Programme Information

This summer Pierre Boulez goes back to Bayreuth , his first visit since 1980, to conduct a new production of Richard Wagner's Parsifal. Tom talks with Boulez about why he is returning to the spiritual home of Wagner's music where his original production of Parsifal once shocked the conservative Bayreuth audience.
Parsifal opens the Bayreuth Festival on 25 th July.
You can hear Boulez conducting the Ensemble Intercontemporain and the BBC Singers on Radio 3 at the Proms, Prom 65, 3 rd September 2004 at 10pm .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/whatson/0309.shtml

British novelist, Jonathan Coe , is known for his often satirical portraits of contemporary culture in books like What a Carve Up and The Rotters' Club. He talks about his musical interests, defending lesser-known composers and explaining why Kurt Atterberg and Herbert Howells mean more to him than Beethoven and Mozart.
Tom reflects on Coe's thoughts in discussion with John Deathridge, Professor of music at Kings College London and Michael Spring , Sales, Export and Marketing Manager at Hyperion Records.
The Closed Circle , Jonathan Coe's sequel to The Rotters Club, will be available on the Penguin Viking label from September 2004.

Tom went to the launch of the government's controversial Music Manifesto to talk to David Miliband, the Schools Standards Minister. Conceived as a collaboration with around 70 music organisations, from community music groups to international record companies, the Manifesto aims to rejuvenate music provision in the country.

John Haines, author of Eight Centuries of Troubadours and Trouveres. The Changing Identity of Medieval Music, talks with Tom about the origins of the troubadour music and how his study of its reception serves to illustrate the development of the modern concept of 'medieval music'.
John Haines's book is published by Cambridge University Press, hardback, £50