Programme Information

Star guests including Lily Allen and Jimmy Carr take over the Zane Lowe show, sharing their own musical influences past and present.

Guests this week include: Lily Allen on Monday 19 January; Razorlight on Tuesday 20 January; Wombats on Wednesday 21 January; and Jimmy Carr on Thursday 22 January.

BBC Radio 1 Publicity

John Armstrong continues his series on the most foot-blistering, heart-warming, soul-shaking Latin music on the planet.

This week, the programme travels to Cuba to meet a living legend – Bobby Carcasses, the world's greatest-living (and almost only) Afro-Cuban jazz-scat singer. With a career that spans more than half a century, lived to the full on almost every continent on Earth, Bobby now calls Havana home. As one can imagine, after 50 years on the bandstand, the stories and anecdotes fly thick and fast, and the music's never far behind – including a couple of exclusive, unreleased tracks especially for iViva Latino! listeners.

Meanwhile, in Miami, the programme tracks down a fascinating young acolyte of the Nu-Latin scene. Javier makes his UK interview debut in a wide-ranging conversation with John. He tells listeners about the very idiosyncratic music scene in Miami and also offers an exclusive couple of tracks from his unreleased second album, the first having become a hard-to-find cult item among the world's Latin aficionado community.

Tonight's programme includes records from the weird and wonderful Chilean cheese-meister Señor Coconut, Brazil's current favourite female singer, Marisa Monte, some up-to-the-minute Reggaeton from Wisin Y Yandel and Nelly Furtado, as well as vintage New York Latin soul from Bobby Valentin and bourgeoning funk-flamenco pioneers Los Rumbers. There's also the weekly round-up of live Latin music from around the UK.

Presenter/John Armstrong, Producer/Graham Pass

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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The Funk Brothers were session musicians at the heart of the Motown sound and, as Pete Mitchell continues his series celebrating 50 years of the label, he talks to Dennis Coffey, Uriel Jones and others about some of their unsung heroes.

Presenter/Pete Mitchell, Producer/Helen Lennard

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

Composer Of The Week – Haydn Ep 1/5

Monday 19 to Friday 23 January

12.00noon-1.00pm BBC RADIO 3

www.bbc.co.uk/composers

Donald Macleod introduces the
early life and compositions of
Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn is one of BBC Radio 3's Composers Of The Year 2009, marking year-long celebrations for Haydn, Purcell, Handel and Mendelssohn, who all have significant anniversaries in 2009. This week's programmes – together with a complete Haydn Symphony Cycle (all 104 at the rate of two a week, throughout the year) which began earlier this month – marks the start of Radio 3's extensive Haydn celebrations.

Donald Macleod introduces the early life and compositions of Haydn, who died 200 years ago this year, using contemporary accounts and Haydn's own letters and notebooks to reveal the life and times of a hugely prolific composer.

Haydn had a long and productive life, most of which was spent in the employ of the aristocratic Esterhazy family. At their residences in Vienna, Eisenstadt and Esterhaza, he administrated and conducted orchestras and opera seasons, and also took responsibility for the music library and a staff of musicians. His compositional duties included sacred music for the Prince's chapel and chamber music for the Prince's favourite instrument, along with symphonies, string quartets, piano music, concertos, trios, cantatas, oratorios and songs.

In spite of spending most of his career in the relative isolation of the Esterhazy summer residence, he became the most famous composer in Europe – there were even demands in England for a band of men to be despatched to kidnap Mr Haydn and bring him across the Channel. In the end, Haydn made it to these shores of his own volition, and enjoyed huge success here, making favourable impressions on not only the concert-going public, but also on Royalty and London ladies of a certain age.

In his first programme, Donald uncovers stories and music from the beginning of Haydn's career, including the tale of his disastrous marriage to his true love's elder sister.

A dedicated website for Radio 3's Composers Of The Year, including detailed information about Haydn, is available at www.bbc.co.uk/composers.

Presenter/Donald Macleod, Producer/Kerry Clark

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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The second concert in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Hallé's joint Nielsen Symphony Cycle, Carl Nielsen – Inextinguishable, continues its exploration of one of the 20th century's most original symphonic composers. It's the CBSO's turn tonight, under their principal guest conductor Sakari Oramo.

The Second Symphony, The Four Tempraments, seeks to capture the essence of human character types, one movement corresponding to each of the medieval "humours". It's a work full of colour and what Nielsen called "the life force," an ineluctable propulsive energy at the heart of much of Nielsen's music. He teasingly called the Sixth "Semplice" – "Simple". But it's the most complex and puzzling of his large-scale works, with its recurring pattern of violated innocence; the positive life force of the Second Symphony is now transformed into acceptance, resignation and defiance.

Helios, the overture which begins this concert, recorded at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall last Sunday, is a portrayal of the sun's journey over the Aegean, a northern European's happy memory of a holiday in the seductive south.

Akiko Suwanai has the distinction of having been the youngest-ever winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition. She's the soloist in Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto, that magical, fairy-tale work with its mixture of innocence and sophistication, the product of that very un-fairy-tale time and place of Russia, 1917.

The Nielsen series continues on BBC Radio 3 next Monday.

Presenter/Petroc Trelawny, Producer/David Papp

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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The Essay – The Elephant In The Poetry Reading Ep 1/5

Monday 19 to Friday 23 January

11.00-11.15pm BBC RADIO 3

Next week, on 25 January 2009, it is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. Each succeeding generation of Scottish poets has had to come to some accommodation with the most popular poet, arguably, the world has known, his very popularity often being a barrier rather than a positive example, his Scottishness something that modern Scottish poets find themselves measured against. Burns's attitude to drink, women, politics and poetry is somehow seen as the default position.

In this week's Essay, five Scottish poets describe their attitudes to the metaphorical presence at the back of the room as they read or write their own poetry.

In the first programme, David Kinloch reflects on a Scottish private school education that ignored all Scottish literature, and where Burns's rampant heterosexuality was a complication for a poet who hadn't yet come out.

Reader/David Kinloch, Producer/Dave Batchelor

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

All Passion Spent Ep 1/5

Monday 19 January

10.45-11.00am BBC RADIO 4

Honor Blackman stars in All
Passion Spent

Honor Blackman stars in an adaptation of Vita Sackville West's classic novel, confronting the premise that a woman's life starts when her husband dies.

As an unmarried 17-year-old, Lady Slane had nurtured a secret, burning ambition to become an artist. Instead, she became the wife of a great statesman and the mother of six children. Seventy years later, released by widowhood, and to the dismay of her pompous children, she rejects their plans for her future and decides to give up the opulence of the family home for a tiny house in Hampstead.

Isolating herself and taking stock of her life, she remembers the dreams of her youth, and also revels in the present with an assortment of companions, including Genoux, her French maid, Mr Bucktrout, her house agent and Mr FitzGeorge, a millionaire collector of art and antiques. FitzGeorge dies, leaving her his collection, but she gives it away, to the shock of her family.

As the family contemplate their mother's strange behaviour and worry about what she might do next, Lady Slane has a visit from her great-granddaughter, who has broken off her society engagement, determined to pursue a career in music. Lady Slane realises that, although she can no longer realise her own creative dreams, her satisfaction may come from helping her great-granddaughter to achieve hers.

Honor Blackman plays Lady Slane; other cast details still to be confirmed.

Producer/Sara Davies

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Afternoon Play – A Prayer For Owen Meany Ep 1/5

Monday 19 January

2.15-3.00pm BBC RADIO 4

John Wheelwright narrates the story of his friendship with Owen Meany who, at the age of 11, accidentally kills Wheelwright's mother with a baseball, in this week's Afternoon Play.

Owen has a vision in which he sees his own gravestone and, over time, more details of his death are revealed to him until he comes to believe that he is God's instrument on Earth.

Set in New England in the Fifties and Sixties, this five-part dramatisation moves from John's childhood in New Hampshire, through his teenage years at Gravesend Academy, and finally to tragic events surrounding the Vietnam War.

This novel, written by John Irving and dramatised by Linda Marshall Griffiths, explores faith, politics, war, friendship and love.

Toby Jones plays Owen Meany with Henry Goodman as John Wheelwright. The cast also includes Adam Godley, Charlotte Emerson and Eleanor Bron.

Producer/Nadia Molinari

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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America, Empire Of LibertyEp1/30

Monday 19 to Friday 23 January

3.45-4.00pm BBC RADIO 4 Schedule Amendment 14 January

From the Civil War to the end of the Second World War, this comprehensive history of the United States of America, written and presented by Cambridge historian David Reynolds, is a major, landmark narrative history series for BBC Radio 4.

In 90 parts, divided into three series of 30 programmes, it tells the story through the voices of those who were there – presidents and farmers, mothers and children, slaves and Indians.

The second part of America, Empire Of Liberty spans nearly a hundred years, from the Civil War to the end of the Second World War, showing particular resonances for today in the Wall Street crash, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, as well as lessons about American intervention during the First and Second World Wars.

This series puts America in its historical context and helps to explain its present by looking at its past: the lasting legacy of slavery; the entrepreneurial spirit first, highlighted by the Robber Barons; the emergence of fundamental Christian belief; and why mass immigration made socialism untenable in the land of the free.

And it's not just the big picture which comes under the historical spotlight. This series focuses on personal stories, like that of the first "It" girl – Clara Bow – who personified sex and fast living in the jazz age and of the businessman turned philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Then there's baseball, America's love affair with the car, Al Capone and terror plots. That's before the series even reaches the Second World War, when listeners can experience original sound archive from the period, from the day Pearl Harbour was attacked to the day the atomic bomb was dropped.

The series is written and presented by David Reynolds – a prize-winning Cambridge historian whose previous work for the BBC includes 2008 TV series Summits. The final instalment, which can be heard in June and July 2009, concerns events from the Cold War and Civil Rights up to the 2008 election and the new President.

Presenter/David Reynolds, Producers/Sue Ellis and Rosamund Jones

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

5 Live Sport

Monday 19 January

7.00-10.00pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

Mark Saggers presents all the day's sports news and is joined by special guests for The Monday Night Club, discussing all the latest football news. Jonathan Overend also reports from the opening day of the Australian Open tennis in Melbourne.

From 8pm there is live commentary on the Merseyside derby in the Barclays Premier League, as Liverpool take on Everton at Anfield.

Presenter/Mark Saggers, Producer/TBC

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

Tennis

Monday 19 January

8.30am-2.00pm BBC 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

BBC 5 Live Sports Extra brings uninterrupted commentary from the night session of the Australian Open, live from Melbourne Park.

Producer/Jen McAllister

BBC 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

Imran discovers it's a small world when his taxi driver turns out to be Chunky's brother, in the week's first episode of the Asian drama. Imran's chances of a quiet drive home are dashed and he instructs Jungli to take him to the Jilani house in Silverhill.

Dr Hassan, meanwhile, mistakes Imran for an intruder and hits him with an old shoe. Imran explains who he is but the new lodger doesn't seem convinced. Dr Hassan secretly makes a phone call…

Imran is played by Narinder Samra, Jungli by Adil Ray and Dr Hassan by Youssef Kerkour.

BBC Asian Network Publicity

The Legacy Of George W Bush Ep 1/2

Monday 19 January

9.05-9.30am BBC WORLD SERVICE

BBC North America Editor Justin
Webb investigates The Legacy
Of George Bush

Outgoing US President George Bush hands over to Barack Obama at noon on 20 January, 2009, bringing to an end his eight-year run in the White House.

President Bush's legacy was always going to be controversial. The manner in which he took office deeply split America. His response to 9/11 polarised the world. As he prepares to leave the White House, the BBC's North America Editor, Justin Webb, presents two special programmes.

The first investigates President Bush's domestic legacy. The American economy and judiciary look very different than they did in 2000, as does the Republican Party. With comments from current and former world leaders, senior White House staffers, diplomats and others who worked with – and sometimes against – President Bush, Justin Webb examines whether these changes will endure.

Presenter/Justin Webb, Producer/Neal Razzell

BBC World Service Publicity