Saturday Classics: Recent Episodes
BBC Radio 3
A personal view of classical music from a range of presenters. Authored, themed mini-series and one-off programmes offer a chance to share the musical interests of the presenters.
Cerys Matthews takes us on a personal guided tour of the musical world, taking in Bellini and Blind Snooks Eaglin, Max Richter and the Rhos Male Voice Choir, with poetry too from Rumi, Dylan Thomas and W B Yeats.
Conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier chooses music from Paris in the Belle Époque as part of "Debussy's Paris" marking the 100th anniversary of the death of Debussy this weekend. His choices include music by Maurice Ravel, Paul Dukas, Florent Schmitt, Jacques Offenbach, Camille Saint-Saens, Lili Boulanger, and Claude Debussy.
1.30-1.40 Debussy's Paris 4: "The Paris Expositions and Art Nouveau" Georgia Mann continues her journey through fin-de-siècle Paris at the Eiffel Tower and the Grand Palais with French art curator Emanuel Coquery and a look at the impact of the Great Paris Expositions and the explosion of the Art Nouveau.
Rosalind Plowright introduces the music that has been most influential on her life and operatic career. Including John Ogdon playing Beethoven, Maria Callas singing Puccini and Bernhard Klee conducting Mahler.
Baritone Roderick Williams chooses music concerned with different modes of transport, including works by Schubert, Wagner, Stanford, Liszt, Honegger, Vaughan Williams and John Adams.
Clarinettist Julian Bliss, who plays both classical and jazz clarinet, chooses pieces that show the influence of jazz on classical music. With compositions by Gershwin, Bartok, Bernstein, Copland and Stravinsky, who once agreed to write an 'easy-listening' piece for the Paul Whiteman band.
To mark Australia Day on 26th January, Artistic Director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra Richard Tognetti chooses some of his favourite pieces and performers, including works by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Grainger, Lutoslawski, Peter Sculthorpe and Brett Dean.
The composer, pianist and producer Max Richter introduces some of the music that has inspired him.
The trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth with her personal choices, including music that inspired her when she was growing up in Norway.
Baritone Sir Thomas Allen shares some of his favourite musical moments: works by Beethoven, Wagner and Humperdinck; treasured voices such as Nicolai Ghiaurov in Verdi's Don Carlo and Kenneth McKellar in Handel's Messiah; and festive treats, including Finzi's Christmas Scene, In Terra Pax.
Soprano Ailish Tynan explores the effect different languages have on songs and vocal works. Ailish feels that words are the foundation blocks to unlocking a song, and explores the fascinating way different languages (English, French, German) very often dictate the style of a song or vocal work. Her music choices include Reynaldo Hahn's Bach-flavoured A Chloris, the Irish folk-song The Last Rose of Summer, Handel's Messiah and the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, as well as works by Stanford, Poulenc and Carl Orff.
Sakari Oramo, Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, introduces a selection of music from his home country of Finland. His choices include piano music by the great symphonist Sibelius, music for orchestra and birds by Rautavaara, early choral music, a fine symphony by the little-known composer Ernst Mielck, and Songs from the Sea by Sallinen.
Soprano Ailish Tynan shares great moments in opera, including music by Handel, Mozart, Humperdinck, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Janacek and Benjamin Britten.
As part of the BBC Opera Season, one of the greatest singers of his generation, bass Robert Lloyd charts the cultural, social and technological changes of the opera stage through the music he has performed and experienced over the past 50 years.
In a special show in front of a live audience at Wellcome Collection, star soprano Lesley Garrett presents music that brings back memories for her - from the people, places and events that have shaped her life and career.
Part of Why Music? The Key to Memory, a weekend of live events, concerts and discussions exploring the implications of music's unique capacity to be remembered, produced by Radio 3 in partnership with Wellcome Collection.
In the second of two programmes Rachel Podger, described by The Sunday Times as "Queen of the Baroque violin", shares the music that has helped to define her musical personality - much of it encountered during her childhood years in Kassel. Rachel's choices range from Tallis to Stravinsky via Monteverdi, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms and Vaughan Williams, and not forgetting her beloved Bach, of whose music she says "I don't think a day goes by when I don't play some or listen to some'. She talks engagingly about singing in her father's choir, The William Byrd Singers, where she absorbed Renaissance polyphony "by osmosis"; a memorable school-chamber orchestra trip round Eastern Europe in the declining years of the Ostblock; her love of Glenn Gould's idiosyncratic approach to the performance of Bach's music; her revelatory first encounter with 'authentic' performance practice; and much more.
In the first of two programmes, Rachel Podger, "queen of the Baroque violin", introduces some of the music that inspires her.
As part of the BBC's autumn Opera Season, Danielle de Niese, hailed as "opera's coolest soprano" by New York Times Magazine presents a personal selection of the music closest to her heart.
Rob's selection this week includes music by Bartok, Verdi, Prokofiev and Monteverdi performed by Janos Starker, Margaret Price and Paul McCreesh.
Chi-chi Nwanoku profiles black composers and performers down the centuries, with their friends and contemporaries.
Rob presents works by Mozart, Saint-Saens, Wagner and Dvorak from performers including Arturo Toscanini, Christian Zacharias, David Oistrakh and Il Giardino Armonico.
Pianist James Rhodes continues his series of three consecutive Saturday Classics, sharing the music, recordings and musicians he's most passionate about.
Today's show includes Teodor Currentzis, the Russian-Greek conductor who once claimed 'I will save Classical Music', in Stravinsky and Shostakovich, chamber music by Schubert and Tchaikovsky, and the iconic Herbert Von Karajan with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in Bruckner.
Pianist James Rhodes is back with the first of three consecutive Saturday Classics, choosing the music, recordings and musicians he's most passionate about.
Today's show includes the iconic pianists Martha Argerich, Vladimir Horowitz, and Mikhail Pletnev, plus violinist James Ehnes in Bach and Mendelssohn, and Mariss Jansons conducting Wagner.
James Rhodes has been obsessed with the iconic Canadian pianist Glenn Gould for as long as he can remember. Ahead of his Sunday Feature tomorrow, this afternoon he selects his pick of Gould's idiosyncratic and often controversial recordings - from his distinctive Bach, to Beethoven with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, his own transcription of the Meistersingers Overture, and Prokofiev's 7th Piano Sonata, which the New York Times described as 'an explosive burst of rock and roll with a chromatic edge'.
James presents his documentary Geeking Glenn Gould on Sunday 25th June at 1845.
CANADA 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.
Rob Cowan with music by Richard Strauss, Debussy, Verdi and Copland from performers including Mirella Freni, Gérard Souzay and Maurizio Pollini.
Pianist James Rhodes presents a personal selection of music including works by Stravinsky, Sibelius and Schumann, and performances by Arcadi Volodos and Radu Lupu. James will be back with a Saturday Classics devoted to Glenn Gould on the 24th June.
Pianist James Rhodes presents a personal selection of music including works by Chopin, Saint-Saëns and Beethoven, and performances by Krystian Zimerman and Garrick Ohlsson. Plus extracts of Don Giovanni conducted by Teodor Currentzis. James is back with more choices next Saturday at 1pm.
Live from Free Thinking at Sage Gateshead the composer and pianist Richard Sisson brings his infectious enthusiasm to an idiosyncratic journey through music articulated by the boundless, cyclic, remorseless unfolding of Time; from the clock's ominous striking of midnight in Prokofiev's Cinderella to vivid evocations of heady times past in Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, with works by Finzi, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven along the way.
For many years the piano playing half of cabaret act Kit and the Widow, Richard has composed extensively, particularly for the theatre, including the music for Alan Bennett's The History Boys.
CBeebies presenter Chris Jarvis chooses music composed for, and about, children - including pieces by Mozart, Britten, Debussy, Mussorgsky, Humperdinck, Poulenc, Tchaikovsky, Delibes, Paul Paterson and Jim Parker's "Captain Beaky and his Band"!
Rob presents a specially chosen selection of music including works by Franck, Bach and Bartok, performed by Ernest Ansermet, Zuzana Ruzickova and Stanley Drucker.
On the eve of the BAFTA awards, film critic Peter Bradshaw presents a personal selection of music from cinema and beyond: from Hannibal Lecter's favourite Bach, to Katharine Hepburn as Clara Schumann, and a Handel aria used in a chilling Michael Haneke horror film. Plus Peter's memories of his days at Cambridge University alongside star student George Benjamin, and his own youthful endeavours with composition lessons and the classical guitar.
Rob Cowan with music by Beethoven, Arnold, Chopin and Debussy, in classic recordings from artists including Fritz Wunderlich, Emil Gilels, Thomas Beecham and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.
Music from Finzi, Mozart, Prokofiev and Elgar with performers including David Oistrakh, Eugene Ormandy, Fritz Reiner and Karl Richter.
Conductor Jessica Cottis was born in Australia and grew up there. Now based in the UK she regularly returns to conduct in Sydney, Queensland and Adelaide. Ahead of Australia Day later this week she presents a personal selection of contemporary music from her homeland, including orchestral works by Peter Sculthorpe and Richard Meale, and the didgeridoo playing of the virtuosic William Barton.
Image Credit: MJ Cruz.
Rob Cowan's hand-picked selection this afternoon includes Smetana's Czech Song and a work by Brahms for the unusual combination of choir, two horns and harp, as well as Bach from pianist Friedrich Gulda and a major orchestral piece by Edward Gregson.
Dance critic Mark Monahan presents music for the ballet from the 1930s to the present day. Including music by Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Khachaturian and Philip Glass.
Michel Roux Jr does not allow music in his restaurants nor in their kitchens. For him the food is the music. However, he is a great music lover - of both classical music and, in particular, of the mainly French chanson tradition. In this edition of Saturday Classics he presents a selection of music including Wagner, Vivaldi, Mozart, Brassens, Piaf, Brel and Trenet.
First broadcast in December 2013.
Dance critic Mark Monahan goes on a whistle-stop tour through the first 100 years of the ballet as we know it today, looking at the ground-breaking works that took cities such as Paris and St Petersburg by storm. He traces the history of ballets such as The Nutcracker and Swan Lake which were - surprisingly - both resounding flops when Tchaikovsky premiered them, only being rescued later by the dance-maker Marius Petipa. And he looks at the enormous influence of Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, beginning with Mikhail Fokine's 1907 ballet Chopiniana, leading to famous scores by Stravinsky and Ravel.
Image of Mark Monahan courtesy of David Rose.
Rob Cowan's selection this week includes Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli playing Liszt, Vaclav Neumann conducting Milhaud and George Szell in Mozart.
Deborah Bull is a former Royal Ballet principal dancer and was a Creative Director of the Royal Opera House. She is currently assistant principal at King's College London. Deborah chooses music which was not originally written for the ballet but was later appropriated by choreographers for the ballet stage. Her choices include music by Tchaikovsky, Bach, Ravel, Schubert, Stravinsky and Max Richter.
In the second of two programmes, journalist Simon Heffer charts a chronological profile of the life and music of the French composer Maurice Ravel. Today's programme includes "Le Tombeau de Couperin" and "La Valse", plus excerpts from Ravel's two piano concertos and the opera "L'Enfant et les sortilèges".
In the first of two programmes, journalist Simon Heffer offers a chronological profile of the life and music of the French composer Maurice Ravel. Today's programme includes recordings of some of Ravel's early songs and piano pieces as well as chamber music, including his String Quartet and Piano Trio, and his first forays into the orchestral world with excerpts from Daphnis et Chloé and Ma Mere L'Oye.
Rob Cowan's hand-picked selection this week includes music by Zelenka, Ravel, Handel and Shostakovich. There's also piano music by Chopin and dances from Renaissance Hungary.
Baritone and composer Roderick Williams presents a second personal selection of song-themed music. This programme is devoted to foreign-language song, and music inspired by it, by composers including Schubert, Fauré and Rachmaninov.
Baritone and composer Roderick Williams with the first of two personal selections of song-themed music. This first programme is devoted to English song and music inspired by it, by composers including Purcell, Butterworth and Britten.
Rob Cowan presents classic recordings of Dvorak, Bartok, Bizet and Sullivan from artists including George Szell, Lawrence Tibbett, Enrico Caruso and Andreas Bach.
As part of Radio 3 at Southbank Centre, London, pianist and composer Richard Sisson presents a celebration of musical septuagenarians, unearthing some of the late glories of composers still at the height of their powers. Featuring works by Bruckner, Saint-Saëns, Strauss and Reich.
James Rhodes presents another selection of his favourite recordings, including performances by pianists Jorge Bolet, Grigory Sokolov and Jean-Marc Luisada, and symphonic works by Tchaikovsky and Mozart.
As part of BBC Get Playing he also introduces specially recorded performances by some inspiring amateur pianists and talks to them about the impact music making has on their lives.
Rob Cowan presents hand-picked music by Vivaldi, Respighi, Britten, Mozart and Brahms from artists such as Maurice Gendron, Suzanne Danco, Annie Fischer and Sergio Fiorentino.
CBeebies Presenter Chris Jarvis looks ahead to the CBeebies Prom by choosing some of his favourite classical music for, and about children, including Saint-Saëns's "Carnival of the Animals", Fauré's "Dolly Suite", Schumann's "Kinderszenen", Leroy Anderson's "The Typewriter", Trevor Duncan's "Children in the Park" suite, Henry Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk", and Frankie Howerd's inimitable recording of "Peter and the Wolf".
Rob Cowan with a personal choice of music: solo Bach from Maurice Gendron, Chabrier conducted by Igor Markevitch and Haydn played by the Schneider Quartet. There's an orchestral fantasy on Dvorak's Rusalka, plus a genuine stereo recording from the early 1930s.
Comedian and writer Josie Long presents a rich selection of her favourite classical and folk music to compile an Audio Survival Kit - her perfect soundtrack for uncertain times. Alongside music by Shostakovich, Rachmaninov, Chopin, Poulenc and Mahler, Josie also chooses music from some of her favourite folk musicians including Andrew Bird and James Yorkstone, plus her "top two female folk harpists" - Joanna Newsom and Serafina Steer.
As part of BBC Dance season, pioneering choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh presents her choice of music, including works which have influenced and inspired many of her dance compositions. Born in India and with roots in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, Shobana founded her dance company in London in 1988. Her acclaimed works are often created for outdoor and unusual settings and she regularly collaborates with contemporary composers including Kevin Volans and Michael Nyman.
(Photo: Shobana Jeyasingh / credit: Chris Nash)
Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka rose to fame in the 1950s with hits including 'Oh Carol', 'Calendar Girl' and 'Stairway to Heaven' and has sold millions of records in the last six decades. A prodigiously talented pianist from a young age he studied at the Juilliard School in New York in his teens and in the last few years has written his own classical works. His piano-themed selection today includes works by Chopin, Debussy and Prokofiev.
Journalist Martin Sixsmith presents a programme of Russian music. Having studied both Russian and Psychology extensively Martin explores how music might help us understand Russia's sense of self, and the extent to which it's been shaped by traumatic events and competing world views throughout its tumultuous history.
Rob Cowan's Gold Standard depository this week includes a rumbustious overture by Malcolm Arnold, Beethoven from pianist Julius Katchen, as well as two rarities: Czech composer Miloslav Kabelac's Hamlet Improvisation for large orchestra, as well as Cimarosa's sparkling operatic comedy, The Music Master.
Rob Cowan's Gold Standard selection this week features pianist Mindru Katz in Bach, Gianna d'Angelo singing Delibes, Janos Starker in Rautavaara's seldom-heard Cello Concerto, and Sviatoslav Richter in Miaskovsky's explosive Third Piano Sonata.
As Diplomatic Correspondent Bridget Kendall prepares to leave the BBC after more than three decades she looks back at her global postings and presents the music that accompanied her through them.
From Shostakovich, Gershwin and Shchedrin in Moscow, where she reported on the fall of the Soviet Union, to Bernstein, Villa Lobos and the Appalachian folk music she experienced for the first time whilst Washington Correspondent in the mid-nineties. Plus music from Cambridge, where she grew up and is now returning to as the first female master of Peterhouse College.
In the second of two programmes this month pianist James Rhodes presents music that's changed his life: including recordings by iconic twentieth century pianists Glenn Gould and Vladimir Ashkenazy, and performances by some of today's leading virtuosi including Marc-Andre Hamelin, Joseph Moog, and Evgeny Kissin. Plus extracts from The Marriage of Figaro conducted by Teodor Currentzis.
Until the age of 14, James had no formal academic musical education or dedicated mentoring. Aged 18 he stopped playing the piano entirely for a decade. Since returning to the piano, he has released five albums, all of which have topped the iTunes classical charts. His bestselling memoir, Instrumental, is a moving and compelling story that was almost banned until the Supreme Court unanimously overthrew an injunction in May 2015. He has performed in venues around the world from the Barbican, Roundhouse, Royal Albert Hall, Latitude Festival, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Soho Theatre in the UK to halls in Paris, Australia, Hong Kong, Chicago, Vienna and more.
Plus news of how you can take part in a special edition of Saturday Classics with James later this summer if you're an amateur pianist as part of the BBC Get Playing campaign.
In the first of two programmes this month pianist James Rhodes presents music that's changed his life: including recordings by iconic twentieth century pianists Glenn Gould and Vladimir Horowitz, and performances by some of today's leading virtuosi including the Labeque sisters, Arcadi Volodos, and Sergio Tiempo. Plus extracts from Cosi fan tutte conducted by Teodor Currentzis.
Until the age of 14, James had no formal academic musical education or dedicated mentoring. Aged 18 he stopped playing the piano entirely for a decade. Since returning to the piano, he has released five albums, all of which have topped the iTunes classical charts. His bestselling memoir, Instrumental, is a moving and compelling story that was almost banned until the Supreme Court unanimously overthrew an injunction in May 2015. He has performed in venues around the world from the Barbican, Roundhouse, Royal Albert Hall, Latitude Festival, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Soho Theatre in the UK to halls in Paris, Australia, Hong Kong, Chicago, Vienna and more.
James will be back next week with another edition of Saturday Classics.
In the second of two programmes, broadcaster Sue MacGregor describes her professional encounters with great musicians including Jessye Norman, Sir Thomas Allen and Mitsuko Uchida, with extracts from archive interviews she recorded with them. With music by Beethoven, Berlioz, Schubert, Mahler and Britten.
In the first of two programmes, broadcaster Sue MacGregor describes her introduction to classical music growing up in South Africa and during her early career in London. The programme includes her early encounters with the music of Wagner, Bach, Shostakovich and Mozart.
Rob Cowan mines the archive for great recordings, forgotten musical heroes and repertory adventures
Rob Cowan's selection of music includes Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, violinist Arthur Grumiaux playing Saint-Saëns's Introduction and Rondo capriccioso and Aaron Copland conducting his own compact, dazzling Piano Concerto with soloist Earl Wild.
Rob Cowan mines the archive for great recordings, forgotten musical heroes and repertory adventures
Rob's selection this week includes Barber's delightful wind quintet 'Summer Music', a rhapsody by Bartok played by the young Hungarian virtuoso Barnabas Kelemen and cellist Jacqueline du Pré in a live recording of Saint-Saëns's first concerto accompanied by her husband, conductor Daniel Barenboim.
Ahead of his first lead singing role in twenty years in The Threepenny Opera at The National Theatre, actor Rory Kinnear presents a personal selection of music for voice. The voice as instrument, the voice as storyteller, voices together and voices alone, voices from the past and present, sacred and secular, voices which have all recently made him think: "Oh gosh, how long until we open?"
Including Strauss's Geduld which brings back painful memories of a school singing competition, Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares who inspired a plum brandy soaked trip to Bulgaria, and Mozart's Mass in C minor, which moved Rory to tears in a village hall in the Brecon Beacons.
Writer and historian Dr Amanda Foreman takes a personal journey through the musical history of Britain, introducing works which have inspired her over the years and which reflect different aspects of what it is to be British.
Foreman is the author of the award-winning best sellers, 'Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire' (1999) and 'A World on Fire: A Epic History of Two Nations Divided (2011), and is seen and heard frequently on TV and radio history programmes.
Having lived in the UK and the United States, Foreman has both an inside and outside view of Britain and the music which defines it. In her varied choice, she introduces works such as the Medieval "Agincourt Carol", pieces by Byrd and John Bull which entertained women in the Tudor Court, as well as evocative musical portrayals of the 20th century English and Scottish landscapes by Elgar and Hamish MacCunn.
2016 sees the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, and in amongst Foreman's choices are works inspired by his writing, including Judith Weir's "Storm" with texts from "The Tempest", incidental music from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Mendelssohn and Henry Bishop's "Lo! Here the lark" from his music for "The Comedy of Errors".
Other music includes works by Henry Wood, Ethel Smyth, Thomas Weelkes, Henry Purcell, William Walton and Hubert Parry.
Producer Helen Garrison.
Rob Cowan mines the archive for great recordings, forgotten musical heroes and repertory adventures
This week, conductor Willem Mengelberg presents lively Handel from New York, Elly Ameling and Helen Watts sing Bach, while violinist Henryk Szeryng's account of Szymanowski's luminous Concerto no.2 is an unmissable classic of the gramophone.
Rob Cowan mines the archive for great recordings, forgotten musical heroes and repertory adventures
This week, conductor Rene Leibowitz sends Faust on a whirling dance routine, Conchita Supervia proves the most alluring Carmen ever and Rafael Kubelik conducts Karl Amadeus Hartmann's fiercely intense Second Symphony.
Julian Barnes's fifty-year relationship with music recently culminated with his novel The Noise of Time, the central character of which is Shostakovich. Today Julian takes Shostakovich and his battles with Stalin as the starting point for a musical journey through works by Mozart, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Bach.
Actor Greta Scacchi with a personal selection of aquatic and sea-themed music including 'La mers' from Debussy and Charles Trenet, Schubert's 'Trout' Quintet and an extract from Britten's opera Peter Grimes. Her choice also includes songs from Joni Mitchell, Fats Waller and Mario Lanza
Star of films such as The Player and The Red Violin, Greta Scacchi has been seen most recently as Countess Rostov in BBC One's epic production of War And Peace. For Saturday Classics, she draws on her Italian roots, her adolescence in Australia and her passionate advocacy of maritime environmental causes for a wide-ranging selection of music.
Ahead of his BBC4 series Renaissance Unchained, art critic Waldemar Januszczak conjures up the sound world of this epoch of huge passions and powerful religious emotions across all of Europe. The term 'Renaissance', or 'rinascita', was coined by Giorgio Vasari in 16th-century Florence, and his assertion that it had fixed origins in Italy has since influenced all of art history. But what of Flanders, Germany and the rest of Northern Europe? Waldemar presents music from the time of the Renaissance greats: Jan Van Eyck, Hans Memling, Albrecht Dürer, Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo and El Greco.
Northumbrian piper and fiddler Kathryn Tickell chooses some of her favourite classical pieces inspired by folk music, including works by Antonio Soler, Samuel Barber, Charles Ives, Johan Halvorsen, Percy Grainger, Juan de Araujo, Henry Cowell, Pehr Henrik Nordgren and Howard Skempton.
Northumbrian piper and fiddler Kathryn Tickell chooses some of her favourite classical pieces inspired by folk music, including works by Schubert, Debussy, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Rachmaninoff, Villa-Lobos, Ligeti, and Judith Weir.
American broadcaster Katie Puckrik indulges in a little 'classical cross-pollination' as she presents familiar music in unfamiliar settings. Her choices include the first movement of Bach's concerto for two violins in D minor played by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli, and the Hallelujah Chorus performed by the folk trio The Roches. There is music which contains American folk themes (Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid and the Hawthorne movement from Charles Ives' Piano Sonata No.2) and music played on the 'wrong' instruments (the first movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No.3 performed on the Moog synthesizer and the Largo from the Winter movement of Vivaldi's the Four Seasons on a church organ).
Actor Krister Henriksson, known to many as rumpled Swedish detective Kurt Wallander, presents a personal selection of music.
In Henning Mankell's novels and subsequent television films Wallander's musical tastes are very much operatic: his dog is even named after the legendary tenor Jussi Björling. Krister, who played the role for over a decade after a long and acclaimed stage career, presents a more varied selection today including works by Sibelius, Nielsen and Arvo Pärt, and performances by some of his favourite Swedish artists including jazz pianist Jan Johansson, singer Monica Zetterlund, and ABBA's own Benny Andersson. Krister also reflects on his home town of Stockholm, his early performances in Peer Gynt, and his experience of working with Ingmar Bergman.
First broadcast in December 2015 as part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season.