I don’t know if Desert Island Discs was, in 1942, the original radio programme where an interview is disguised as a discussion of the guest’s favourite music - that friendly format which allows the interviewee to show off, sometimes unashamedly & without challenge, its genius in making them choose the only eight records they could listen to, possibly for the rest of their life – we all like to play that game.
Private Passions has been going on Radio 3 for a mere 15 years. There is more musicology in the interplay between Michael Berkeley & his guests (who do not necessarily have any musical training) & the format produces some interesting exchanges about how music produces its effects on non- experts who nevertheless have an ‘ear.’ I am intrigued to learn from the website that the programme is recorded in Michael Berkeley’s own London home. The musical choices are played at greater length – whole tracks, if not actually whole works.
Classic FM has the Classic FM Interview on Saturday evenings where the bonhomous Nick Ferrari talks to ‘some of today’s best known personalities’ about their lives & favourite pieces of classical music.
Now Radio 3’s weekday mid-morning Essential Classics adopts the same format between 10.30 and 11, with the same guest stripped across the week. One newspaper reviewer finds this a bit too much – said that by the end of the week the interviewee seemed like a house guest who had outstayed their welcome.
I had a different concern – trying to work out if the item goes out live every day, with the guest having to trek to the studio, or whether the chat is recorded all in one go & the programme put together later.
Certainly some of the earlier guests sounded surprised by the interviewer’s Hello! on Tuesday , Wednesday …, but recently it has sounded less forced. Since 5 mornings for a whole week would be quite some undertaking for a guest with plenty of other commitments I suspect it must be pre-recorded (by the same company which produces Private Passions) & not necessarily in the studio at all.
The website says gnomically that “Their choices are spread across the week’s programmes.”
I recently heard a trail on RTÉ Radio 1 for a programme with what sounds like a very similar format, but unfortunately on one of their FM or digital stations which cannot be picked up over here by old-fashioned steam radio.
