Stephanie Hughes with music and arts news, including a report on the first-ever Australian performance of Wagner's Ring cycle. Music includes at 6.30 Haydn's Variations in F minor, H XVII 6, performed by pianist Mikhail Pletnev ; at 7.15 Honegger's Pacific 231 played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conductor Charles Dutoit ; and after the 8.00 news a Scarlatti piano sonata played by Vladimir Horowitz.

With
Peter Hobday. Buxtehude Prelude in C, BuxWV137
Ton Koopman (organ)
9.05 Ravel Rapsodie Espagnole Vienna Philharmonic, conductor Constantin Silvestri
9.20 Beethoven Variations in E flat,
Op 44
Itzhak Perlman (violin), Lynn Harrell (cello), Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano)
9.34 Poulenc Concerto in G minor for Organ, Timpani and Strings Maurice Durufie (organ), French Radio Orchestra, conductor Georges Pretre
9.57 Marais Suite No 1 in C (Pieces en Trio) Amalia Ensemble

Charles Mackerras
Australian conductor
Charles Mackerras talks to Joan Bakewell about his operatic career and his passion for the music of Mozart.
With excerpts from Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro.

Women Writers
With Peggy Reynolds.
4: Elizabeth Gaskell. A minister's wife, Elizabeth Gaskell found time to write seven novels and masses of stories. She loved music and always hired a piano when she went abroad. She was a fine dancer too, and very nearly caused a scandal in Germany when she grasped the arm of the baron who was dancing with her. Including:
Mozart Variations on "Ah, Vous Dirai -Je, Maman", K265
Daniel Barenboim (piano)
Haydn Symphony No 98 in B flat (4th mvt) Philharmonia, conductor Leonard Slatkin
Chopin Barcarolle in F sharp, Op 60 Roland Pontinen (piano)
Anon God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen Taverner Consort

Chris de Souza considers how
Brahms commemorated his mother in his Horn Trio and looks at the background to the composition of the German Requiem.
Horn Trio in E flat, Op 40; A German Requiem
Repeated next Thursday 12 midnight

The last of five concerts given earlier this year by the Lindsays of string quartets by Shostakovich and Tippett.
The Lindsays
Shostakovich String Quartet No 4, Op 83
Tippett String Quartet No 5 Repeat

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Conductors Andras Ligeti and Markus Stenz , Stephen Kovacevich (piano), Julian Gavin (tenor), BBC Symphony Chorus
Kodaly Psalmus Hungaricus
Brahms Piano Concerto No 2 in B flat;
Symphony No 2 in D

Dvorak wrote his Violin Sonatina for his children to play, Beethoven composed a piano trio movement to encourage a little girl's musical studies, and Janacek's Mladi is a nostalgic reflection of youth. Penny Gore introduces a programme inspired by childhood, including a performance of the Dvorak work by Philippe Graffin (violin) and Stephen Coombs (piano).
Repeated from yesterday 10pm

Designs on the Cello
Bach and Britten both wrote seminal works for cello, so what is left to be said? Verity Sharp meets composers selected by the SPNM who are trying out some new ideas in a workshop, with cellists Philip Sheppard and Andrew Shulman and composer John Woolrich.

Sean Rafferty 's guest is Louis Lortie , the French-Canadian pianist whose playing has been likened to that of Alfred Cortot and who tomorrow evening begins a seven-concert cycle of the complete Beethoven sonatas at London's Wigmore Hall. Music includes Beethoven's Piano Sonata in G, Op 14 No 2 played by Lortie at
5.35, and Sibellus's Karelia Suite at about 6.40.

More from the London Symphony Orchestra's Shostakovich retrospective, conducted by the composer's friend Mstislav Rostropovich.
Maxim Vengerov (violin), Elena Prokina (soprano),
Sergei Aleksashkin (bass),
London Symphony Orchestra, conductor Mstislav Rostropovich
Shostakovich Violin Concerto No 2;
Symphony No 14
Next programme Monday 7.30pm

Magnum at the Millenium
Five programmes celebrating 50 years of photojournalism from the world's most famous photo agency. 4: Surviving History. The shaping events and movements of the postwar era as they have been captured on film by Magnum photographers.

Preludes, Op 28 (selection) Shura Cherkassky (piano)

Handel and the Bishop. One of the most influential figures in Handel's early career was Agostino Steffani , a composer, papal diplomat and Bishop of Spiga. Handel owned a copy of some of Steffani's vocal duets and imitated his style in his own music for two voices. Lucie
Skeaping introduces some of Handel's finest duets and two of Steffani's own, specially recorded for the programme by Sophie Daneman (soprano), Paul Agnew (tenor),
Laurence Cummings (harpsichord) and Helen Gough (cello). Producer Lindsay Kemp Repeated tomorrow 4pm

Paul Allen explores the persistent appeal of the Gothic, from the wilder excesses of Victorian architecture to vampire clubs in modern New York.
He talks to Richard Davenport-Hines , whose new book on the theme is subtitled Four Hundred Years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin, and looks at the re-emergence of Gothic in the urban landscape of modern film and fiction. Plus a profile of French screen icon Jeanne Moreau in the light of a major retrospective of her films.
Producer Doug Traill-Stevenson

Alyn Shipton and Campbell Burnap review some new CD releases.

Roger Nichols surveys the music of Debussy's last ten years. Today, he introduces music from 1914 and 1915. Epigraphes Antiques Werner Haas and Noel Lee (piano duet) Berceuse Heroique
French National Radio Orchestra, conductor Jean Martinon
En Blanc et Noir
Katia and Marielle Labeque (pianos) Cello Sonata Maurice Gendron ,
Jean Frangaix (piano)
Pour les Notes Repetes (Etudes) Garrick Ohisson (piano) Repeated from last Thursday

With Donald Macleod.
1.00 Mahler Symphony Series Symphony No 6
Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, conductor Edo de Waart
2.25 Luys de Narvaez Los Seys Libros del Delphin (excerpts) Hopkinson Smith (vilhuela)
3.00 Schools
3.00 Alphabet Time 3.10 Music Workshop 3.30 Let's Move 3.50 Words Alive! 4.05 First Steps in Drama 4.20 Listen and Write 4.40
Standard Grade English
5.05 Weber, arr anon Concertino in C Geoffrey Payne (trumpet),
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, conductor Michael Halasz
5.15 Hildegard of Bingen 0 Pulchre Facies
Sequentia
5.25 Scarlatti Sonata in A, Kk208 llze Graubina (piano)
5.30 Tavener Funeral Ikos
Norwegian Soloists' Choir, conductor Grete Helgerod
5.35 Otto Taubmann Malinconia ,
Op 20
Arto Noras (cello),
Tapani Valsta (piano)