Latest news with #PrivatePassions
Times
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
I spent three weeks with the new Radio 3 — and I'm smitten
My guess is Radio 3 bosses returned to work on Tuesday feeling rested but invigorated ahead of announcing the 2025 Proms programme. The station had a successful month. Its most popular presenter, Petroc Trelawny, made a seamless transition from Breakfast to the In Tune drivetime slot. The sunny Tom McKinney took over the day's start. Then the BBC heard that Radio 3 Unwind, the station's classical chillout offshoot, has been given the go-ahead by the media regulator Ofcom. Alongside these schedule changes there has been some strong holiday programming: a day-long celebration of 30 years of Private Passions, the composer-presenter Michael Berkeley's revealing interview show in which well-known guests (including King Charles in 2018) share the classical music that inspired them. Fascinating interview excerpts
Spectator
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
‘I've seen controllers come and go': Radio 3's Michael Berkeley interviewed
A few years ago I had a panic-stricken phone call from a female friend. 'Help!' she wailed. 'Remind me what classical music I like. I think I'm going to be a guest on Private Passions.' I could understand her anxiety. The programme, which celebrated its 30th birthday this month, is BBC Radio 3's lofty version of Desert Island Discs. Eminent writers, scientists, artists and businessmen, plus the occasional book-plugging celeb, explain how music – mostly but not exclusively classical – is, well, one of their private passions. Even if, as in the case of my friend, it isn't. It's an honour to be asked on the show, which is presented by Michael Berkeley – the first classical composer since Benjamin Britten to be elevated to the House of Lords. In other words, if you're bluffing about your lifelong love affair with Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, then Lord Berkeley of Knighton will rumble you instantly, though he'll be far too polite to let on. In the end my friend chickened out. I didn't blame her, though I'd love to have heard her enthusing about Schubert's Piano Sonata D960 or Haydn's Te Deum – both chosen by me. It's amazing how many otherwise cultivated people just don't get classical music. They rhapsodise about Manet or Mann but fall silent if they're asked about a new cycle of Bruckner symphonies. Yet, unlike my friend, I suspect few of them would turn down Private Passions. Even the King has been a guest. In 2018 he chose Haydn's C major Cello Concerto, the Quintet from Die Meistersinger, a chorus from Jean-Marie Leclair's Scylla et Glaucus and Leonard Cohen's 'Take This Waltz'.
