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Front Row: John Eliot Gardiner, Le Week-End, Breathless

John Eliot Gardiner, Le Week-End, Breathless

07/10/2013

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, John Eliot Gardiner, Le Week-End, Breathless

Le Week-End and Breathless reviewed, and John Eliot Gardiner on his new book about Bach.

Arts news. Le Week-End reviewed, John Eliot Gardiner discusses his new book on Bach, and neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reviews Breathless, ITV's new hospital drama set in the '60s.

With Mark Lawson

Breathless is a new prime-time period drama from ITV set in a London hospital during the early sixties. The programme follows the lives of a group of doctors and nurses and, like Mad Men and The Hour, combines period glamour with historical social commentary. Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reviews.

Le Week-End stars Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as a middle aged couple who embark on a trip to Paris to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary, with less than romantic results. The comedy is the latest collaboration from writer Hanif Kureishi and director Roger Michell. Jenny McCartney reviews.

The conductor John Eliot Gardiner discusses the life and music of JS Bach, who he regards as the greatest composer. Gardiner's book, which he has spent the last decade writing, presents an "unsanitised" version of Bach, revealing his brutalising schooling, his brushes with the law, and the difficult conditions in which he wrote such masterpieces as The St Matthew Passion and the B Minor Mass.

Producer Stephen Hughes.

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