after the footballer Maradona - part man, part maypole, with dangling breasts and a nine-foot phallus.In Private Passions, Sarah Lucas looks back on the wild days of the 90s, and her upbringing in North London "a childhood completely without ambition". She talks about leaving school at 16, becoming pregnant, but then deciding not to keep the baby; and how that decision enabled her to know clearly what she wanted to do with her life. She reflects on how the central relationships in her life lead to artistic collaboration - with her partner, the composer Julian Simmons, and with her girlfriends, whose lower bodies she cast in plaster. And Sarah Lucas reveals that the wild London party girl is now happiest in Suffolk, living at the end of a country lane, and listening to Benjamin Britten. How seriously are we supposed to take her work? "Just because you're funny doesn't mean you can't be serious too." Sarah Lucas's music choices include Purcell's King Arthur; songs by Benjamin Britten and Ivor Gurney; and music by her partner Julian Simmons.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Stephanie Flanders is familiar to most of us from the years she spent as the BBC's Economics Editor, untangling graphs and statistics and treasury policies with great clarity and cheerful common sense. She left the BBC in 2013 and is now chief market strategist for Britain and Europe at JP Morgan Asset Management. But she's also the daughter of the late Michael Flanders, of Flanders and Swann, the writer of so many memorable comic songs - like "Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud".Michael Flanders died when Stephanie was only six, but she remembers the pleasure of pushing him around in the wheelchair he used after catching polio as a student. And because she didn't know him for long, she has spent time researching his life, combing through boxes in the garage, and re-discovering her father through his music. Music choices include some of her father's favourite songs, including a little-known song about gluttony which is a protest against the cruelty of foie gras. She includes too Glenn Gould's recording of a Haydn Piano Sonata which kept her going through long nights in Washington when she was writing speeches for Bill Clinton. The speeches were about impending financial crisis and, as an economist, Stephanie has weathered many financial crises, able to unpick the deepest workings of both the Treasury and the City and explain them to a mass audience. She is not afraid to shake up the status quo: an unmarried mother, she challenged David Cameron on tax breaks for married women, and her blog speaks out about "the over-mathematization of economics at the expense of common sense". The programme ends with a preview of a new recording of Donald Swann's "Bilbo's Last Song", setting words by Tolkien.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Philippe Sands is a human rights lawyer who recently won the biggest non-fiction prize in the UK, the £30,000 Baillie Gifford Prize, for his book "East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity". It's the story of two leading lawyers fighting for justice after the Second World War in the Nuremberg trials - and a third man, Hitler's lawyer, who was personally responsible for the murder of millions. It's a detective story too, in which Sands tries to discover the identity of the mysterious "Miss Tilney" who rescued his mother Ruth as a baby, and managed to smuggle her out of Vienna to safety in London in 1939. In Private Passions, Philippe Sands talks to Michael Berkeley about the strange gaps in his family history, the secrets which impelled him to begin a seven year quest. He reveals the music that kept him going, songs he listened to daily, and how Bach's St Matthew Passion, which he's always loved, became intensely troubling for him to listen to when he discovered that Hitler's lawyer also adored it. Music choices include Mahler's 9th Symphony; Keith Jarrett; Bach's St Matthew Passion; Rachmaninoff; kora music from Senegal; and the Leonard Cohen song with Sands' favourite line: "There is a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in.".

Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, is a special guest for Christmas Day.In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about being the middle child of thirteen children, in Uganda. His father had a small gramophone and they all learned to sing Handel's Messiah with great gusto. John Sentamu practised as a lawyer and was a judge in the country's High Court by the age of 25, but when Idi Amin came to power the rule of law collapsed. Sentamu was imprisoned and tortured; "it was not so much a prison as a killing field". He heard his friends being shot. He talks movingly about how his Christian faith never wavered during his imprisonment and miraculous escape. He came to Britain in 1974 and trained as a priest, spending most of his career in some of the most deprived areas of London. Dr Sentamu became Bishop for Stepney and then Bishop for Birmingham; he was appointed Archbishop of York in 2005. Poverty and social inequality has always been at the heart of his Christian mission; he strongly believes he has a political role and a duty to speak out in a divided society. He talks too about his involvement in the campaign against knife crime in Birmingham, and being taken blindfolded to visit gang leaders. Dr Sentamu was Adviser to the Stephen Lawrence Judicial Inquiry and he chaired the Damilola Taylor Murder Review. Archbishop Sentamu reveals the music which has sustained him through an extraordinary and challenging life: Elgar's Cello Concerto, for instance: the Archbishop played the Jacqueline du Pre recording on the hour every hour from 6am to 6pm at York Minster for a week as part of a Vigil of prayers for peace. He introduces music from his local church in Uganda; and the choir of York Minster singing the Archbishop's favourite carol: "Hark the Herald Angels Sing". The programme ends with Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Christmas Carols, as John Sentamu reflects on the great pleasures of Christmas - including his love of cooking. If all else fails, his children say, he could always open a restaurant. And his signature dish would be - brussels sproutsProduced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.