Music Matters - 18/10/2008

Petroc Trelawny talks to leading American composer John Adams about his new musical memoir Hallelujah Junction, and how he has been blacklisted by US security for the perceived morality of his political stage works. Authors David Huckvale, Peter Dickinson and Adrian Wright review each other's recent books on the composers Lord Berners and William Alwyn and about the British composers who composed music for Hammer horror films. And as a rare Stradivarius cello, expected to fetch over one million pounds, is about to be auctioned online, Petroc investigates the phenomenal prices such instruments command and asks who is buying them.