Private Passions

As part of the BBC's Classical Voice season, Michael Berkeley's guest is singer Alison Goldfrapp.Alison Goldfrapp burst onto the music scene fifteen years ago, as lead singer in the duo Goldfrapp with the debut album Felt Mountain. Rock critics reached for adjectives such as 'lush', 'symphonic', 'epic'. Since Felt Mountain there have been five more hit albums, moving across pop, dance, electronic music - but each featuring the same extraordinary voice. Alongside the six gold albums, Goldfrapp also composed the soundtrack for the John Lennon film, Nowhere Boy, and the music for the recent Medea, starring Helen McCrory, at the National Theatre. In Private Passions, Alison Goldfrapp talks to Michael Berkeley about finding her voice, and about the childhood that inspired her. Her father ('a closet hippy') used to take all six children out into the Hampshire woods, and make them sit still and listen, for hours; when there was a full moon he would drive them to the sea, for a night swim. The first time Goldfrapp heard her own voice soar was as a schoolgirl at the Alton Convent School in Hampshire, and encouraged by the nuns, she sang higher and higher until she felt a kind of 'buzzing' in her head: an unforgettable experience. Goldfrapp chooses music which features a choir of extraordinary women's voices, the Bulgarian State Radio female choir, and Jessye Norman singing Fruhling from Strauss's Four Last Songs. She also chooses Atmospheres by Gyorgy Ligeti - music she finds very frightening - and celebrates both Mahler, and Ennio Morricone's film music, especially his score to an erotic thriller from 1969, Dirty Angels. And she reveals the music her partner Lisa Gunning sends her to listen to when they're apart. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

It's impossible to imagine what it must have been like to live in a society where Western Classical music was forbidden on pain of severe punishment, or where playing a musical instrument was something that could only be done in utter secrecy. But that was the situation in China during the Cultural Revolution, when Jung Chang was a teenager. She is now an internationally acclaimed writer; but she began her working life as a peasant, a 'barefoot doctor', a steelworker and an electrician, before becoming a university lecturer. She left China for Britain in 1978 and obtained a PhD in Linguistics from the University of York - the first person from the People's Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British university. She shot to fame with her book Wild Swans, which tells the story of her own life and the lives of her mother and grandmother, set against the turmoil of 20th-century China. It has sold more than ten million copies but is still banned in China. And she followed it with biographies of Mao, co-written with her husband, and of the Empress Dowager Cixi - an extraordinarily powerful woman in the last years of Imperial China. Jung Chang talks to Michael Berkeley about the joy of finding grass in Hyde Park after Mao had banned it in China; the horrors of foot-binding; her mother's extraordinary testimony of the Cultural Revolution, which led to Wild Swans; and her hopes that one day people will be free to read her books in China.And above all she shares the joy she finds in music: both Chinese music and the Western music she's embraced with delight since moving to Britain. Her choices include Handel, Mozart, Billie Holiday and music played on the zither and the san xian.A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3 Producer: Jane Greenwood.

The President of the Royal Academy of Arts, Christopher Le Brun, gives Michael Berkeley a tour of this year's Summer Exhibition and shares his musical and artistic passions. The RA Summer Exhibition is the largest open submission exhibition in the world, and Christopher shares the excitement in the days running up to the opening as 1000 pictures - selected from 10,000 - are hung in the brightly-painted galleries. An acclaimed painter, sculptor and print-maker Christopher Le Brun has work in public and private collections around the world. He is passionate about the music of the late 19th and 20th centuries, and his work has frequently been inspired by music. He takes Michael to the RA library to show him a series of etchings inspired by Wagner, and we hear music by William Walton that has also stimulated his work.Christopher's other choices include music by Schoenberg, Poulenc and Django Reinhardt, and he shares the nasty surprise he once gave his mother when she sat down at the piano to play a Grieg nocturne.Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Sir Alan Moses is a distinguished lawyer who sat as a judge for almost 20 years, latterly in the Court of Appeal. He resigned last autumn to become the first Chairman of the new Press Standards Organisation, IPSO, the successor to the Press Complaints Commission. It's a challenging, and indeed highly controversial role. Alongside this he has spent 6 years as Chairman of Spitalfields Music, and is a dedicated concert goer, and a member of the Parliament Choir. In Private Passions, Sir Alan curates a playlist of great choral works: Bach, Monteverdi, Schubert, Donizetti, and a Handel oratorio, Saul. He introduces a little-known work by Birtwistle which was written for his wife, Dinah, and he chooses a French chanson by Brassens in tribute to his mother, a French teacher.Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Michael Berkeley's guest is the opera and theatre director Iqbal Khan.He has brought to the stage everything from Madame Butterfly and Sondheim's Into the Woods to an RSC production of Much Ado About Nothing set in modern India. In Private Passions, Khan explores his favourite operas, with extracts from Verdi, Mozart, and Wagner, and chooses other music which inspires him, from Mahler's 2nd Symphony and Britten's War Requiem, to an extraordinary percussive piece by Nitin Sawhney. He plays, too, a historic recording of Paul Scofield as King Lear. And he talks movingly about his childhood and difficult teenage years, growing up in Birmingham, after his father died and the family was left penniless. Khan was inspired by his older brother, who encouraged him to aim for the highest academic honours, and read to him at night by candlelight - to make the books more exciting. Dracula was a particular favourite.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Tim Rice has written the lyrics for some of the most successful musicals of our generation: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat ... Jesus Christ Superstar ... Evita ... For 45 years he has been creating hit songs, collaborating first and famously with Andrew Lloyd Webber, then with Abba, Elton John, Freddy Mercury and Madonna. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, thanks to the success of his songs in Disney movies The Lion King, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. A three-time Oscar winner, he has been knighted for services to music. In Private Passions, he talks to Michael Berkeley about the process of lyric-writing, about why it's an extraordinary experience to work with Elton John, and about what it is that makes a successful song lyric. He also reveals that his early ambition was to be a pop star, and that he started out as a singer - in fact, he recorded a single. Music choices include a satirical operetta by Offenbach, Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Vaughan Williams's London Symphony, The Swan of Tuonela by Sibelius, Malcolm Arnold's Peterloo Overture and Britten's arrangement of the folk song The Plough Boy. And Tim Rice ends by revealing which is his favourite musical of all - music his father introduced him to as a boy: My Fair Lady. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

"As a composer I've always been intrigued by the way people who are not professional musicians talk about music and how they tend to reveal things about themselves when they do. And so twenty years ago, when Radio 3 was looking for a new programme in which a huge variety of people talked about their passion for music, I felt very excited about the possibilities. Over twenty years we've had a wonderful selection of guests. One unforgettable guest was the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, and I was astonished by his childhood memory: of actually watching the Russian Revolution at the age of 8 on a balcony in St Petersburg. He revealed that for him Bach was like 'daily bread', and chose the 5th Brandenburg Concerto."Music connects us with what really matters, beyond the daily busyness of our lives; through music we plunge beneath the surface, and often find ourselves at earliest childhood memories. So, for instance, the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy remembers the unexpected arrival at home of a piano, and how she learned to play Chopin to placate her mother when they'd had a row."Music often gives us an unparalleled insight into the creative process. I was very fortunate to spend quite a bit of time with the artist David Hockney, both in his studio in London and in Los Angeles, and he gave a fascinating interview back in 1995 about his approach to designing for opera, and his passion for Wagner. One of the most memorable conversations over the last 20 years was with the neurologist Oliver Sacks. We talked about something which has always intrigued me, why we enjoy particularly sad music, and the link between music and depression. He reveals how a Schubert song helped him after the death of his mother."But sometimes guests have surprised me with music choices that are - well weird. We don't censor them though..."Other speakers in the programme include: John Peel; Dame Edna Everage; Maggi Hambling; Sam Taylor-Johnson; Anoushka Shankar; George Steiner; Marina Lewycka, and Joan Armatrading. With Bach, Chopin, Wagner, Bruch, Russian folk music, Tavener, Edith Piaf, and the Coronation Street Theme tune.To mark the 20th anniversary of Private Passions, there will a be collection of new podcasts available. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Jane Hawking's personal life is very much in the public eye at the moment, thanks to the success of the film 'The Theory of Everything'. It tells the story of her love affair and then marriage to the physicist Stephen Hawking, and movingly reveals the way she cared for him, and their children, as his illness increased, until the sad disintegration of their marriage. Both Stephen and Jane Hawking have given the film their approval - indeed, in Jane's case, it's very much based on her autobiography, 'Travelling to Infinity'. In Private Passions Jane Hawking talks to Michael Berkeley about the crucial role of music in her life, and about how listening to music and singing sustained her during twenty-five years caring for Stephen. She reveals that it was through music that she met her second husband, Jonathan Hellyer Jones.Other music choices include Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, Schubert's 'The Trout', the Scherzo from Beethoven's 7th Symphony, music from Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, Brahms' German Requiem, and Chopin's second piano concerto.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Michael Berkeley talks to the Reverend Lucy Winkett, the Rector of St James’s Church, Piccadilly, and formerly Canon Precentor of St Paul’s Cathedral, about her lifelong passion for music. A classically trained soprano, she won a choral scholarship to Cambridge and subsequently studied at the Royal College of Music but gave up a career as a singer for the priesthood. The first woman to sing the Eucharist at St Paul’s Cathedral, she tells Michael about the opposition she faced from traditionalist members of the church, how she faced up to it, and the joy of being in charge of music at the Cathedral. Lucy chooses music she’s sung, music that inspires her, and some - rather surprising - music that helps her prepare for Easter Day. Her choices include Gibbons, Messiaen, Rachmaninov, Bach, and a wonderful piece of early jazz from ‘Sister’ Winona Carr. Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3

A husband and wife go for a walk in the woods; full of energy, the wife starts to walk on the tips of her toes - suddenly she takes off, across the forest. Startled, the husband calls out to her - but too late. She has transformed herself into a fox. If that unsettling story sounds familiar, it's because it won the BBC National Short story award in 2013; you might have heard Mrs Fox read on Radio 4. Its author, Sarah Hall, was already an accomplished novelist. She was born in Cumbria in 1974, and her first novel, Haweswater, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Novel, among other prizes. The awards have come thick and fast for every book since. She's been shortlisted and longlisted for the Booker Prize, with The Electric Michelangelo and How to Paint a Dead Man, and her 2007 novel, The Carhullan Army, was listed as one of The Times' 100 Best Books of the Decade. Sarah's latest novel, The Wolf Border, about a plan to reintroduce wolves to the north of England, is published this month.Sarah's music choices include Puccini, the Welsh lullaby Suo Gan, Dvorak's Song to the Moon, and others that reflect her love of bluegrass and film music.Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.