The music of memory

Available for over a year

Kate Molleson talks to composer Mark-Anthony Turnage, a life-long Arsenal supporter, about his new piece 'Up for grabs' ahead of its premiere next week at the Barbican Centre in London. The work celebrates one of his team's most famous victories, back in 1989, and Kate learns about Mark’s setting of the personnel who played during this much-famed football match, as well as his thoughts about the relationship between music and sport. We drop by on rehearsals of a new chamber opera, “Tomorrow's Wonder. . . A Window into Our Lives”, by the composer Electra Perivolaris written in collaboration with a family dealing with dementia. The work was commissioned by the fledgling opera company, Theatre of Sound, and accompanies their new production of 'Bluebeard's Castle' which retells the story of Bartok's psycho-drama through the lens of a long and happily married couple coming to terms with dementia. We hear, too, from the flautist and music journalist Eugenia Zuckerman, author of 'Like Falling Through a Cloud - a Lyrical Memoir of Coping with Forgetfulness, Confusion, and a Dreaded Diagnosis', who talks candidly about her book which documents her fight against memory loss. And 'Richard Wagner in Venice: A Symphony' – we hear how composer Matthew King has reconstructed sketches left by the German composer, and created the new orchestral piece Wagner wanted to write towards the end of his life.