Private Passions is a weekly music discussion programme which has been running for over 10 years on BBC Radio 3, presented by the composer Michael Berkeley. The one-hour show is broadcast almost every Sunday in the UK, and is available on demand through the BBC website. BBC Radio 3 is a domestic UK BBC radio station, which devotes most of its schedule to classical music. ... Michael Berkeley (born 1948) is a British composer. ...

Every week Berkeley interviews a notable guest about their life and musical interests and plays a selection of their favourite pieces. The emphasis is on classical music but also embraces jazz, world music and popular song. Classical music is a term with three distinct meanings: The European tradition of music which is associated with high culture, as distinct from popular or folk forms (including works in this tradition in non-European countries). ...

The show's guests range from celebrities to musicians, academics and physicians. The "life and works" aspect of the interview is generally secondary to the discussion about musical passions, and Berkeley often aims to explore a guest's unexpected musical interests, such as the classical music passions of John Peel. Autobiography John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, and journalist. ...

In December 1997, one of Berkeley's guests was 112-year-old Viennese percussionist, "Manfred Sturmer", who told anecdotes about Brahms, Clara Schumann, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg and others so realistically that some listeners did not realise that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by Berkeley and John Sessions. As a tie-in to Comic Relief, other Sessions creations have appeared on Berkeley's show, such as Argentinian opera impresario and cocaine smuggler "Pilar Woffington" and dissolute and politically incorrect conductor "Sir Jimmy Disperin".^[1] This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Clara Schumann Clara Josephine Wieck Schumann (September 13, 1819 – May 20, 1896) was one of the leading pianists of the Romantic era as well as a composer, and wife of composer Robert Schumann. ... This article is about the German composer of tone-poems and operas. ... Schoenberg redirects here. ... A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real. ... John Sessions in the 1990 film Sweet Revenge. ... Comic relief is the inclusion of a humorous character or scene or witty dialogue in an otherwise serious work, often to relieve tension. ...

Private Passions may be regarded as the Radio 3 equivalent of Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4. Desert Island Discs is a long-running BBC Radio 4 programme. ... BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station which broadcasts a wide variety of chiefly spoken-word programmes including news, drama, comedy, science and history. ...

A book about the first ten years of the programme, written by Berkeley, was published in 2005.^[2]

The programme's theme tune is Michael Berkeley's "The Wakeful Poet" (from Music from Chaucer) performed by the Beaux-Arts Brass Quintet.^[3]

2007 guest list

• Dr Miriam Stoppard, physician
• Charlie Higson, actor and author
• Colin Wilson, author
• Henry Goodman, actor
• James May, TV presenter

Miriam Stoppard (nee Miriam Moore-Robinson) is a British physician, author, television presenter and agony aunt. ... Charlie Higson (born, 1958 in Frome, Somerset) is an English actor and producer, an author, television writer and a comedian. ... Colin Henry Wilson (born June 26, 1931) is a prolific British writer. ... Henry Goodman is a theatre actor. ... James Daniel May (born 16 January 1963, in Bristol) is an English television presenter and journalist best known as co-presenter of BBC Two motoring show Top Gear, along with Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson. ...

References

External links

• "Private Passions" website
• BBC Radio player