Private Passions - 02/03/2008

Michael Berkeley meets Dr Frank Tallis, a clinical psychologist specialising in obsessive-compulsive disorders who has also achieved success as a writer of detective novels. His Liebermann series of books is set in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, where his young doctor hero, a disciple of Freud, helps to solve complex crimes through the use of radical analytical techniques. Frank is interested in all the arts of the period, but particularly music, and pieces by Mahler and Zemlinsky feature among his choices, as well as vocal music by Gesualdo and Rachmaninov and a Viennese-sounding waltz from a film score by Takemitsu.