About this programme

Michael Berkeley's guest is historian and political biographer DR Thorpe. His musical choices begin with Go Forth Upon Thy Journey, Christian Soul from Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, which reminds him of the great Huddersfield choral tradition in the area where he grew up. The three composers who mean most to Thorpe are Strauss, Wagner and Britten, and his other choices include excerpts from Strauss's Elektra and Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, as well as Depart from Britten's early song-cycle Les Illuminations.