Private Passions

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Private Passions Podcast

Discussion & Talk

Music: Classical

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates, and talk about the influence music has had on their lives

Private Passions: Sister Teresa Keswick

Sister Teresa Keswick

BBC Radio 3 - Private Passions, Sister Teresa Keswick

Michael Berkeley’s Easter guest is Carmelite nun Sister Teresa Keswick.

Sister Teresa Keswick, a former London lawyer who became an enclosed nun, shares her life story and the music she loves with Michael Berkeley.

Some 40 years ago, Teresa Keswick exchanged her career as a London lawyer for life as a nun in an enclosed and largely silent Carmelite monastery in Norfolk. She’s devoted her life to prayer and work and has become a highly skilled embroiderer. Since 2014 she’s written a regular column for The Oldie magazine. 

In a special programme, originally broadcast on Easter Day 2021, Sister Teresa shares her fascinating life story and the music she loves with Michael Berkeley. 

Teresa tells Michael about her initial reluctance to accept her vocation and leave her busy social life in London for a remote monastery in the Norfolk countryside and the contentment she eventually found in the strict daily routine of prayer and work. 

She chooses pieces by Handel and by Beethoven that reflect her life before she became a nun, and two pieces of plainchant that play a central role in the life of her community. She describes her ongoing love of 1960s pop music and we hear a song by Simon and Garfunkel that she still plays when she has a day off from work, once a month. And she appreciates the importance of having fun – in life and in music – choosing the party scene from the opening of La traviata, which recalls a wonderful evening at the opera when she lived in London. 

Teresa describes how her community celebrates Easter Day and chooses music from Bach’s Mass in B Minor; she says this music is the only thing that comes close to describing Christ’s resurrection. 

Producer: Jane Greenwood
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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