 | | BBC RADIO 3 Sunday 28 December 2008 | |
Private Passions – Sue Perkins
Sunday 28 December
12.00noon-1.00pm BBC RADIO 3 | | | | |
Michael Berkeley talks to the comedian Sue Perkins, one half of the comedy duo Mel And Sue, and current star – with Giles Coren – of BBC Two's The Supersizers Go... Sue revealed a totally new area of expertise when she won BBC Two's Maestro conducting competition last summer. Her great passion is the music of Benjamin Britten, and her other choices include a Mozart aria, excerpts from Pergolesi's Stabat mater and the finale from Stravinsky's The Firebird Suite. Presenter/Michael Berkeley, Producer/Classic Arts BBC Radio 3 Publicity Discovering Music – The Play Of Daniel
Sunday 28 December
5.00-6.45pm BBC RADIO 3 | | | | |
The medieval Play Of Daniel is one of the earliest examples of what might today be called an "opera". Stephen Johnson joins The Harp Consort and the group's leader, Andrew Lawrence King, for an exploration of the work. The Play Of Daniel is a 13th-century "opera" about the prophet Daniel, first given by young clerics at Beauvais Cathedral. It was performed at New Year as part of the Feast of Fools and combines burlesque with the mysteries of the Daniel story. Stephen Johnson looks at the music and ideas in the play before listeners are given the chance to hear a complete staged performance of the work, recorded at York Minster as part of the 2008 York Early Music Festival. Presenter/Stephen Johnson, Producer/Chris Wines BBC Radio 3 Publicity The Choir
Sunday 28 December
6.45-8.00pm BBC RADIO 3 | | | | |
Aled Jones explores choral singing in the world of musicals. It isn't the norm to have to show off your dancing skills at an audition to join a cathedral choir or a local choral society, but that's just one of the many demands placed on chorus members in musicals and shows. Aled talks to West End music director James McKeon and chorus member Aoife Nally about their world. Presenter/Aled Jones, Producer/Kerry Clark BBC Radio 3 Publicity Drama On 3 – Beyond Words
Sunday 28 December
8.00-9.20pm BBC RADIO 3 | | | | |
This adaptation for Drama On 3 by radio dramatist Katie Hims comprises three of Maeterlinck's beautiful short plays – The Intruder, The Seven Princesses and Interior – linked and given context by Dr Patrick McGuinness, fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. Maeterlinck was the only major playwright to emerge from the first European anti-realist movement, Symbolism. Yet, with the exception of The Bluebird, his plays are now rarely performed, despite their power and atmosphere. Katie, who wrote the adaptation, claims they are the only plays she has read that she genuinely wishes she had written herself. Performed simply, from new scripts that are plain-speaking and deceptively pure, it is possible to see Maeterlinck's austere manifesto behind the action. The characters are ordinary people with ordinary vocabularies (even when they are royalty). The poetry is truly dramatic, deriving from repetition, things almost said and things hinted at. His ambition, which these productions share, was to make a poetry of ordinary language and common myth, to make accessible the unspoken dread and elusive shades that haunt even the most mundane existence. The cast includes Sheila Reid; Trystan Gravelle, who was nominated for the Ian Charleson Award in 2006 for The Winter's Tale and a Bafta for Best Newcomer in 2004 for The Chosen; and one of radio's best-known voices, John Rowe, who recently played Ibn Khaldun in Tamburlaine – Shadow Of God on BBC Radio 3. Director/Katie Hims,
Producers/Marc Beeby and Jessica Dromgoole BBC Radio 3 Publicity Paradise LostEp 7/12
Monday 22 December to Friday 2 January
9.30-10.15pm BBC RADIO 3 | | | | |
Anton Lesser continues to read John Milton's Paradise Lost to mark the 400th anniversary of the writer's birth. Today, in Book Seven, Raphael explains to Adam how this world was created after the expulsion of Satan. Reader/Anton Lesser, Producer/Nicolas Soames BBC Radio 3 Publicity | | BBC RADIO 4 Sunday 28 December 2008 | |
Sunday Worship – The Manchester Carols
Sunday 28 December
8.10-8.50am BBC RADIO 4 | | | |  |
The Manchester Carollers and choirs from Manchester schools are joined by narrator James Quinn in this special version for Sunday Worship. The Manchester Carols re-tell the Christmas story for the 21st century in 16 new carols. Writer Carol Ann Duffy has worked with composer Sasha Johnson Manning to produce a selection of these carols, which concentrate on the human element of the story. The 16 carols are linked by narrator James Quinn, who tells the Christmas story in Carol Ann's poetic prose style. A performance at the Royal Northern College of Music on Tuesday 16 December has been adapted for Sunday Worship. Music from the Northern Chamber Orchestra is led by Nicholas Ward and directed by Richard Tanner. Presenter/James Quinn, Producer/Philip Billson BBC Radio 4 Publicity Orley FarmEp 1/3
Sunday 28 December
3.00-4.00pm BBC RADIO 4 | | | | |
Tim Pigott-Smith, Samantha Bond and Ronald Pickup star in this new adaptation of Anthony Trollope's classic novel by Martyn Wade. In Orley Farm, Lady Mason is accused and acquitted of forging her late-husband's will. Some 20 years later, her son, Lucius, has come of age and inherited Orley Farm, the family home. Lucius forces Mr Dockworth, one of the estate's tenants, to quit, and this convinces Dockworth that suspicious circumstances surround the bequest of Orley Farm, which he then sets out to prove. Tim Pigott-Smith plays the narrator, Trollope, with Samantha Bond as Lady Mason, Ronald Pickup as Sir Peregrine, Dan Stevens as Peregrine Orme, Jonathan Christie as Lucius and Amanda Root as Mrs Orme. Producer/Tracey Neale BBC Radio 4 Publicity Walker Of The Downs
Sunday 28 December
4.30-5.00pm BBC RADIO 4 | | | | |
Walker Of The Downs explores the poetry of Ted Walker and the native Sussex countryside which inspired him. In the Sixties, Walker became an accomplished poet of the natural world and this programme creates a journey through Sussex based upon some of his poems. By the Seventies, he was establishing himself as a television and radio dramatist, a short story writer and a chronicler of Spain, where he was living when he died in 2004, aged 69. Professor Martin Sorrell, whose family knew Walker, joins Mike Russell from the Sussex Wildlife Trust on the journey in the Sussex countryside which Walker adored. Producer/Sara Davies BBC Radio 4 Publicity | | BBC RADIO 5 LIVE Sunday 28 December 2008 | |
5 Live Sport
Sunday 28 December
11.45am-6.30pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE | | | |  |
Eleanor Oldroyd presents an afternoon of live football starting with commentary of the Barclays Premier League game between Newcastle United and Liverpool from St James's Park at noon. This is followed by coverage of the day's 2pm kick-offs in the Premier League, including Arsenal versus Portsmouth and Fulham versus Chelsea. From 4.15pm there's live commentary as Blackburn face Manchester City at Ewood Park. Presenter/Eleanor Oldroyd, Producer/Steve Houghton BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity | | BBC 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA Sunday 28 December 2008 | |
5 Live Football
Sunday 28 December
1.55-4.00pm BBC 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA | | | | |
Uninterrupted commentary comes from one of the afternoon's top matches in the Premier League. Producer/Jen McAllister BBC 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity | | BBC WORLD SERVICE Sunday 28 December 2008 | |
Heart And Soul – Bolivian Music
Sunday 28 December
10.30-11.00am BBC WORLD SERVICE | | | | |
Deep in the tropics of Bolivia, a revival of centuries-old Jesuit music is leading to a spiritual re-awakening and creating the next generation of the country's classical musicians. Chiquitano Indians have restored the original churches and reconstructed thousands of pages of original musical scores from the Jesuit period that began in 1691 with the founding of the San Javier mission. Children are keeping the musical legacy alive and, over the last decade, youth orchestras have sprung up in every mission in the lush, steamy lowlands, reviving interest in Baroque culture. Jane Chambers talks to the young musicians, who say the music makes them feel closer to God, and to Father Piotr Nawrot, a Polish priest and musicologist, who painstakingly restored 27 volumes of music, a treasure trove he calls his "second conversion". He has discovered that, while the Jesuits used music as a tool of evangelism, the indigenous populations made it their own. He says: "I believe we shouldn't call these Jesuit missions. They should be called Chiquitano missions... The mission belongs to the people. This music isn't just music, it's sacred music." Presenter/Jane Chambers, Producer/Katy Hickman BBC World Service Publicity | 
