Programme Information

Saturday 29 November 2008

BBC RADIO 2 Saturday 29 November 2008

Comedian Jimmy Carr joins Dermot O'Leary to co-host the first hour of this week's show. He plays some of his favourite records.

There's also music from Emmy The Great, who performs her new single, We Almost Had A Baby, which is the first from her new album, First Love.

Presenter/Dermot O'Leary, Producer/Ben Walker

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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BBC Radio 2 hosts an exclusive live performance of the music from Monkey: Journey To The West, the new work from Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, the team behind Gorillaz.

With a specially arranged score, this radio production is based on their album of the same name and features Chinese and European musicians from the original theatre production.

This unique performance was recorded on Tuesday 25 November at the BBC's Radio Theatre in London.

Producer/Paul Long

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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BBC RADIO 3 Saturday 29 November 2008

Musicologist and conductor Nigel Simeone visits Paris to tell the story of classical music activity in the city during the dark years of Nazi occupation. He speaks to historians, musicologists and musicians who vividly outline both the oppression and the resistance in the concert halls, conservatoires and radio studios of the times.

Presenter/Nigel Simeone, Producer/Dave Sheasby

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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Work on one of the most monumental artistic achievements ever seen on Earth began 500 years ago this year, as Michelangelo began to paint the now iconic ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Remarkably, Michelangelo was born in 1475, the same year as work on the Sistine Chapel began. He was just eight when it was finished and 33 when he began the task of painting the Chapel's ceiling, which took him four years to complete.

Lucie Skeaping traces the lives of the great artist and the Chapel through music, examining this historic event in more detail.

Presenter/Lucie Skeaping, Producer/Sam Philips

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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Still regarded as one of the greatest soloists and innovators in jazz, Charlie Parker made hundreds of recordings, but which are the essential items for a jazz collection? Alyn Shipton explores Parker's work – from his earliest big band days to the time of his premature death, including his partnerships with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Fats Navarro. Alyn is joined in the studio by Brian Priestley to discuss Parker's live recordings, and by Peter King, who explains Parker's significance as a saxophonist.

Presenter/Alyn Shipton, Producers/Simon Poole and Alyn Shipton

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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Opera On 3 – Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust: Live From The Met Saturday 29 November 5.30-8.30pm BBC RADIO 3

Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham
who plays Marguerite

James Levine conducts Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust, live from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in the first of a new season of live Saturday broadcasts.

Goethe's version of the 16th-century "true story" of Dr Faustus, who sold his soul to the devil, fascinated the young Berlioz, who went on to compose what he termed a "dramatic legend", in which his Faust is more of a bored but deeply feeling romantic than a scholar, who is tricked by Méphistophélès into selling his soul to save the woman he loves, the sweet and innocent Marguerite.

Berlioz's score was a step too far for his contemporaries and its lack of early success deeply wounded him, but the famous Hungarian March in Part 1, Méphistophélès's Song Of The Flea, with almost cinematic music and wonderful use of choruses, helped to re-establish him as a great composer with more recent audiences.

The cast includes mezzo-soprano Susan Graham (Marguerite), basses John Relyea (Méphistophélès) and Patrick Carfizzi (Brander), tenor Marcello Giordani (Faust) and the Orchestra and Chorus of Metropolitan Opera.

Presenter Margaret Juntwait is joined by guest commentator Ira Siff.

Presenter/Margaret Juntwait, Producer/Tony Cheevers

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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Dramatist and theatre director Lou Stein draws upon the many sound recordings he's made during his life, mapping a distinctive audio journey that explores the tensions between selective memory and identity.

Lou bought his first MiniDisc recorder when they were launched more than 15 years ago, and has used it since, like a camera, snapping sound recordings of places and events wherever he's found himself. What excites him about "crossing the same river twice" is the opportunity to revisit key points in his life, a chance to reflect upon the nature of memory as triggered by sound as opposed to image. Experience, Lou concludes, transforms the nature of the sounds when heard again with the distance of time and experience.

As a Jewish-Catholic native New Yorker, Lou uses his album of sounds in the spirit of jazz improvisation, creating a free association that links his childhood in Brooklyn with significant moments in his adopted country, particularly in Belfast, London and the Outer Hebrides. It is an extremely personal sound story, with universal themes, in which Lou reflects upon his own childhood, contrasting it with the life of his son, born two years ago with Down's syndrome. In this light, and taken again with hindsight, the journey to childhood and back develops its own new surprising meanings and destinations.

Presenter/Lou Stein, Producer/Mark Smalley

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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BBC RADIO 4 Saturday 29 November 2008

Boscobel is a tense and thrilling escape story from Ian Curteis.

Defeated in battle following the execution of his father, the future Charles II must flee England or face death. Over a 40-day journey, young Charles has much to learn, including how to live rough, how to evade capture and how to earn the kindness of strangers.

Charles's only route to safety in France consists of a series of dashes across hostile territory, during which he has to rendezvous with people risking their lives to help him. In undertaking the physical journey, he also crosses the psychological line into adulthood. Charles, the pampered prince, stripped of every advantage of rank, encounters many difficulties and has to juggle with his inheritance, his prospects and the temptation of betraying those who love him in order to save his own skin.

The cast includes Simon Woods as Charles, Kevin Eldon as Derby and Chris Larkin as Wilmot.

Producer/Rebecca Pinfield, Director/Dirk Maggs

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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BBC RADIO 5 LIVE Saturday 29 November 2008

5 Live Sport Saturday 29 November 12.00noon-6.00pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

Mark Pougatch presents an afternoon of live sport from Twickenham, with all the build-up ahead of England v New Zealand in rugby union's autumn Test series, with live commentary of the game from 2.30pm. The programme also features regular updates from Wales v Australia at the Millennium Stadium.

At 12.30pm there's commentary from the top of the Coca-Cola Championship as Wolves take on Birmingham in the West Midlands derby, live from Molineux, and from 3pm there are updates from the day's Barclays Premier League and Clydesdale Bank Scottish Premier League matches.

Presenter/Mark Pougatch, Producer/Mark Williams

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

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BBC 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA Saturday 29 November 2008

Cricket Saturday 29 November 2.50-11.00am BBC 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Live, uninterrupted commentary of the sixth One Day International between India and England comes from Guwahati, with the Test Match Special team.

Producer/Jen McAllister

BBC 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

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Rugby Union Saturday 29 November 2.15-4.15pm BBC 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Uninterrupted commentary of the rugby union autumn Test match between Wales and Australia comes live from the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

Producer/Jen McAllister

BBC 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

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