Private Passions

As part of Canada 150, a week of programmes marking the 150th anniversary of the founding of the nation, Michael Berkeley talks to Canadian novelist Madeleine Thien.Born in Vancouver, she is the daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants to Canada and her writing explores the history of the Asian diaspora. She is the author a short story collection 'Simple Recipes' and the novels 'Certainty', 'Dogs at the Perimeter' and 'Do Not Say We Have Nothing' -about musicians studying Western classical music at the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s and about the legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Scotiabank Giller Prize 2016 and the Governor General's Award 2016. Her books and stories have been translated into 23 languages.Madeleine talks to Michael about the history of Western of classical music in China and its suppression during the Cultural Revolution. Countless instruments were destroyed, including more than 500 pianos at the Shanghai Conservatory. Th

Michael Berkeley talks to Patsy Rodenburg, the most highly acclaimed voice teacher of her generation, about the music she loves. Patsy Rodenburg has worked with pretty much every actor you can name, including Judi Dench, Ian McKellen and Daniel Day Lewis. They all testify to the huge impact she has had on their careers and performances. Among the many companies she's worked with all over the world are the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she continues to teach drama students, as she has done for more than 20 years, at the Guildhall School of Music and the Michael Howard Studios in New York.Patsy tells Michael about her passion for helping everyone - actors, singers, children, business leaders and even prisoners - find their own natural, strong voice, a frequently moving and liberating experience. Among her choices is music by Sibelius, Strauss, Bach and Philip Glass.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBc Radio 3.

Nishat Khan is one of India's finest musicians; born into a dynasty of famous sitar players, he first went on stage with his father and uncle when he was only seven. Since that first appearance in Calcutta in the 1970s, he has performed worldwide, collaborated with all kinds of musicians, from Philip Glass to Gregorian choirs to Django Bates, and composed both for the BBC Proms and for Bollywood films. He's here in Britain to appear at the Aldeburgh Festival this June, fresh from recording the soundtrack to a Bollywood movie. In Private Passions he talks to Michael Berkeley about the musical family he grew up in - he started playing the sitar before he could even walk. He explores too the spiritual meaning of music within this tradition and its power to reveal the voice of God. And he shares his excitement at discovering Western classical music, still very much a minority taste in India. Nishat Khan's choices include Bach's B Minor Mass; Bruckner's 8th Symphony; Mozart, Manuel de Falla; Britten's "Sea Interlu

Michael Berkeley talks to the award-winning theatre director Ivo van Hove about his musical passions.The director of Amsterdam's prestigious Toneelgroep theatre, Ivo works all over the world, notably with the New York Theatre Workshop and at the Barbican in London. Equally at home with Sophocles, Shakespeare and contemporary American drama, he won huge acclaim for his stripped-back production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, and his recent A View From The Bridge with the Young Vic won, among many other awards, two Oliviers and two Tonys.Ivo talks to Michael Berkeley about working with David Bowie on his musical Lazarus; about the close working and personal relationship with his partner, the designer Jan Versweyveld; and the dramatic decision he made to leave law school at the age of 20 to pursue a life in theatre. His musical choices reflect the emotional intensity and sparse aesthetic of his directing style, with pieces by Brad Mehldau, Webern and Ligeti, as well as songs by Rufus Wainwright and Joni Mit

Bettany Hughes talks to Michael Berkeley about the music that's shaped her family life, and the music she's come to love during her travels as a historian.Bettany has more than 50 radio and television documentaries to her name, many about ancient history and she's also a prolific writer, a Research Fellow at King's College London and has been honoured with numerous awards including the Norton Medlicott Medal for History and the Fem 21 International Journalism Award for her 'exceptional contribution to the international coverage of the place of women in societies past and present'.She's the author of three bestselling books, the latest of which is 'Istanbul', a decade in the making and over 800 pages long, which brings to life 3000 years of action-packed history in that great city.She talks to Michael about the importance of visiting the places she writes about and the joy of discovering music such as shepherds' calls in Greece and gypsy music in Istanbul. Bettany's interest in women's history is reflected in

Jane Goodall was only twenty-four when in she went to live among the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park in Tanzania, and she went on to spend more than 55 years there. She has done more than anyone else to transform our understanding of chimpanzees - and beyond that, her work has raised questions about how we treat these highly intelligent primates, and indeed about the rights of all animals. Now in her early eighties, she's on an extraordinary mission travelling round the world to protect chimpanzees from extinction.During a rare stay in Britain, Jane Goodall talks to Michael Berkeley about her life and ground-breaking discoveries. She reveals that the chimpanzees she lived with also had a darker side, and were sometimes violent, stamping on her. She remembers difficult times after the kidnapping of some of her workers, and the death of her second husband - and how music sustained her, and transformed her view of the world.Music choices include Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and Ric

Gabriele Finaldi, the Director of the National Gallery, talks to Michael Berkeley about his artistic and musical passions.When Gabriele Finaldi took up his post as Director of the National Gallery in the summer of 2015, one of the first things he did was to install a piano in the corner of his office. He grew up in a musical household in Catford in South East London, the son of a Neapolitan father and half-Polish, half-English mother. Early in his career he was a curator at the National Gallery, specialising in Italian and Spanish paintings and he was involved in major and memorable shows such as Seeing Salvation and Discovering the Italian Baroque. In 2002 he was appointed Deputy Director of the Prado in Madrid, where he worked until his return to the National Gallery. Gabriele takes Michael on a musical and artistic journey though Britain, Italy, France and Spain and chooses music by Ravel, Messiaen, Puccini and Britten, as well as a 17th-century Neapolitan serenade and a spine-tingling piece of flamenco. P

It's not easy starting out to make a living as a writer, and A.L. Kennedy began with one of the most challenging jobs ever: as a puppeteer and clown, chasing children around a field in Fife with a loud horn. Thankfully it didn't take long before she left the day job behind and established her reputation as one of our most original voices, the author of 17 books - novels, short story collections, non-fiction - and talks and plays for stage, radio and television. She's also, on and off, a stand-up comedian - so that early training as a clown wasn't wasted. In Private Passions she tells Michael Berkeley about growing up in Dundee, and discovering that she could escape on the overnight bus to Stratford and the theatre, which made everything in life more bearable, more alive. Glenn Gould is one of Kennedy's heroes, and we hear him playing Bach; but we also hear Gould's speaking voice in a radio documentary about the Canadian North. Other choices include the Venetian baroque composer Franceso Cavalli, and Josquin d

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

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

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

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:

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. S

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

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 de

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 S

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 law

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

Royal Ballet Principal Edward Watson talks to Michael Berkeley about his life in dance and shares the music that has inspired him both professionally and personally.Known for his dramatic flair and astonishing dedication and stamina, he has become one of the Royal Ballet's best-known dancers, and has consistently championed new repertoire, working closely with many contemporary choreographers. Ed talks about his passion for creating new roles and his extraordinary creative partnership with Wayne McGregor, illustrated by music from Max Richter's Infra. His other music choices reflect the diversity of his career in dance - pieces by Schoenberg and Liszt from Macmillan ballets, and songs from Martha Wainwright, Bev Lee Harding and Concha Buika. And no ballet dancer's Christmas is complete without revisiting The Nutcracker. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Chris Hadfield has described going into space as 'strapping yourself on top of what is essentially a large bomb'. He is one of the world's most respected astronauts, and his career has included Space Shuttle flights and helping to build the Mir Space Station, as well as serving as Director of NASA's operations in Russia and as Commander of the International Space Station during his final five-month mission. If that wasn't enough he's also a bestselling author and an accomplished musician - indeed he plays in an all-astronaut band. His cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity - which he recorded while orbiting the earth on the Space Station at over 17,000 miles an hour - has had more than 33 million Internet hits. Chris talks to Michael Berkeley about his route to the stars, about overcoming fear and extreme danger - and the difficulties of playing a guitar in zero gravity. He chooses music by Strauss, Rossini and Hans Zimmer, which he associates with particular space missions. He talks about his admiration for Wil