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Claire Bartleet

Front Row: Vermeer exhibition; tennis on film; pianist Mitsuko Uchida

Vermeer exhibition; tennis on film; pianist Mitsuko Uchida

25/06/2013

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Vermeer exhibition; tennis on film; pianist Mitsuko Uchida

Music in the paintings of Vermeer; two new tennis documentaries; pianist Mitsuko Uchida.

Michael Berkeley on the use of music in Vermeer's paintings, advice for writers from TV producers, tennis champions in new films, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida's Cultural Exchange.

With Mark Lawson,

For the first time, three Vermeer paintings of female musicians are on show together at the National Gallery, London. They form the centrepiece of a new exhibition examining music as a motif in Dutch painting of the 17th Century. Composer Michael Berkeley considers the various roles played by musical instruments in the art of that period. 

For many writers working in TV drama, the trickiest things they have to deal with are the notes from the producers. At their worst, such notes can confuse and undermine a writer's vision. At their best, they can help a writer to see a better way of telling the story. Peter Bowker, writer of Blackpool, Desperate Romantics and Monroe, and Patrick Spence, the executive producer on Murphy's Law, Lilies, and Hancock and Joan, reflect on the best and the worst notes writers receive.

As Wimbledon gets under way, Ed Smith reviews two tennis documentary films. Venus and Serena shows the lives of the champion sisters as children, in their shared home and battling illness in 2011. The Battle of the Sexes, which takes its title from the famous 1973 match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, explores the relationship between women's professional tennis and the Women's Liberation movement.

For Cultural Exchange, the pianist Mitsuko Uchida selects Piero della Francesca's Resurrection. She explains how she was inspired by Piero della Francesca's fresco and why great art, whether music or painting, does not have to be technically perfect.

Producer Claire Bartleet.

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