Private Passions

Nitin Sawhney is a multi award-winning musician, producer and composer. With nine studio albums to his credit, he has collaborated with the likes of Paul McCartney, Joss Stone, Sting and Nelson Mandela, and has composed over 40 film and television scores, including for the BBC series Human Planet. In his own work he combines the musical traditions of East and West, and composes for a wide variety of different art forms. He has collaborated with the legendary theatre company Complicite, the dancer and choreographer Akram Khan and more recently has written scores for video games. His passion for diversity is reflected in his musical choices which include Ravi Shankar's Kafi Holi, flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia's Guajiras de Lucia and Debussy's ground-breaking Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. As well as being a composer, Nitin is a virtuoso performer on both guitar and piano and we hear the pieces he practises every morning, including Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu and Bach's Keyboard Concerto No.1 in D minor. This year Nitin Sawhney turns 50 and after a period of personal loss, including the death of Ravi Shankar, he discusses the impact this has had on his life and work.Producer: Hilary Dunn.

Assyriologist Irving Finkel talks to Michael Berkeley about his passion for clay tablets, chamber music, and Jimi Hendrix.Irving Finkel is one of the world's leading experts in the world's oldest, and most impenetrable, system of writing - cuneiform.Because the scribes of Ancient Mesopotamia imprinted cuneiform with a stylus into clay tablets, lots of it has survived, and indeed Irving Finkel has spent the past 45 years delighting in the company of more than 130,000 cuneiform tablets at the British Museum. But one day a member of the public brought in a clay tablet which changed his life - it was a 4000-year-old blueprint for Noah's Ark - a thousand years older than the story in the Bible.Irving is also passionate about music - particularly old recordings - and his choices include string quartets by Schubert and Dvorak, 1930s blues and a blast of Jimi Hendrix.Producer: Jane Greenwood.

Nearly 30 years ago Emma Bridgewater, a young English graduate, went shopping for a cup and saucer for her mother's birthday present. She couldn't find anything she liked - so she designed one herself, and enjoyed the process so much that she installed a kiln in her London flat. That small kiln has grown into a company with an annual turnover of 11 million pounds - and has revitalised the old potteries industry of Stoke-on-Trent. Her teapots and mugs covered in polka dots, hens, dogs and birds have become a staple of the middle class kitchen, symbols of cosiness and comfort.In Private Passions, Emma Bridgewater talks to Michael Berkeley about our yearning for home - all the more intense as working lives become overwhelmingly demanding. She reveals the tragedy at the heart of her life - her mother's riding accident, which left her gravely brain-damaged but still alive, for 22 years. Under the pressure of that sorrow, Emma Bridgewater describes how work became a marvellous escape. She chooses music to remind her of her mother, and which consoled her after her mother's death last Christmas. She talks too about the adventure of setting up her business in Stoke-on-Trent, bringing derelict factories back to life - but missing her four children as she spent hour upon hour on the road.Her music choices include Pergolesi, Purcell, Kurt Weill, Boccherini, a carol by Benjamin Britten - and the UK Theme Tune, which used to start the day on Radio 4 as she was getting up early to begin work.Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus production, for BBC Radio 3.

Lady Hale is a trailblazer. 30 years ago, she was the first woman to be appointed to the Law Commission (and the youngest person there); 10 years ago, she was the first female judge to be appointed to the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (as Baroness Hale of Richmond) and there hasn't been another woman appointed since. Last year she was appointed as the Deputy President of the Supreme Court. Where she is still the only woman! Her judgments have changed family and equality law in this country; and despite her eminent role she remains outspoken about domestic violence, women in prison, and the rights of children.In Private Passions, she talks about her upbringing in Yorkshire, one of three daughters ? and about being in such a minority when she began to study law. Lady Hale chooses music which connects with her professional life: operas about crime, punishment and injustice (Beethoven's Fidelio and Britten's Billy Budd). She talks about how she'd like to change the law on divorce, and why she loves Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. She discusses the conflict between reason and emotion in her work, and reveals that she is haunted by certain cases from the past. And she reflects on the way her judicial role has revealed the worst ? but also the best ? of human nature. Finally, during this season of exam stress, she reveals her revision tip: march up and down the room, reciting the textbook and listening to Strauss.Produced by Elizabeth Burke, for Loftus.First broadcast 11/05/2014.

Writer and broadcaster Jonathan Meades's fascination with architecture began on a school trip to Marsh Court in Stockbridge, Hampshire - designed by that great architect of English Country Houses Edwin Lutyens. Subsequently, in a broadcasting career which spans 40 years, he has written and performed in more than 50 television shows on a wide range of topographical subjects: from shacks to garden cities, to buildings associated with vertigo; from beer and pigs, to the architecture of Hitler and Stalin. He was also a food critic for 15 years, winning the coveted Glenfiddich Award in 1999, and has written three novels and a memoir: "Encyclopedia of Myself". His latest television series, "Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloody-mindedness", was screened on BBC 4 in February.He now lives in the iconic Corbusier building, Cité Radieuse in Marseille - and his musical choices reflect his adopted country's love of chanson: French singer / songwriter Barbara's "Ma Plus Belle Histoire d'Amour" features, as does Jacques Brel's Mijn Vlakke Land. Film was not only Jonathan Meades's chosen career; his love of cinema also provided him with a rich musical education. Among his musical choices are Hans Werner Henze's soundtrack to the Alain Resnais film Muriel, and The Aquarium, from Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, which Terence Malick used in his ground breaking film Days of Heaven.

For this special Easter edition of Private Passions, Michael Berkeley is given a backstage tour of the National Gallery by its Director, the distinguished art historian Nicholas Penny. For this programme he selects paintings on an Easter theme of death and rebirth, with music which accompanies and illuminates them. The painters include his great passion, Titian, with a visit to the Gallery's Restoration Lab, where a painting of the Resurrection is being brought back to life. Nicholas Penny talks about the way in which such paintings change their meaning over time, and about what to look for when we try to read 14th-century depictions of the Crucifixion. His musical choices include Rossini's Stabat Mater, Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, Handel's Messiah, Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Walton's Façade, a reading of James Joyce's story 'The Dead' - and the sound of English blackbirds singing in spring.

Charlotte Mendelson's novels are in danger of making you laugh out loud: the absurdities of family life, the excruciating embarrassment of being young, or clumsy, or not quite English enough. There are four prize-winning novels thus far, and the latest, Almost English - which has been longlisted both for the Booker Prize and for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction - comes out in paperback this spring.In this edition of Private Passions, Charlotte Mendelson talks entertainingly about embarrassment - her own embarrassment, and why she inflicts it on her fictional characters. Embarrassment, she claims, is the most under-reported emotion - because we just can't bear to think about it. She explores too the legacy of her Eastern European family, and the feeling of never being English, of never fitting in, and how that fuels her writing. And she reveals why her music teacher gave up trying to teach her the piano and settled for the can-can instead.Charlotte Mendelson's music choices include Bach, Schubert, Chopin, the country singer Gillian Welch, and Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter's 'Always True to You in my Fashion' - a song which she claims has the best lyrics in the world.Produced by Elizabeth Burke for Loftus.

There's a huge revival in British craftsmanship going on at the moment, with a new generation keen to learn how to make beautiful things. For 40 years now, Theo Fennell has been one of the country's most distinctive and witty jewellers. His intricate and beautifully crafted designs take you into a strange dream-world: miniature skulls with jewelled snakes twisting from their eyes; bees cast in gold; dragonflies trailing amethysts; salamanders studded with diamonds. Perhaps not surprising that his jewellery has decorated rock stars such as Elton John, Lady Gaga and Freddie Mercury.In Private Passions, Theo Fennell reveals the music that inspires him when he's working - dreaming up those strange and beautiful new creatures. Music is what helps him, he says, when confronted by a blank sheet of paper. He also reveals that as a young art student he worked as a busker, and even bought a one-man band. He discusses the erotic power of jewellery, with a vivid story from his own experience. And during the recording, he sketches continuously, and has agreed to put some of his drawings on the Private Passions webpage.Theo Fennell's choices include Dvorak's Cello Concerto, Offenbach's opera 'The Tales of Hoffmann', Yehudi Menuhin playing Saint-Saëns's Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor, and a Charles Trenet song from 1937. And his great patron, Elton John.A Loftus production produced by Elizabeth Burke.

Craig Brown has been described by The Sunday Times as "our greatest living satirist". He invented the conservative Spectator columnist Wallace Arnold, and Bel Littlejohn, the long-standing Guardian columnist who many Guardian readers took to be real. Brown is a kind of satirical ventriloquist: impersonating the voices of politicians and celebrities, mocking them week after week in Private Eye and The Daily Mail, mimicking thousands of different voices. This year he celebrates his 25th anniversary of parodying the rich and the famous on Private Eye.In this edition of Private Passions Craig Brown talks to Michael Berkeley about how he does it ? and why he does it. Does he find the whole world ridiculous? Brown reveals that before embarking on a parody he has to feel the creative germ of irritation, which he then attempts to transform into comedy. Parody, as he reveals, is a delightfully libel-free method of pricking the bubble of self-obsession in celebrity culture.For Private Passions, Brown reveals the music he finds inspiring, moving and funny. Some of his choices are surprising: gospel songs, for instance, are top of his list. He celebrates the Irish composer John Field, and enjoys both Satie and a plangent lament from Kathleen Ferrier. But he also chooses humorous pieces: Kenneth Williams reading Edward Lear, and Harry Belafonte singing 'There's a Hole in my Bucket'. He talks about living in a musical family; his wife, son and daughter are all gifted musicians, while he can't sing in tune, and has no sense of rhythm at all.The programme is recorded with an audience at the Radio 3 pop-up studio at Royal Festival Hall, as part of Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre.

John Finnemore is one of our most successful comedy writers and performers. A star turn in Miranda as the doting husband Chris, he writes and stars in the award-winning Radio 4 sitcom Cabin Pressure, and he's made two series of the Radio 4 sketch show Souvenir Programme. He regularly appears on The Now Show, The Unbelievable Truth and The News Quiz. And apart from his own shows, he also writes for other comedians such as Mitchell and Webb.John reveals to Michael Berkeley his secret of comedy inspiration, his love of performing, and his struggle with insomnia. His choices include Beethoven, Flanders and Swann, and Chopin: the music that means most to him, the music that makes him laugh - and the music that helps him sleep.Producer: Jane Greenwood.