Tracy Chevalier
Michael Berkeley's guest is novelist Tracy Chevalier. Her musical choices include works by Schubert, Dvorak, Brahms, Schumann, Bernstein and Talking Heads.
Michael Berkeley's guest is the best-selling novelist Tracy Chevalier, whose 'Girl with a Pearl Earring', inspired by Vermeer's enigmatic painting, has sold 4 million copies worldwide and was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johanssen. Her novels so far have been historically based, and include 'The Lady and the Unicorn', inspired by a famous set of medieval tapestries in the Cluny Museum in Paris. Her latest book, 'Remarkable Creatures', tells the story of two early 19th-century female fossil-hunters whose remarkable discoveries pre-dated Darwin and upset the establishment status quo.
Tracy Chevalier , who grew up in Washington DC and was educated at Oberlin College, Ohio, and then at the University of East Anglia, has lived in London for over 20 years. She played the clarinet as a child, and her music choices begin with two extracts from symphonies featuring a clarinet solo - Schubert's 'Unfinished' and Dvorak's 'From the New World' - as well as Brahms's Second Clarinet Sonata. Her choices also include two much-loved piano pieces, Schubert's Impromptu in G flat major played by Canadian pianist Paul Berkowitz and Schumann's 'Of Strange Lands and People', played by Alfred Brendel; as well as the Prologue to Leonard Bernstein's masterpiece 'West Side Story'; a piece of plainchant from a medieval part-book found in the Spanish monastery of Montserrat, which inspired Tracy Chevalier while she was writing 'The Lady and the Unicorn', and 'Once in a Lifetime' by Talking Heads.
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Music Played
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Michael Berkeley
The Wakeful Poet (Music from Chaucer)
Performers: Beaux-Arts Brass Quintet
- BBQ BBQ 003.
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Franz Schubert
Symphony no 8 in B minor (Unfinished), (excerpt from 1st movt, Allegro moderato)
Performers: Vienna PO/Sir Georg Solti
- Franz Schubert.
- DECCA 430 439-2.
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Johannes Brahms
Clarinet Sonata no 2 in E flat, Op 120 (2nd movement, Allegro appassionato)
Performers: Thea King, clarinet; Clifford Benson, piano
- Brahms Clarinet Sonatas.
- HYPERION CDS 44340.
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Anton铆n Dvo艡谩k
Symphony no 9 in E minor (From the New World), (4th movement, Allegro con fuoco)
Performers: London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Colin Davis
- LSO 0001.
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Leonard Bernstein
Prologue
Performers: Original Broadway Cast Recording/Max Goberman (Musical Director)
- West Side Story.
- SONY SK 60724.
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Franz Schubert
Impromptu in G flat major, D899
Performer: Paul Berkowitz, piano
- Schubert.
- MERIDIAN CDE 84102.
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Anon.
Polorum regina (from the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat, the Red Book of Montserrat)
Performers: The Osnabr眉ckner Youth Choir/Johannes Rahe
- Llibre Vermell.
- JARO 41712.
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Robert Schumann
Of Strange Lands and People (from Kinderszenen, Op 15, no 1)
Performer: Alfred Brendel, piano
- Alfred Brendel.
- PHILIPS 434 732-2.
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Talking Heads
Once in a Lifetime
- Remain in Light.
- SIRE K256867.
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