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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music

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Samira Ahmed

Leif Ove Andsnes

Matt Wolf

Choman Hardi

Michael Carlson

Ellie Bury

Front Row: Leif Ove Andsnes, Mack & Mabel, Choman Hardi, EL Doctorow remembered

Leif Ove Andsnes, Mack and Mabel, Choman Hardi

22/07/2015

Leif Ove Andsnes, Mack & Mabel, Choman Hardi, EL Doctorow remembered

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Leif Ove Andsnes, Mack & Mabel, Choman Hardi, EL Doctorow remembered

Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes discusses performing Beethoven's piano concertos at the Proms.

Arts news with Samira Ahmed, including pianist Leif Ove Andsnes on performing Beethoven's piano concertos at the Proms, a Mack & Mabel review and Kurdish poet Choman Hardi.

Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes comes to the end of a long journey at the Proms - he's travelled around the world performing and conducting Beethoven's five Piano Concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The performances and recordings have won praise and awards including Recording of the Year from BBC Music Magazine. Andsnes discusses devoting himself to one composer for four years.

Michael Ball plays Mack Sennett, a silent-movie director in a revival of the 1974 musical Mack & Mabel at the Chichester Festival Theatre. Based on a true story, Mack is so struck by Mabel Normand, the girl delivering the studio lunch sandwiches, that he puts her in the movies. Matt Wolf reviews.

The American author E. L. Doctorow has died aged 84. In an extract from a 2014 interview he explains why he never liked the label of historical novelist, and the writer Michael Carlson discusses Doctorow's work.

Iraqi Kurdistan poet Choman Hardi explores statelessness, genocide, conflict and Kurdish identity in her poetry. She talks to Samira about the challenges of capturing the complexities of war in verse and the insights that poetry can give into conflict.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Ellie Bury.

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