The international journalist and author Christopher de Bellaigue shares his passion for the music that reflects the decades he has spent as a journalist immersed in the politics and daily life of Turkey, the Middle East and South Asia. He has written five award-winning books on these regions, and numerous articles for The Economist, The Guardian and The London Review of Books on subjects as varied as technology, mental health and the environment.
He chooses a setting of the poetry of the great Sufi mystic Rumi; music from Philip Glass’s opera about Gandhi; and a Venetian madrigal that relates to his new book, about the Ottoman Emperor Suleyman the Magnificent, the most powerful man in the world in the 16th century. As emperor it was routine practice to murder all your male relatives, and anyone else who even slightly displeased you, but Christopher explains that Suleyman was also a law maker and, after a colourful early love life, eventually settled down with one woman for the rest of his life.
Christopher tells Michael about the joy he has found becoming part of his wife’s family in Tehran and about the way Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto helped him to engage with his grief and start to come to terms with his mother’s depression, thirty years after her death.
Producer: Jane Greenwood
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVshVoB7vv4
Canadian pianist Chilly Gonzales is on a mission - to get us all playing. His piano books and online pop music masterclasses attract hundreds of thousands of hits. Classically trained, he has one of the least orthodox careers in recent music: he made his name in rap, electronica and pop, becoming a successful songwriter and producer for the likes of the rapper Drake and the band Daft Punk. More recently he has been composing for piano and now for strings as well. He has a mission to break down the barrier between art and entertainment, and above all, a simple, overriding passion for music.
His stage shows - both in concert halls and in less conventional places such as old Cold-War German bunkers - are pretty dazzling affairs, and he appears dressed like a matinee idol in a silk robe and slippers.
Chilly chooses music by Mahler, Michael Nyman and Scarlatti, and songs from Fauré, Dionne Warwick and Drake.
He talks to Michael about musical genius, the art of rapping, and above all the endless possibilities and joy he finds in the piano.
Produced by Jane Greenwood
A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFlwDdunVoY