Private Passions

In a special edition to mark International Women's Day next week, Michael Berkeley talks to Britain's most decorated female Olympic athlete, the rower Dame Katherine Grainger.Katherine won a silver medal in Rio in 2016 - at the age of 40. It was her fifth medal from five consecutive Olympic Games, including a gold in the double sculls at London 2012. On her return from Rio, she was voted the Olympians' Olympian by her fellow Team GB athletes. The holder of six World Champion titles, she has an MBE and a CBE, was made a dame in 2017 New Year's Honours list, and, since last summer, has been the Chair of UK Sport.On top of her huge sporting achievements, Katherine has a PhD in Criminal Law and is Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University. Katherine tells Michael how music has helped her to cope with the pressure of competing at the highest level, and how music has been an important part of her life since her Scottish childhood. She chooses a Mozart aria to remind her of her grandparents in Aberdeen, and Rachmaninov for her rowing partner Cath Bishop, who is a talented pianist. In celebration of International Women's Day, all but one of her choices - which include Elgar, Chopin and Bach - are performed or conducted by female musicians. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Singer, multi-instrumentalist, electronic sitar player, performer and DJ, Bishi has performed with everyone from Yoko Ono, Pulp, Goldfrapp, the LSO, and the Kronos Quartet. A glamorous and extravagantly costumed presence on stage, she's influenced by both Eastern and Western classical music as well as electronic dance, glam rock and folk music. Michael Berkeley talks to her about growing up with the music of her mother, Susmita Bhattacharya, a celebrated Indian classical singer who knew Ravi Shankar. Bishi has her own take on the sitar, which she plays like an electric guitar. A talented chorister and pianist as a child, she could have chosen a career in Western classical music, but instead has brought it to bear on her own panoramic musical style.She chooses music from Ravi Shankar's collaboration with Philip Glass, iconic film soundtracks she's used in her work as a DJ, a song she's sung from a Bulgarian choir and pieces from major influences Mica Levi and Meredith Monk.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Bernard Cornwell is now one of the world's most popular writers of historical fiction. He's famous for his Sharpe series, about a British soldier during the Napoleonic wars, and for his Last Kingdom books, set in 9th-century Britain. Both have become successful television adaptations, with a third season of The Last Kingdom being filmed for Netflix at the moment. The numbers are pretty staggering: 57 books published, worldwide sales of 35 million. But Bernard Cornwell owes his existence as a writer to a very happy accident. It was 1978, he was in an office in Edinburgh, the lift doors opened, and out stepped a blonde. In his own words, he "fell disastrously in love". But Judy, the woman who stepped out of the lift, was American, and, when he moved to America to live with her, he couldn't get a green card. Unemployed, he decided to write a novel. And so the Sharpe series was born. In Private Passions, Bernard Cornwell reveals his extraordinary childhood among a religious sect called the "Peculiar People". He was adopted, and he tells the story of his search for his birth parents. When he found his mother, her shelves were full of his books. The music he loves now is very much influenced by his lifelong rebellion against this ascetic religious upbringing: he loves Requiems and Catholic liturgical settings. Music choices include Faure's Requiem, Mozart's Requiem, Allegri's Miserere, and songs from Shakespeare. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Michael Berkeley talks to the actress Frances Barber about the music and friendships that have inspired her throughout her career. From Cleopatra at the Globe Theatre to the evil Madame Kovarian in Dr Who, from Peter Greenaway to Inspector Morse, and from Chekhov at the Royal Shakespeare Company to playing a seductive barrister in TV's Silk, Frances Barber is one of our most versatile actors. From the moment she won the Olivier Award for the Most Promising Newcomer, her hugely diverse career has spanned theatre, television and film - and every genre from comedy, sci-fi, kitchen sink drama, to theatrical classics and Hollywood.Frances tells Michael how she discovered classical music by working her way through the records in her local library when she was setting out on her acting career; she chooses Chopin to remind her of that time.In a funny and revealing interview, Frances talks about the music that's been part of her work, including Michael Nyman's soundtrack to A Zed and Two Noughts and songs by Brecht and the Pet Shop Boys. And she chooses music that reminds her of people she's loved, including Schubert for her close friend Alan Rickman. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is steeped in Viking lore. She travels through the icy landscapes of the Far North in the footsteps of those Norse "far travellers" who have left us their wonderful poetic stories of kings and trolls and dragons. She's an Associate Professor at Durham University and an AHRC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker, and her fieldwork has taken her pretty much everywhere the Vikings went: through Greenland, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and Orkney. Recently she went to stay on the Arctic island of Svalbard, where in 24-hour darkness she encountered a family of polar bears. Eleanor Barraclough's music list full of snow and ice - glittering, shimmering music - from the Norwegian composer Frode Fjellheim and Sibelius's 5th Symphony, through Eriks Esenvalds' "Northern Lights", to Martin Carthy, singing "Lady Franklin's Lament". She ends with music by Geoffrey Burgon that will resonate with anyone growing up at the end of the last century: the theme tune to the BBC dramatization of Narnia. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Alistair Spalding talks about dance with the zeal of the convert. Although he's headed Sadler's Wells since 2004, commissioning new work from leading international choreographers - Akram Khan, Mark Morris, Matthew Bourne, Pina Bausch - he doesn't come from a dance background. He left school at sixteen, and worked in a solicitor's office, aiming to be a lawyer. He then studied linguistics and philosophy and became a primary school teacher. And so, how did he end up becoming Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Sadler's Wells in London, the top British venue for international dance?In Private Passions, Alistair Spalding reveals his route to an unlikely career, beginning with the first dance performance he ever saw: John Cage was in the pit, blowing on a conch shell. He explains his vision of drawing in the best contemporary composers to write for dance, and of widening the repertoire to include older dancers. He discusses too his innovative and highly popular dance afternoons for the over-65s. Music choices include Debussy, Bach, Thomas Adès, Monteverdi, Nick Cave and Joni Mitchell. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

The physicist and broadcaster Helen Czerski talks to Michael Berkeley about her favourite music, inspired by her Polish heritage and her fascination with technology and exploration. Having gained a wonderfully titled PhD in Experimental and Explosive Physics from Cambridge in 2006, Helen worked in the US and Canada, and is now a Research Fellow at University College London where she specialises in the relationship between waves, weather and climate.But apart from her academic research and teaching she has another mission - to make physics accessible to us all. She does this by exploring the connections between the way the world works and our everyday experiences - for example weather patterns can be seen in microcosm when you stir milk into your tea. Hence the title of her highly successful book - Storm in a Teacup.She writes regularly for the Guardian, and has made numerous radio and television programmes about colour, bubbles, the sun, the weather - and the science behind sound and music. Her latest is a three part television series about temperature.She chooses music by Strauss which reminds her of her Polish heritage; music by Dvorak which evokes the long sea voyages she undertakes for her research into ocean bubbles; music by Verdi which celebrates her fascination with technology and industry. And she gives the definitive, scientific answer to that most vital of questions: what's the best shape for a champagne glass?Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Another chance to hear pianist Alfred Brendel in conversation with Michael Berkeley in 2017. Alfred Brendel, one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, died in June aged 94. He was renowned for his masterly interpretations of the works of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Liszt and Beethoven. He talks to Michael Berkeley about the composers and musicians he admires, and looks back at his early life. It wasn't a musical childhood; the family had no record player, but his mother used to sing cabaret songs. The Second World War made an unforgettable impression. Brendel reveals too what drew him to live in Britain: the musical culture here, the Third Programme, the Proms, and the flourishing choral tradition. He also talks honestly about how the deafness of his later life affected his love of music, and how he dreamed of music all the time and played it continually in his head.Brendel was too modest to pick any of his own recordings for his Private Passions music selection, so following the 2017 programme Michael Berkeley presents some of his personal favourite Brendel recordings of works by Bach, Mozart and Schubert.Original producer: Elizabeth Burke, a Loftus production for BBC Radio 3 Repeat producer: Graham Rogers

Many Private Passions guests over the years have revealed their passion for Bach. But for some, the great composer has really transformed their lives. The great primatologist Jane Goodall, for instance, describes how she reached such a dark time in her life that she considered giving up altogether. Four of her workers had been kidnapped in Africa, in the chimpanzee sanctuary she'd established. The money for her research had come to an end. At crisis point, she went into Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and heard Bach's famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor being played on the organ. Bach gave her hope, and transformed her vision of the world so that she could carry on. "It helped me to understand that I was a small person in a big world. And the world was very beautiful. It caused me to think about the meaning of our lives, and what am amazing thing it is that this little creature can encompass so much. So I came out a different person.""Bach deals with death, but also with transcendence..." - so says architect Daniel Libeskind who reveals how Bach sustained him when he was building the memorial to 9/11 in New York. Alan Bennett describes first hearing the St Matthew Passion in Leeds Parish Church when he was growing up, while Vivienne Westwood discovered Bach's Passions only recently: "I don't believe in God, but the beauty, the hypnotic rhythm lifts you." And tenor Mark Padmore talks about singing the Evangelist in Bach's Passions, how he never tires of the music, and how there's always something more to discover. As Joan Armatrading says at the end of the programme: " This guy Bach - how IS that humanly possible?"Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.

Jane Birkin came to fame in the swinging 60s, thanks to her wild beauty and daring appearances in avant-garde films such as Blow-up, and thanks also to her tempestuous relationship with Serge Gainsbourg. In 1969 their song "Je t'aime" was banned by the BBC and the rest is history; it became the biggest-selling foreign language record ever. Since then, Jane Birkin has appeared in more than fifty films, been awarded the OBE for services to Anglo-French relations and released thirteen albums. In Private Passions, she remembers Paris in the 1960s, and above all, her beloved Serge Gainsbourg; she describes the night they met in vivid cinematic detail. She talks too about her marriage to the film composer John Barry and chooses music he wrote for the funeral of her daughter. She talks perceptively about getting older, and the strange freedom age brings.Music choices include Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring; Allegri's Miserere; John Barry's music for The Lion in Winter; Mahler's 10th Symphony, and Bernstein's West Side Story. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.