Radio choice Charlotte Runcie

Eugénie Grandet RADIO 4 EXTRA, 10.00AM

 Honoré de Balzac’s classic 1833 novel about miserliness in his The Human Comedy series is given a beautiful dramatisation by the novelist Rose Tremain, in this 2014 production starring Sir Ian Mckellen as the mean vine farmer Felix Grandet. Grandet has amassed a fortune but lives in feigned poverty with his innocent daughter, Eugénie, and their lives are disrupted with the arrival of Eugénie’s cousin, the spoilt Charles, whose father has killed himself. Tragedy and comedy blend in a family story redolent of King Lear.

Radio 3 in Concert RADIO 3, 7.30PM

 Sun-soaked major key symphonies are the gorgeously summery subjects of tonight’s concert, as Daniele Gatti conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra in performing Mendelssohn’s Symphony No 4 “Italian” and Brahms’s Second, composed in the summer of 1877 and playing on his famous lullaby. Brahms sent it to his publisher with his tongue in cheek, describing it as “so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it. I have never written anything so sad.” On the contrary, it’s a sumptuous feast of warm summer happiness.