 | | BBC RADIO 2 Sunday 4 January 2009 | |
Elaine Paige On Sunday
Sunday 4 January
1.00-2.30pm BBC RADIO 2 | | | | |
Continuing her celebration of the best of Broadway, Hollywood and the West End, Elaine Paige is this week joined by film and stage choreographer Anthony van Laast MBE. Anthony trained at the London School Of Contemporary Dance, later joining the Company as both performer and choreographer. He went on to become one of Britain's leading choreographers and his credits include the hit film and stage show Mamma Mia!, the West End and international productions of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and many more. Anthony shares his choice of Essential Musicals, which include Hair (New York, 1967), Song And Dance (London, 1982), Little Shop Of Horrors (New York, 1982), Candide (Broadway, 1956) and Bombay Dreams (London, 2002). Presenter/Elaine Paige, Producer/Malcolm Prince BBC Radio 2 Publicity Sunday Half Hour
Sunday 4 January
8.30-9.00pm BBC RADIO 2 | | | | |
Brian D'Arcy introduces some much-loved hymns for the feast of the Epiphany and celebrates the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus, when God revealed himself in human form. The featured singers are from Glasgow and Edinburgh and were recorded in Old Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in Edinburgh. They are directed by Ian McCrorie MBE and the organist is John Kitchen. Hymns include The Three Kings, As With Gladness Men Of Old and Angels From The Realms Of Glory. Presenter/Brian D'Arcy, Producer/Janet McLarty BBC Radio 2 Publicity | | BBC RADIO 3 Sunday 4 January 2009 | |
Private Passions – Jonathan Dimbleby
Sunday 4 January
12.00noon-1.00pm BBC RADIO 3 | | | | |
 Jonathan Dimbleby studied
piano up to the age of 16 Michael Berkeley's guest today is writer, broadcaster and political commentator Jonathan Dimbleby. Jonathan has always loved music and studied the piano up to the age of 16. One of his choices for Private Passions is Alicia de Larrocha playing the first movement of Mozart's A major piano sonata K331, which he used to play himself. He has also chosen The Birth Of Nicholas from Britten's cantata St Nicholas, reflecting his love of the joyful aspects of Britten's music; the scherzo from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony recorded by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Daniel Barenboim in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down; Desdemona's prayer Ave Maria from Verdi's Otello, sung in a newly-released recording from La Monnaie in Brussels by the soprano Susan Chilcott, with whom Dimbleby fell passionately in love not long before her tragic early death from breast cancer in 2003; some Ambassel music from Ethiopia, which he first encountered during his time as chairman of the Bath Festival; and a chorus from Bach's St John Passion, which he heard sung unforgettably in Bach's Leipzig church, the Thomaskirche, while he was making a Cold War television series in East Germany in the early Eighties. Presenter/Michael Berkeley, Producer/Sarah Cropper BBC Radio 3 Publicity Discovering Music With Julian Joseph –
The Art Of Jazz Improvisation
Sunday 4 January
5.00-6.30pm BBC RADIO 3 | | | | |
Julian Joseph presents Discovering Music from the 2008 London Jazz Festival, held last November. Performing alongside his own Trio, singer Cleveland Watkiss and the Guildhall Big Band, Julian provides a unique insight into the art of improvisation, using excerpts from jazz standards as well as from his own music, including performances of The Reverend and Mountain Of Hope. Presenter/Julian Joseph, Producer/Les Pratt BBC Radio 3 Publicity The Choir – Bodleian Library Exhibition
Sunday 4 January
6.30-8.00pm BBC RADIO 3 | | | | |
Conductor Harry Christophers reports from Oxford's Bodleian Library on its astonishing exhibition of almost 800 years of priceless British choir manuscripts, in this edition of The Choir, presented by Aled Jones. Harry also gets a chance to hear what is universally regarded as the worst oratorio of all time, George Tolhurst's Ruth. Plus there is a look ahead to the big choral anniversaries of 2009. Presenter/Aled Jones, Producer/Michael Surcombe BBC Radio 3 Publicity Drama On 3 – In The Absence Of Geoff
Sunday 4 January
8.00-9.30pm BBC RADIO 3 | | | | |
Who wouldn't want a genuine second chance in life? In The Absence Of Geoff, a comedy about love, loss and identity, by award-winning writer Charlotte Jones, Geoff lives in Purley. He is fat, 40 and facing ruin – his small business is about to collapse and his marriage is about to fail. He adores his wife but, where Geoff is concerned, she exudes a steady drip of disappointment. Even his 12-year-old daughter, the love of his life, despises him, parroting her mother. So, in despair, Geoff fakes a fugue (total memory loss) as an alternative to suicide. It's kinder to his child, more environmentally friendly and more creative. Discovered by a lifeguard on the Isles of Scilly, Geoff is interviewed by the police, claiming complete amnesia. He watches as they piece bits of his life together and send him to hospital and then home. But he's altered. The old Geoff is gone, and he claims not to know his wife and his daughter. He is a blank page, or trying hard to be a blank page, and he becomes a media hero and minor celebrity. Money starts to roll in. Love rekindles. His new life is proving to be less of a deception than the one he was living before. But his daughter is suspicious. When his cover cracks, history looks in danger of repeating itself but Geoff is determined to hang on to the good things he's found. Charlotte Jones's previous work includes Humble Boy, for the National Theatre, which won Best New Play 2001; Lightning Play, performed at the Almeida in 2007; and her screenplay Bessie And The Bell, which won the New York Film And TV Festival award 2006. Charlotte has created many distinctive plays for radio – her most recent are Talking To Strangers, Dolly's Mexican Wife, Mia And Maia and Sea Symphony. Adam Godley plays Geoff and Amanda Lawrence plays his wife. Director/Claire Grove BBC Radio 3 Publicity Sunday Feature – Vril
Sunday 4 January
9.30-10.15pm BBC RADIO 3 | | | | |
Vril was the infinitely powerful energy source of the species of superhumans who populated a pioneering science fiction novel by Victorian author and politician Edward Bulwer Lytton, called The Coming Race. It was completely invented, and yet many people were desperate to believe it really existed, and had the power to transform their lives. Matthew Sweet goes on their trail to find out why. Matthew begins at Knebworth, Lytton's vast, grandiloquent Gothic mansion, where he meets his great-great-great-grandson, and hears how his book was intended as a warning about technology, soulless materialism and utopian dreams. At London's Royal Albert Hall, he discovers how a quack electro-doctor, Herbert Tibbits, along with a handful of aristocrats, tried to promote the notion of electrical cures and the possibility of a "coming race" in a bizarre bazaar that was meant to recreate the "city of the Vril-ya". Matthew visits the site of "England's House Of Mystery", where magicians mounted a stage version with similarly disastrous results and unearths an interview with the founder of the Baroness-rich "Vril-ya Club". He also hears a choir sing The Marching Song Of The Coming Race. And he heads for Whitehall to discover how, in the wake of the First World War, Vril came to be caught up with sinister ideas about improving the health of the race. Along the way, Matthew and his contributors reflect on why so many English people have been so desperate to see the fantasy of regeneration transformed into fact. And, finally, he reveals why he began his journey with a meat-based drink to hand – one that owes its name to Lytton's idea, but which is still on sale today. Presenter/Matthew Sweet, Producer/Phil Tinline BBC Radio 3 Publicity Words And Music – The Year
Sunday 4 January
10.15-11.30pm BBC RADIO 3 | | | | |
Andrew Lincoln and Emma Fielding read a selection of Ted Hughes's Season Songs, as this edition of Words And Music explores the changing seasons. One of his finest collections, these poems are full of sharp observations, playful language and the feeling of natural forces of destruction and renewal. Interspersed with Ted Hughes's are poems that complement these themes, by a range of poets, including Thomas Hardy (The Darkling Thrush), Robert Frost (Prayer To Spring), Wordsworth, Tennyson, Blake and Kahlil Gibran. Music ranges from Sir Michael Tippett's opera New Year, Piazzolla's vibrant response to the seasons through tango, Mahler's Frühlingsmorgen and Brahms's Ballades. Presenters/Andrew Lincoln and Emma Fielding, Producer/Jessica Isaacs BBC Radio 3 Publicity | | BBC RADIO 4 Sunday 4 January 2009 | |
Desert Island Discs
Sunday 4 January
11.15am-12.00noon BBC RADIO 4 | | | | |
Kirsty Young's guest this week is British businessman, author and former French Foreign Legionnaire, Simon Murray CBE. Born in 1940, Simon joined the Foreign Legion in 1960 and served in the Second Foreign Parachute Regiment, fighting in the Algerian War and rising to the rank of Chief Corporal. Soon afterwards he began his business career, joining Jardine Matheson in Hong Kong, eventually becoming the company's managing director. He joined Hutchinson Whampoa as Group Managing Director before joining Deutsche Bank Group as an executive chairman and later founded Simon Murray And Company. Presenter/Kirsty Young, Producer/Leanne Buckle BBC Radio 4 Publicity Book Club – Oliver James: Affluenza
Sunday 4 January
4.00-4.30pm BBC RADIO 4 | | | | |
James Naughtie chairs the discussion as psychologist Oliver James joins Book Club to expand on his idea of Affluenza, a modern-day virus that is sweeping through the English-speaking world. In the book, James explains that the affluenza virus is a set of values which increase our vulnerability to psychological distress. The "symptoms" include placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions, looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous. He says many studies have shown that infection with the virus increases your susceptibility to the commonest mental illnesses – depression, anxiety, substance abuse and personality disorder. Written just before the advent of the credit crunch, he points out that the aspiration to, and trappings of, affluence might be emotionally harmful to us. As part of his research James spent a year travelling around the world to look at the rates of depression in different countries, comparing and contrasting attitudes to wealth and how societies live their lives. Notably he travelled to the USA, Scandinavia, Russia, China, the European Community, Australia and New Zealand. Presenter/James Naughtie, Producer/Dymphna Flynn BBC Radio 4 Publicity The Maadai-Kara
Sunday 4 January
4.30-5.00pm BBC RADIO 4 | | | | |
Performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah explores the ancient tradition of throat singing that celebrates the legends of remote and distant lands in the poem, The Maadai-Kara. Benjamin immerses himself in the poem, recorded in the Karakol valley on the border of Siberia, Mongolia and Tuva. The poem tells the legend of the Altaian people being taken into slavery by Qara Qula. Their heroic leader, Maadai-Kara, has become too old to defend them, but his son, Kögüdäy Märgän, is born with magic powers which he uses to overpower Qara Qula. The performance of Maadai-Kara is delivered in the hypnotic throat-singing style whose roots lie in shamanic practice. Listeners can hear an abridged translation of the poem, interviews with local villagers and sounds from the Siberian slopes. Benjamin also discovers the secrets behind throat singing in a workshop with musician Michael Ormiston. Presenter/Benjamin Zepaniah, Producer/Ruth Hedges BBC Radio 4 Publicity | | BBC RADIO 5 LIVE Sunday 4 January 2009 | |
5 Live Sport
Sunday 4 January
12.00noon-6.00pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE | | | |  |
Eleanor Oldroyd presents an afternoon of live sport, with all the action from the day's third round FA Cup matches sponsored by E.on, including live commentary from the pick of the games, plus updates from rugby union's Guinness Premiership. Presenter/Eleanor Oldroyd, Producer/Steve Houghton BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity | 
