Programme Information

Tony Blackburn counts down the charts from this week in 1973 and 1982.

There are hits and climbers from Carly Simon, Shakatak, Foreigner, The Human League and many more.

Presenter/Tony Blackburn, Producer/Phil Swern for Unique Productions

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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Jimmy Carr's Comedy Cuts Ep 1/6

Saturday 15 January

10.00-10.30pm BBC RADIO 2

Jimmy Carr hosts the first of six comedy master classes in which he discusses his passion for all aspects of comedy and plays some of his favourite comedy clips.

In the first episode Jimmy takes a look at what it takes to become a stand-up comedian. Featured comedians include Eddie Izzard, who talks about swimming; Bill Bailey, who finds out about the appeal of photographing kebabs; Peter Kay wonders at the marvels of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire; and Rowan Atkinson performs his schoolmaster sketch.

Presenter/Jimmy Carr, Producer/Paul Russell for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

Tom Service visits Tallinn in Estonia, and Turku in Finland, both European Capitals of Culture for 2011.

Separated by the Baltic Sea, the cities show off their cultural programming and celebrate the ties they've shared for centuries in the Baltic Sea region. Estonia celebrates 20 years of independence in 2011 and on 1 January the country adopts the Euro. Tom Service investigates the tradition of massed choral singing as well as looking at how the new economic climate is affecting music making in the country.

The programme includes interviews with celebrated Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra and Finnish composer Mikko Heiniö.

Presenter/Tom Service, Producer/Jeremy Evans

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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Lucie Skeaping examines some of Vivaldi's concertos

Lucie Skeaping examines Vivaldi's ground-breaking Op 3 set of concertos for one, two or four violins entitled L'Estro Armonico.

The concertos were published 300 years ago in Amsterdam and eventually landed on the desk of JS Bach, who found them so inspirational that he set about transcribing many of them for keyboard instruments.

The Early Music Show features a number of Vivaldi's concertos in recordings by The English Concert and Italian chamber orchestra I Musici, as well as one of Bach's transcriptions – the Concert For Four Harpsichords in a performance by Callegium Stuttgart.

Presenter/Lucie Skeaping, Producer/Les Pratt

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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Opera On 3 – Live From The Met

Saturday 15 January

6.00-9.00pm BBC RADIO 3

Marina Poplavskaya as Violetta in La Traviata

The Met season continues with Giuseppe Verdi's ever-popular La Traviata.

The consumptive courtesan Violetta renounces her life of parties to settle down with the devoted Alfredo. But when Alfredo's father asks her to give Alfredo up for the sake of his family's reputation, she agrees to this terrible sacrifice.

By the time Alfredo discovers the truth, it's too late for them. Gianandrea Noseda conducts a cast including Marina Poplavskaya and Matthew Polenzani as the ill-fated lovers.

Presenter/Margaret Juntwait, Producer/Ellie Mant

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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Poet James Crowden experiences the wide range of sheep communication at lambing time, including the interaction between ewe and lamb, the talk between shepherds and the many interesting methods of counting sheep.

James himself worked as a shepherd in the early Eighties on a farm next to ground owned by conductor and maestro John Eliot Gardiner. His sheep constantly escaped into John Eliot's property and in the end the conductor employed James to work as a night shepherd alongside his own shepherd during lambing season.

It was while working on the long dark nights in the lambing shed that James started to write his first book, Blood Earth And Medicine.

Presenter/James Crowden, Producer/Matt Thompson

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the largest festival of its type in the UK, retains a truly international focus on the best in contemporary and new music.

Founded in 1978, it has hosted numerous luminaries in the world of contemporary composition, including John Cage, Steve Reich, Harrison Birtwistle and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Over the next five weeks, Sara Mohr-Pietsch and Robert Worby present highlights from the 2010 festival, including world premières from Brian Ferneyhough and UK premières from Peter Adriaansz and the festival's composer-in-residence Rebecca Saunders.

The series also includes reports on some of the more unusual events at the festival, including a concert on a train, a musical PowerPoint presentation from composer Trond Reinholdsten and a 12-hour performance from John Cage.

Tonight's programme includes Mauricio Kagel's String Quartet II, the UK première of a new work by Enno Poppe for four string quartets, and Martijn Padding's violin concerto White Eagle.

Robert Worby talks to English composer and pianist Michael Finnissy about the UK première of his new work, Gedachtnis-Hymne, while Sara Mohr-Pietsch explores noise art from the Low Frequency Orchestra.

Presenters/Robert Worby and Sara Mohr-Pietsch, Producer/Sam Phillips

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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Catherine Bott examines JS Bach's cantata collaboration with author and poet Mariane von Ziegler, a relationship which, as Mark A Peters in his new book about von Ziegler argues, "brought a woman's voice to Baroque music".

Mariane von Ziegler, who eventually emerged as Germany's first female poet laureate, believed passionately in the intellectual rights of women. Her cantata texts arguably inspired Bach to a different pattern of writing. Together, in 1725, they created a sequence of nine new cantatas for St Thomas's.

Catherine Bott looks back on Mariane's life and career, considering her achievements alongside a rich selection of music drawn from the Bach/von Ziegler collaboration.

Presenter/Catherine Bott, Producer/Chris Wines

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

Tom Mangold joins a spy-themed cruise around the Caribbean. Among the passengers are ex-spooks and two former CIA chiefs debating national security threats.

Outward appearances suggest it is just a regular cruise. But as the MS Eurodam sets sail from Fort Lauderdale in Florida, this vast ship is carrying two men who have been at the very heart of the US intelligence services. Former CIA directors Porter Goss and Michael Hayden are on board for the Spy Cruise, a seven-day trip devoted to issues of national security.

Passengers have paid to hear from and mingle with these senior ex-spooks, as well as a range of other former intelligence and military officers. While other passengers on the ship gamble in the casino, play pool and try their hand at line-dancing, the spy cruisers are locked into a lecture theatre worrying about the state of global security. Tom Mangold finds out what makes them tick.

Presenter/Tom Mangold, Producer/Laurence Grissell for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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This new production of Athol Fugard's award-winning masterpiece looks at the days of Apartheid in Fifties South Africa through the eyes of two black waiters and a young white man.

On a wet and windy afternoon in the St George's Park Tea Room in Port Elizabeth, waiters Sam and Willie are practising their dance steps, unaware that the owner's son, Hally, who grew up with them, is about to change their relationship for ever.

This new production of Fugard's masterpiece, which opened on Broadway in 1982, has been recorded with a South African cast. Athol Fugard introduces the play himself, from his home in America, the country where it was first performed. He speaks movingly about its first performance in South Africa, about why he wrote it and about himself as its central character, performing an act which he says he will regret until his dying day.

Sam is played by Wiseman Sithole, Hally by Andrew Laubscher and Willie by Sizwe Msutu.

Producer/Marion Nancarrow for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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BBC RADIO 4 FILM SEASON
Archive On 4 – Going To The Flicks Ep 1/2

Saturday 15 January

8.00-9.00pm BBC RADIO 4

Film buff Barry Norman launches BBC Radio 4's Film Season

One hundred years after the first Hollywood film studio opened in 1911, BBC Radio 4's two-week film season explores how "going to the movies" has changed over the last century and where our relationship with film is heading.

Today people can watch films in multiplexes, on planes, in community halls, on beaches, in living rooms, in cars, on mobile phones, almost anywhere. And developments in technology have radically changed how films are made and who the film-makers are; but will people really want to watch films made on mobile phones? How will Hollywood respond to the digital revolution?

To kick off Radio 4's film season, Barry Norman begins by exploring how the experience of going to the cinema in Britain has changed over the past 100 years.

Drawing on the BBC archive, as well as recordings from the University of Lancaster which have never been broadcast before, his first surprise is the discovery that people are much more likely to recall the general experience of going to the cinema than the individual films they saw.

The Silent Era, it turns out, was not all that silent, with plenty of chatting and tea-drinking going on, and children reading out the titles to their illiterate parents and grandparents.

Barry also hears how overwhelmed many viewers were by the sheer luxury of the cinemas built in the inter-war years and how these pleasure palaces offered a few hours of escape from lives which were harsh or sometimes simply dull. He recalls going to the pictures in the Fifties, the golden age of Saturday morning cinema for children. In the Sixties, with the advent of television, Barry examines the ultimately failed attempts to introduce novelties such as Cinerama and The Smellies and hears confessions about what went on in the back row.

The programme features contributions from film expert Annette Kuhn and architectural historian Richard Gray.

Presenter/Barry Norman, Producer/Beaty Rubens for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

5 Live Sport

Saturday 15 January

12.00noon-6.06pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

Mark Chapman presents all the day's sports news plus build-up to today's Premier League coverage.

From 3pm there's Premier League coverage including Chelsea versus Blackburn Rovers and Manchester City versus Wolverhampton Wanderers, plus updates from rugby union's European Cup fifth round ties.

At 5pm Sports Report includes post-match reaction and interviews along with updates from West Ham United versus Arsenal, which kicks off at 5.30pm.

Presenter/Mark Chapman, Producer/Mike Carr

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

Football

Saturday 15 January

2.55-5.15pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Football fans can enjoy commentary on a top game from the Championship, plus score updates from across the Football League.

Producer/Jen McAllister

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

Ali B sits in for Dave Pearce, playing 30 years of classic dance anthems from electro to techno via hardcore and house.

A former resident at Fabric nightclub, Ali's record box spans cutting edge electro through to future funk and classic house. He continues Dave's series of featured record label profiles and, in the final half hour, goes in the mix with a selection of his current favourite tunes from clubland.

Presenter/Ali B, Producer/Rowan Collinson

BBC 6 Music Publicity