Radio choice Charlotte Runcie

On and Off the Valleys Lines

RADIO 4, 11.00AM

This new three-part series tells the story of the Welsh Valleys through its railways. The railways chart Wales’s industrial past and move through some of its most affluent areas, closest to Cardiff, and some of it most deprived, such as former mining villages where unemployment is a major concern. Each programme includes discussions with regular passengers and those who live in the areas where the track passes, plus we also hear about a proposal to create a “Valleys Landscape Park” tourist attraction. Radio 3 in Concert RADIO 3, 7.30PM

Continuing the Welsh theme on the radio is this concert, as the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and pianist Stephen Hough perform Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto, and chief conductor Thomas

Søndergård conducts Brahms Symphony No 1 in C minor, as well as Dvořák’s The Golden

Spinning Wheel, based on the dark fairy tale by Karl Erben. Hough has been named by The

Economist as one of 20 Living Polymaths, and is a writer and painter as well as an accomplished musician.