Private Passions - Rachel Cusk

Canadian-born author Rachel Cusk is Michael Berkeley's guest this week. After finishing her schooling in England she went on to Oxford University, and won the Whitbread First Novel Award for 'Saving Agnes' (1993). Since then her books have included 'A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother' (2001),;'Arlington Park' (2006), which was shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Prize for fiction; 'The Bradshaw Variations' (2009), and 'The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy' (also 2009), which is a memoir of a three-month family stay in Italy. Rachel Cusk's music choices are all classical, and focus on piano and vocal music. They start with Bach and Beethoven played on the piano by Glenn Gould and Richard Goode respectively; while Lorraine Hunt Lieberson sings Handel's 'As with rosy steps the morn'. Then there's music by Britten (the opening of the canticle 'Abraham and Isaac') and Janacek (an excerpt from Act II of 'Jenufa'); Shostakovich's First Piano Concerto played by Russian pianist Dmitri Alexeev; an extract from Stravinsky's oratorio 'Oedipus rex', and part of Gerald Finzi's Eclogue, played by pianist Piers Lane with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.