RADIO CHOICE

JESSIE BUCKLEY, who played Marya in the BBC’s stunning War & Peace, takes a very different role in the new film Wild Rose. She plays a singer who is hellbent on becoming a big country music star. Jessie (pictured), who came second in the 2008 BBC musical star search I’d Do Anything, joins KEN BRUCE (RADIO 2, 9.30AM) each morning this week to pick her Tracks Of My Tears. She gets off to a good start with tracks from Dixie Chicks and Etta James.

TWO hours of Abba music brings a party spirit to the bank holiday schedules as Nicki Chapman presents LET’S ABBA PARTY! (RADIO 2, 12 NOON). There’ll be covers, cast recordings, film soundtracks and, of

course, performances from Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Bjorn and Benny themselves.

THE BBC National Orchestra of Wales performs Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Festival Overture to open tonight’s RADIO 3 IN CONCERT (7.30PM) celebrating the most important weekend of the Christian calendar. Grainger’s lovely Blithe Bells and Vaughan Williams’s Five Mystical Songs follow; then, after the interval, Bach’s Easter Oratorio, with its passages of great peace and joy, concludes the concert.