Programme Information

Aled Jones says Good Morning Sunday to rocker Alvin Stardust and finds out more about his Christian faith.

Aled is also joined by Father Brian D'Arcy, presenter of BBC Radio 2's Sunday Half Hour which celebrates its 70th anniversary this month. Father Brian provides this week's Moment Of Reflection.

Presenter/Aled Jones, Producer/Hilary Robinson for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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BBC Radio 2 presenter Bob Harris is Johnnie Walker's guest on this week's programme as Johnnie continues to celebrate the Seventies, playing classic tracks from both sides of the Atlantic and archive sessions.

Bob, whose Radio 2 shows can be heard on Saturday and Thursday evenings, reminisces about the decade with Johnnie, including his work on the influential BBC television series The Old Grey Whistle Test.

Presenter/Johnnie Walker, Producer/Natasha Costa Correa for Wise Buddah

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Alan Titchmarsh presents Melodies For You, an eclectic mix of tunes from the worlds of classical, opera, operetta, musicals, films, brass and military bands and jazz.

Tonight's programme features music from Offenbach's La vie Parisienne and Saint Saens's Organ Symphony. In addition, Alan's A-Z Of Operetta looks at the life and works of Ivor Novello.

Presenter/Alan Titchmarsh, Producer/Bridget Apps for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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Brian D'Arcy celebrates the 70th anniversary of Sunday Half Hour

On 14 July 1940, the very first edition of Sunday Half Hour was broadcast from St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol.

It was described as a programme of "community hymn singing" and was intended to boost the morale of troops serving abroad during the Second World War. This week, Brian D'Arcy celebrates its 70th anniversary with a special extended programme of celebration recorded in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London last month.

With music from massed choirs and a packed congregation, he introduces some of the listeners' favourite hymns and finds out precisely what it is that has made the programme so long-lived and so well-loved. Hymns include Great Is Thy Faithfulness, Love Divine and How Great Thou Art. The musical director is Andrew Earis and the organist is Martin Ford.

Presenter/Brian D'Arcy, Producer/Janet McLarty for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

BBC PROMS 2010/OPERA ON THE BBC
Prom 3 – Simon Boccanegra

Sunday 18 July

6.00-9.30pm BBC RADIO 3

• www.bbc.co.uk/proms
• www.bbc.co.uk/opera
• Press pack (BBC Proms 2010)
• Press pack (Opera On The BBC)

Joseph Calleja, Marina Poplavskaya, Plácido Domingo and Jonathan Summers in Simon Boccanegra

Plácido Domingo adds a new role to his list of well over 100 operatic parts: the title role in Verdi's opera Simon Boccanegra, with Royal Opera House forces under Antonio Pappano, live from London's Royal Albert Hall and introduced by Donald Macleod.

Classic Verdi themes are at the heart of his opera Simon Boccanegra: the clash of love and power, and an intense relationship between Boccanegra and his long-lost daughter, Amelia.

Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo has sung over 130 different operatic roles. However, he had never sung a baritone role until a year ago, when he took on a part he had long wanted to play: Simon Boccanegra, the Doge of Genoa. "Verdi didn't have any children," says Domingo, "and in any opera when you have the parts of father and daughter, he wrote his best music."

The cast also includes soprano Marina Poplavskaya as Amelia Grimaldi (Maria Boccanegra); tenor Joseph Calleja as Gabriele Adorno; bass Ferruccio Furlanetto as Jacopo Fiesco; baritone Jonathan Summers as Paolo Albiani; bass Lukas Jakobski as Pietro; tenor Lee Hickenbottom as the captain; and mezzo-soprano Louise Armit as the maid. Antonio Pappano conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House.

This Prom will be repeated on Tuesday 20 July at 2pm.

Presenter/Donald Macleod, Producer/David Gallagher

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In the 150th anniversary year of Gustav Mahler's birth, Norman Lebrecht travels in the footsteps of the composer in search of those whose lives have been touched and changed by his music.

Beginning with Mahler's early life, Lebrecht talks of a child who's so terrified by what's going on at home that he runs away deep into the woods, where he sits on a log, listening. Something that he heard there became part of him. The noise of the wind blowing through the pines sounds like the note A – the note on which he starts his first symphony not many years later. A long, drawn-out A – the A, Lebrecht says, that has made his Gustav Mahler.

Lebrecht visits not just the places Mahler lived and the music he made, but people alive today who have been touched by his music.

Mahler was born in the tiny village of Kaliště in the Czech Republic – a few houses around a murky pond where his father's distillery is in ruins and is now for sale. There, Jiří Štilec has transformed the house where Mahler was born into a museum. Štilec says that when he had problems with his marriage, he used Mahler's Fourth Symphony as medicine – the long, melancholic melodies of the slow movement gave him hope.

At the Opera House in Vienna, where Mahler was director, the music archivist is Peter Poltun. A former American diplomat to Turkey, Poltun used the Fourth Symphony as an escape from the difficulties he encountered when in negotiations with security officers during the violence that engulfed Turkey in the Seventies.

Renate Stark-Voigt is a musicologist who's spent years working on a complete and final edition of the Second Symphony. She describes hearing the adagietto from the Fifth Symphony for the first time; it had such an affect on her that she had to spend weeks in the public rental library listening to the music again and again on LP. She became a music scholar because she had to understand what was behind Mahler's music and why it affected her so much. Yet there were times, such as when her first child died, that she simply couldn't listen to his music.

Travelling from Kaliště to Jihlava, the town of Mahler's childhood in the Czech Republic, Lebrecht moves on to Vienna and then to Klagenfurt in the south of Austria. There, after three years at the Opera and as a powerful man in the land, Mahler built a composing cabin deep in the woods and it was there that he found the voice he had been looking for ever since he was an infant. In the heart of nature, untroubled by the human conflicts he explores in his symphonies, he composed some of his darkest music.

Presenter/Norman Lebrecht, Producer/Jeremy Evans

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

Oscar-winning actor and director Tim Robbins talks to Kirsty Young about his life, his career and his favourite music in Desert Island Discs.

Born 16 October 1958 in West Covina, California, Tim grew up in New York City's Greenwich Village. He has numerous credits as an actor, director, writer and producer of films. These include The Shawshank Redemption, Mystic River, Arlington Road, Jacob's Ladder, Steven Spielberg's War Of The Worlds and Robert Altman's The Player.

Tim has won numerous awards for his acting including an Oscar, a Golden Globe and Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Tim talks to Kirsty about his life and career and describes how he would cope on BBC Radio 4's mythical desert island.

Presenter/Kirsty Young, Producer/Leanne Buckle for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Classic Serial – The Glass Bead Game Ep 1/2

Sunday 18 July

3.00-4.00pm BBC RADIO 4

The Glass Bead Game, starring Derek Jacobi, is a dramatisation of Hermann Hesse's novel set in a futuristic, utopian society.

Joseph Knecht is a rising star in the Castalian Order, a band of elite intellectuals who live a closeted life of study and Glass Bead Game playing.

But Joseph's elevation to one of the highest and most respected ranks of the Order coincides with a crisis of conscience, as his ever-deepening doubts about this idealistic and sanitised society threaten to topple its very foundations.

In the first episode, Joseph is singled out from an early age as one of the Castalian elite. As his education progresses, Joseph quickly proves himself as a gifted Glass Bead Game player and a promising candidate for the higher echelons of the exclusive Castilian Order.

Dramatised by Lavinia Greenlaw, The Glass Bead Game stars Derek Jacobi as the biographer, Tom Ferguson as Joseph and Aidan Parsons as the young Joseph.

Producer/Susan Roberts for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

Open Golf

Sunday 18 July

12.00noon-7.30pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

John Inverdale presents live coverage of the final day of the 2010 Open Championship from St Andrews.

The commentary team is lead by BBC Radio 5 Live's golf correspondent Iain Carter, alongside John Murray, Clare Balding, Alistair Bruce-Ball and Conor McNamara, with expert analysis from Bernard Gallacher, Mark Roe and Jay Townsend. Chris Evans is 5 Live's roving reporter out and about around the course, speaking to players and fans.

There are also updates and reports from the 14th stage in the Tour de France.

Presenter/John Inverdale, Producer/Graham McMillan

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

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Men's Hour With Tim Samuels Ep 1/6

Sunday 18 July

7.30-8.30pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

After 44 years of BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, its cheeky younger brother Men's Hour With Tim Samuels makes its debut on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Hosted and created by award-winning journalist and broadcaster Tim Samuels, the six-part series delves into uncharted emotional territory for men – bringing real candour to the challenges of relationships and life, alongside some irreverent manly banter. Less about leering at ladies and more concerned with how to maintain monogamy, this is a men's mag women have been waiting for.

Tim is accompanied by leading males from the world of entertainment, sport, politics and media – as well as an on-hand shrink – as they leave their comfort zones behind; familiar people talking about unfamiliar things. Louie Spence, choreographer and star of Pineapple Dance Studio, also joins Tim as a regular weekly guest.

Each week, the show features guest interviews and regular features such as Questions You Daren't Ask Your Doctor and Midlife Music Crisis.

Presenter/Tim Samuels, Producer/Jon Holmes for Tonic Production

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

Tour De France

Sunday 18 July

2.45-4.20pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Cycling fans can enjoy uninterrupted commentary on the 14th stage of the 2010 Tour de France, from Revel to Ax 3 Domaines.

Producer/Jen McAllister

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

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5 Live Baseball

Sunday 18 July

7.00-11.00pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Josh Chetwynd and Jonny Gould present the Major League Baseball programme, with a round-up of all the latest news from the week in baseball.

There's also live commentary of the St Louis Cardinals versus LA Dodgers from the Busch Stadium, St Louis, in the National League.

Presenters/Josh Chetwynd and Jonny Gould, Producer/Simon Crosse for USP Content

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

Fun Lovin' Criminal Huey Morgan talks to James Mercer from The Shins and uber-producer and one half of Gnarls Barkley, Danger Mouse, about their collaboration, Broken Bells.

Mutual fans of each other's work and having met in 2004 at a rather messy Roskilde Festival, James Mercer and Danger Mouse got together in 2008 to create Broken Bells, whose spacey and psychedelic melodic rock on their debut self-titled record is a highlight in both of their already impressive careers.

Huey chats to them about making a genuinely collaborative record; Danger Mouse's production work, including the trailblazing Grey Album; and that night in Copenhagen...

Plus this week sees Mark Ronson start his residency in Sharing Is Caring, choosing a rare or special cut from his vast record collection, to share with Huey and listeners, and talking about the influences on his latest album, aptly entitled Record Collection.

Presenter/Huey Morgan, Producer/Rebecca Maxted for Wise Buddah

BBC 6 Music Publicity

Weekend Breakfast has the latest on today's Nottingham Mela at the Arboretum Park. BBC Asian Network DJs Murtz, Noreen and DJ Kayper host the main stage, which enjoys performances from Raghav, The Raghu Dixit Project, Rizwan Muazzam Qawaal, Rajhastani Folk Music And Dance, Ash King, Orchestra Music World and many more.

BBC Asian Network Publicity

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Today's Bhangra Breakdown celebrates the latest stop on BBC Asian Network's A Summer Of Melas tour, at the Leicester Mela. Later today, visitors can enjoy a colourful mix of live music and entertainment at the Mela and the show has a special guest in to talk about what they can expect.

BBC Asian Network presenters including Sonia Deol, Tommy Sandhu, Dipps and Sonny Ji are co-hosting the stage, introducing live acts including Preeya Kalidas, Rishi Rich Camp, Mumzy Stranger, H Dhami, Jernade Miah and many more.

There is also the best classic and new Bhangra, plus another spin in the Bhangra Time Machine, and a budding artist gets a chance in Break Out.

BBC Asian Network Publicity