The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
Gerard O’Donovan On My Wavelength
Many will be familiar with the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died last month, through his film scores – beginning with the haunting music for the David Bowie-led
1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence and going on to grace some of the biggest films of the past 40 years, including The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky and The Revenant. But, as Matthew Sweet reveals in today’s tribute Sound of Cinema (Radio 3, 3pm), there was so much more to this hugely charismatic composer, musician and actor.
Retro radio enthusiasts are in for a good week. Sunday sees the launch of the BBC’s Hidden Treasures season of recently recovered “lost” radio dramas, starting with a production of Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter (Radio 4, 3pm) starring Bob Hoskins and Roy Kinnear, unaired since its original broadcast in 1981. Elsewhere, in The Early Music Show: Bach’s St John Passion at 300 (Radio 3, 2pm), Hannah French explores the origins and enduring impact of one of the most ambitious pieces of religious music ever written.
With trust in public institutions in seemingly terminal decline, Rachel Botsman’s timely series
The Trust Shift (Monday to Friday, Radio 4, 1.45pm) traces the social history of trust and examines why public trust is in a state of flux. In Monday’s opener, Botsman takes us back to the 11th century and a group of merchants who first developed a system to enable them to do business with people they didn’t know.
Speaking of trust, in The Reinvention of Poland (Tuesday, Radio 4, 11am) Anne McElvoy explores why Polish voters recently ejected the populist
Law and Justice Party from government after eight years in power and voted for a coalitionled by that bete noir of Brexiteers, Donald Tusk, instead. Tusk pledged to reposition Poland as a pro-EU liberal democracy and “recapture” the media, judiciary and key institutions from the grip of ultra-conservatism.
A treat for Elbow fans on Wednesday when Huw Stephens (6 Music, 4pm) welcomes Guy Garvey and the band to the studio in Manchester to perform a live session – featuring new tracks and familiar classics – to celebrate the release of their 10th studio album. There’s an upbeat theme to Wednesday’s live Radio 3 in Concert (Radio 3, 7.30pm), too, as the City of Birmingham SO celebrates American mavericks, with pieces by Frank Zappa, Charles Ives and George Lewis alongside Gershwin’s reliably uplifting Rhapsody in Blue.
As Easter approaches, Boom Radio steps up its efforts to lure yet more listeners away from Radio 2. On Thursday, the swashbuckling pioneers of pirate radio at Radio Caroline are honoured, with a day devoted to the 60th anniversary of the station’s seaborne launch. Among the former Caroliners celebrating are Roger Day (2pm), and Tom Edwards and Nick Bailey (6pm).
The theme is taken up again on Good Friday in Clash of the Pirates (Friday, Radio 2, noon) when veteran DJs Johnnie Walker and Tony Blackburn celebrate their own piratical origins in a two-hour battle of playlist one-upmanship. Later, Dame Judi’s Classical Favourites with Zeb Soanes (Classic FM, 9pm), is set to be another winner, with the ever-charming Dench revealing why Peter Maxwell Davies’s Farewell to Stromness, among others, is a heartfelt personal favourite.