The format of this programme is an interview of a prominant person about their significant musical choices and it can illuminate both the person and their biography as well as their musical choices.

Today at 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is writer and philosopher Colin Wilson, whose extensive output began with the publication 50 years ago of The Outsider, the book in which he coined the phrase New Existentialism, and has gone on to embrace literary, music and film criticism, science fiction, the occult and criminology. His musical tastes range from a Haydn string quartet to symphonies by Prokofiev and Howard Hansen and operas by Benjamin Britten and Berg.

Message edited by its author, Apr 29, 2007, 3:15am.

Today:

Michael Berkeley's guest is Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Oxford University, and a noted commentator on constitutional and political issues.

A passionate music-lover, his choices reflect his love of the piano, with works by Bach, Shostakovich, Beethoven and Schubert, and also an interest in the part music has played in politics, illustrated by an extract from Wagner's Parsifal and Prokofiev's Sixth Symphony.

Message edited by its author, Apr 29, 2007, 3:04am.

Today: Michael Berkeley's guest is one of Britain's best-known contemporary playwrights, Mark Ravenhill. He shot to fame with a series of plays whose contemporary themes, black sense of humour and sensational subject-matter - exploring subjects such as alternative sexuality and drug-taking - have intrigued and scandalized audiences all over the world.

His musical choices have a strongly political slant and reveal a passion for opera, ranging from Offenbach's satirical comedy Orpheus in the Underworld to Beethoven's Fidelio, Verdi's Rigoletto, John Adams's Nixon in China and Britten's Peter Grimes.

David Yallop
Sunday 3 June 2007 12:00-13:00 (Radio 3)

Michael Berkeley's guest is the investigative writer David Yallop, whose books have probed some controversial subjects, including the Sicilian mafia, Colombian drug cartels, high-profile criminal cases, and alleged corruption within the Vatican, including the mysterious death of Pope John Paul I. His most recent book, The Power and the Glory, investigates the papacy of John Paul II.

His musical choices range from Gregorian chant, to piano music by Bach and John Field, string quartets by Mendelssohn and Beethoven, and music by the English composers George Butterworth and Elgar.

Colm Toibin
Sunday 29 July 2007 12:00-13:00 (Radio 3)

Michael Berkeley's guest is award-winning Irish writer Colm Toibin, whose novels include The Blackwater Lightship, The Master and a collection of short stories, Mothers and Sons.

A passionate music lover, his choices include Pablo Casals playing Bach, songs by Faure, Gluck, Schubert and Sibelius, a string quartet by Irish composer Frederick May and an excerpt from Wagner's Die Walkure.

Sunday 5 August 2007 12:00-13:00 (Radio 3)

Michael Berkeley talks to actress Felicity Kendal, who is best known for playing Barbara in the classic 1970s sitcom The Good Life.

Her musical choices include Tabla music from India, vocal music from the Westminster Cathedral Choir, works sung by Maria Callas and Placido Domingo and a range of concertos from Vivaldi to Elgar.

Private Passions 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long). Michael Berkeley talks to Peter Kosminsky, director of award-winning TV dramas tackling highly controversial social and political issues such as child abuse (No Child of Mine), the Balkan and Iraq wars (Warriors, Government Inspector) and Muslim extremism (Britz). His musical choices include Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Mozart's Requiem, Philip Glass's The Photographer and Bruch's Kol Nidrei.

Sunday 9th November 2008. Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long). Michael Berkeley's guest is writer David Almond, whose award-winning children's book Skellig has been made into an opera with music by Tod Machover, and which is being performed later this month at The Sage in Gateshead. David is an opera lover and his musical choices include works by Monteverdi, Mozart, Handel, Puccini and Bartok as well as traditional Japanese Noh music.

Sunday 23rd November 2008. Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is rock star Rick Wakeman, keyboard player with the rock group Yes, film composer, session musician for artists such as Elton John, David Bowie, Cat Stevens and Ozzy Osbourne as well as a familiar guest on TV shows such as Grumpy Old Men and Have I Got News for You. He intended to become a concert pianist, and his musical choices reflect a deep love of music from Eastern Europe, with works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Smetana and Arvo Part.

Message edited by its author, Nov 23, 2008, 3:09am.

Sunday 30th November 2008
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley talks to Welsh actor Paul Rhys, who played Theo van Gogh in Robert Altman's film Vincent and Theo, Ludwig van Beethoven in the BBC TV mini-series, and who is appearing in the current series of Spooks. His choices range from a Welsh male voice choir to Bach's St Matthew Passion, taking in works by Beethoven, Purcell, Schubert, Mahler, Puccini, and Ravel.

Thanks for posting these details Antimuzak. Intrigued at the last moment by Rick Wakeman's choices I listened to the programme a few minutes before it went offline this morning. Wakeman is certainly not your average 1970s rock star and his self-effacing comments together with the musical choices were a real pleasure to hear. So thanks again for posting that - it really brightened up my morning.

Sunday 14th December 2008
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is Polish-born illustrator Jan Pienkowski, creator with Helen Nicoll of the much-loved Meg and Mog series of children's books and a pioneer of the modern pop-up book. His most recent publication is an illustrated version of the Christmas story The Nutcracker. His musical choices, which all have strong personal resonances, reflect his Polish background as well as his love of both Italy and England. They include works by Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Rachmaninov and The Beatles.

Sunday 28th December 2008
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley talks to comedian Sue Perkins, who is one half of comedy duo Mel and Sue and stars with Giles Coren in the BBC2 series The Supersizers Go. She revealed a totally new area of expertise when she won the BBC'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.

Sunday 4th January 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley talks to broadcaster and political commentator Jonathan Dimbleby, chair of Radio 4's Any Questions?, biographer of Prince Charles and presenter of a recent BBC TV series about contemporary Russia. He studied the piano until his mid-teens, and has chosen a Mozart piano sonata as well as music by Verdi, Bach, Beethoven, Britten and traditional ambassel music from Ethiopia.

Sunday 11th January 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is actress Kate O'Mara, well known for her glamorous roles in 1980s TV series such as Howards' Way and Dynasty. She has recently returned to the stage as Marlene Dietrich in Lunch with Marlene and as Mrs Cheveley in the Peter Hall/Bill Kenright production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband. Her musical passions range from baroque music by Bach and Zelenka through pastoral scenes by Dvorak and George Butterworth to Shostakovich Jazz Suites and Edith Piaf singing Milord.

Sunday 25th January 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is Pakistan-born writer and film-maker Tariq Ali, whose books examine the often troubled political relationship between West and East. A passionate music-lover, his choices begin with Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit and end with a highly topical song by Hans Eisler and Bertold Brecht, taking in along the way music by Gluck, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and the great Muslim Sufi poet and musician Bulleh Shah.

Sunday 8th February 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Actress Claire Bloom reveals her musical passions to Michael Berkeley, including operas by Mozart, Bellini, Verdi, Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss, as well as pianist Alfred Brendel playing Schubert, cellist Heinrich Schiff playing Bach and the end of Schoenberg's Transfigured Night.

Sunday 1st March 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley meets Ffion Hague, wife of shadow foreign secretary William Hague, who has published a highly-rated book on the women in former prime minister Lloyd George's life. A native Welsh-speaker, Ffion loves music, having played clarinet and cello as a teenager, and is an enthusiastic singer. Her musical choices include Bryn Terfel singing a Welsh lullaby, Bruckner's motet Christus factus est, Faure's Cantique de Jean Racine and concerto movements by Mozart and Bach.

Sunday 22nd March 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is screenwriter and director Terence Davies, whose films include Distant Voices, Still Lives, set in his native city of Liverpool, and an adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel The House of Mirth, starring Gillian Anderson. Music has always played a crucial part in Davies's life, and his choices include songs from musicals Singin' in the Rain and Gypsy, the voice of Kathleen Ferrier and symphonies by Sibelius, Shostakovich and Bruckner.

Sunday 29th March 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is Anthony Horowitz, one of the most prolific and successful writers of his generation, and author of the successful series of books about 14-year-old spy Alex Rider. Anthony's musical choices include Chopin's Prelude in E minor, played by Vladimir Ashkenazy, and the Study in C, played by Martha Argerich, as well as excerpts from Act I of Mozart's Don Giovanni, the Malo song from Britten's Turn of the Screw, the end of Philip Glass's Satyagraha and the end of Act 1 of Tosca. He also chooses I loved You from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, the overture to Maurice Jarre's score for Lawrence of Arabia, and the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, played by the Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan.

Sunday 5th April 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley meets actress, singer and songwriter Marianne Faithfull, the 1960s icon whose subsequent career has demonstrated her remarkable determination to overcome personal setbacks. Her musical choices include a Bach cello suite, a Mozart aria, chamber music by Beethoven and Schubert, songs by Bernstein and Bob Dylan, and John Coltrane's take on the Rogers and Hammerstein classic My Favorite Things.

Sunday 12th April 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Private Passions.

As part of Radio 3's Handel Week Michael Berkeley recalls nine previous guests who are passionate about aspects of Handel's music. They include Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, and writers David Almond, Kirsty Gunn, Patrick Gale and Janice Galloway. Plus cartoonist Posy Simmonds, journalist Fergal Keane and actor Dominic West, as well as the National Theatre of Brent, who bring the programme to a conclusion with the Hallelujah chorus.

Sunday 26th April 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is William Fiennes, award-winning author of The Snow Geese, whose new book, The Music Room, is about his family and their ancestral home in Oxfordshire. A passionate music-lover, William's choices range from piano pieces by Bach, Schubert and Shostakovich to chamber music by Beethoven and Messiaen and a Bruckner motet.

Sunday 24th May 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is GP and medical journalist James Le Fanu, author of books such as The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine, and Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves, in which he argues that Darwinism doesn't necessarily provide all the answers to human existence. He has always loved liturgical music, and his choices begin and end with a Byrd Mass and Haydn's The Creation. He also selects music by Bach, Beethoven and Schumann.

Sunday 14th June 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is actress Penelope Wilton, whose career encompasses stage plays by Chekhov, Lorca, Ibsen, Pinter and Terence Rattigan, TV work including Doctor Who, The Borrowers and Ever Decreasing Circles, as well as films such as Clockwise, Calendar Girls and Shaun of the Dead. Her musical interests range from Brahms and Anton Dvorak to Claude Debussy, Prokofiev and Kurt Weill.

The Kurt Weil choice was wonderfully sung by Sophie van Otter. There was a full-length rendition of Rodger's (and Hart's) "Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered" by Ella Fitzgerald which was also superbly performed. Penelope's choices came over well, intimate and lyrical.

Message edited by its author, Jun 14, 2009, 11:30am.

Sunday 21st June 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley talks to former Cabinet minister Michael Portillo, who since leaving the political arena in 2005 has enjoyed a wide-ranging career in journalism and broadcasting, from presenting TV discussion programmes and documentaries to chairing the 2008 Booker Prize judging panel. Many of his musical choices could be said to have a political edge, from Wagner's Ring cycle to Shostakovich's 13th Symphony and Puccini's opera Tosca.

I liked his choice of the A minor quartet D804 minuet, played by The Lindsays, intelligent and playful.

Schubert chamber music is always good, an interesting programme with interesting choices.

Tomorrow:

Sunday 5th July 2009 (starting tomorrow afternoon)
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley meets actor Jeremy Northam, whose musical choices range from piano pieces played by Andras Schiff and Keith Jarrett, jazz numbers performed by Earl Hines and Ella Fitzgerald to operas by Puccini and Janacek, Schubert's first piano trio and Mahler's Fifth Symphony.

Sunday 12th July 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is award-winning theatrical designer Richard Hudson, who won international acclaim for his imaginative and visually stunning designs for Disney's The Lion King, and has worked at most of the world's great opera houses on a wide range of operas from Handel to Judith Weir. He was born in Zimbabwe, and his musical passions range from the South African national anthem Nkosi sekelele Africa to Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Cole Porter.

Message edited by its author, Jul 12, 2009, 2:57am.

Sunday 6th September 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is Anthony Bolton, one of the most respected British investment fund managers in recent years. He is passionate about music and composes in his spare time, citing Benjamin Britten as a major influence on his work. His choices for Private Passions include the Elegy from Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, sung by Ian Bostridge. There is an opportunity to hear one of Bolton's own pieces, a newly-recorded carol called A Kiss for the Baby, sung by Oxford Voices, directed by Mark Shepherd.

Sunday 13th September 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley talks to actress Imogen Stubbs, who has starred in many stage productions at the RSC, National Theatre and in London's West End in leading roles ranging from Shakespeare to Harold Pinter and Michael Frayn. Her musical choices include Brahms' First Piano Concerto, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Jeff Buckley singing Britten's Corpus Christi Carol, Alfred Deller singing Purcell and Shaun Davey's The Relief of Derry Symphony.

Sunday 1st November 2009 (starting tomorrow afternoon)
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

John Stefanidis.

Michael Berkeley talks to interior designer John Stefanidis, whose work is renowned for its bold use of colour. He draws inspiration from different cultures, and his musical choices reflect his interest in India and Russia, as well as showcasing his favourite artists. They include sopranos Renee Fleming, Maria Callas and Kathleen Battle, as well as pianist Alfred Brendel and cellist Jacqueline du Pre.

Sunday 8th November 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley's guest is Vincent Cable, deputy leader and chief economic spokesperson of the Liberal Democrat Party. A passionate music-lover, his choices include Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto, K466, played by Murray Perahia, and a selection of voices ranging from Luciano Pavarotti in Verdi's Requiem to Nicolai Gedda in Mozart's Don Giovanni and Jessye Norman in Strauss's Four Last Songs.

Sunday 15th November 2009
Time: 12:00 to 13:00 (1 hour long)

Michael Berkeley meets British jazz pianist Jason Rebello, who has released several of his own albums as well as working with Sting. He trained as a classical pianist, and his choices include Ivo Pogorelich playing Ravel, Alfred Brendel playing Beethoven and Keith Jarrett improvising on Somewhere Over the Rainbow as well as excerpts from Durufle's Requiem and Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste.