Sound of Cinema Sunday
BBC
Full details of Radio 3's all-day celebration of film music.
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BBC
From Charlie Chaplin to Barbenheimer, on Sunday 10 March 2024, BBC Radio 3 presents Sound of Cinema Sunday, an entire day dedicated to film music ahead of this weekend’s 96th Academy Awards.

Tracing the way film composition has created some of the greatest movie moments of our time, this Sunday will see the BBC Radio 3 airwaves filled with interviews, discussion and cinema scores, in the build-up to the high-octane LA buzz of the Academy Awards ceremony.

Highlights include Isobel Waller-Bridge in Sound of Cinema Sunday chatting to her fellow film composers including film titan Hans Zimmer, as well as Jerskin Fendrix, nominated for his soundtrack to Poor Things, and Ludwig Göransson, nominated for his soundtrack to Oppenheimer. In The Listening Service, "Needle Drop", Tom Service looks at how and why classical music is used in film, plus Between the Ears dives into the world of one of the greatest film composers of all time, Henry Mancini.

There is a special edition of The Early Music Show presented by Hannah French, who reflects on period music on the big screen with guest Jocelyn Pook, who provided music for Eyes Wide Shut, and The Merchant of Venice; in Private Passions, Michael Berkeley’s guest is the writer and director Mark Cousins, creator of the epic documentary series The Story of Film: An Odyssey. There’s also an interview with actor Ethan Hawke on playing the role of Chet Baker in Born to Be Blue, and Laura Karpman, one of this year’s Oscar nominees for her American Fiction soundtrack in Sunday’s special edition of Jazz Record Requests.

08.00-09.00 Breakfast

Martin Handley introduces music composed for the big screen, and features introductions from the composers themselves. Highlights include soundbites from Rickey Minor, Music Director for this year’s Academy Awards, John Barry talking to Sean Rafferty and Terence Blanchard, as well as music from the likes of film composers such as Rachel Portman (Emma, Chocolat) and Justin Hurwitz (La La Land, Whiplash) and Michael LeGrand (Yentl, The Thomas Crown Affair).

08.00-09.00 Breakfast

09.00-12.00 Sunday Morning

In a special edition of Sunday Morning, presenter Sarah Walker shares some of her favourite film music, delving into familiar classics and hidden gems. This morning Sarah revisits music which won the Oscar for Best Original Score almost forty years ago, and she delights in British film music from Malcolm Arnold alongside Ralph Vaughan-Williams and Doreen Carwithen. There’s also an operatic highlight inspired by the film Quartet, which starred Dame Maggie Smith, Tom Courtney and Billy Connolly. Cellist Caroline Dale talks about working with Thomas Newman on his score for Sam Mendes’ 1917, plus there’s music written for silent film from both Charlie Chaplin, Camille Saint-Saëns and Nitin Sawhney.

09.00-12.00 Sunday Morning

12.00-13.00 Private Passions

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the film-maker, producer and writer Mark Cousins. His documentary work includes The Story of Film, an epic 900 minute journey through the history of cinema, from the earliest moving images in the late 19th century to the digital innovations of our own times. Mark has interviewed many of the most significant directors and actors of the past half century, and with Tilda Swinton he created the Screen Machine, a large portable cinema which they and their supporters sometimes pulled by hand through the Scottish Highlands. Mark’s choices of film music range from Doris Day and Henry Mancini to a score by Alfred Schnittke and a song from Neneh Cherry.

12.00-13.00 Private Passions

13.00-15.00 Sound of Cinema Sunday

Composer Isobel Waller-Bridge presents two hours of music and conversation with special guests Hans Zimmer and Oscar nominees Ludwig Goransson (Oppenheimer) and Jerskin Fendrix (Poor Things). The programme celebrates the creativity underpinning so much contemporary film music. Isobel is also joined by Hollywood composer Nami Melumad (Star Trek, An American Pickle, Thor: Love and Thunder) for a look at how composers enter the profession. Soprano Renée Fleming talks about her role in the epic score of Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings.

15.00-16.00 The Early Music Show

Hannah French looks back at representations of period music in film. She talks to composer and cellist Peter Gregson about scoring the film A Little Chaos, directed by Alan Rickman, and starring Kate Winslet and Matthias Schoenaerts as two landscape artists who become romantically entangled while building a garden in King Louis XIV's palace at Versailles. Peter explains how he drew on the music of Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, a harpsichordist who worked at the Court of Louis XIV, and who composed much of her music in Versailles. Jocelyn Pook chats to Hannah about her inspirations when writing the music for the 2004 film of The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, and Joseph Fiennes. She speaks about drawing on Italian, English, and Sephardic Jewish music to infuse her score with a16th-century Italian flavour. Hannah also looks at how films have included existing music to create a sense of time and place, whether it's adaptations of music by Handel in The Madness of King George, or a more subtle influence in John Barry's Academy Award-winning score for the 1968 film A Lion in Winter, set in the Loire Valley in France in 1183.

15.00-16.00 The Early Music Show

16.00-17.00 Jazz Record Requests

Alyn Shipton presents listener requests for jazz in film, including music from Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Krzysztof Komeda. There’s an interview with Ethan Hawke on playing the role of Chet Baker in Born to Be Blue, from Herbie Hancock, who composed the music for Bertrand Tavernier's film Round Midnight starring Dexter Gordon. Plus, Laura Karpman, one of tonight's Oscar nominees for her American Fiction soundtrack featuring pianist Patrice Rushen, talks about her work.

16.00-17.00 Jazz Record Requests

17.00-17.30 The Listening Service

From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Barbie, from The Shining to Maestro, Tom listens in to some of the most iconic film scenes using needle-dropped classical music. He explores how directors harness the resonance and meanings of a piece of music to enrich the film's storytelling, and how a successful fusion of sound and image can leave such a deep impression in viewers' minds that music and film become inextricably entwined in popular consciousness. Plus Maggie Rodford – one of the film industry's most sought after Music Supervisors – pulls back the curtain on the processes and thinking behind choosing the right needle drop for the right scene to make the most meaningful movie.

17.00-17.30 The Listening Service

17.30-18.45 Words & Music

Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Laurel and Hardy, Judy Garland and Fred Astaire all make an appearance in today's programme celebrating the movies as the Academy Awards are handed out this weekend. The programme include poems by Anthony Brode, Sharon Olds, Jack Mitchell and Roger McGough, and prose by Raymond Chandler, Katherine Mansfield and F.Scott Fitzgerald. The music draws from Max Steiner's score for Casablanca, vintage Erich Korngold, Bernard Herrmann; songs by Elizabeth Lutyens and Francis Poulenc, and film-inspired music for the concert hall by John Adams, Charles Koechlin and Arnold Schoenberg.

17.30-18.45 Words & Music

18.45-19.15 Between the Ears

An immersive dive into the life and music of one of the greatest film music composers of all time: Henry Mancini, who was born 100 years ago this year. Mancini is one of the great icons of film music. His scores for movies like Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Pink Panther, or TV shows like Peter Gunn, not only brought him Academy Awards and a glittering career, but featured songs and themes that have become instantly hummable classics in their own right away from the screen. Alongside these seminal hits like Moon River or Days of Wine and Roses, and a reputation for 'cool jazz' Mancini was actually one of the most versatile composers in Hollywood. He pushed the artform in new directions and inspired some of the biggest names in film music today, from John Williams to Quincy Jones. This Between the Ears tells Henry Mancini's story from his early life as the son of Italian immigrants in Pittsburgh where he was first handed a flute by his father, through his years as a musician in the Big Bands, learning the film trade at Universal Pictures, and eventually to composing some of the most recognisable music on film. With recordings of Mancini himself from the BBC Archives, there’s also interviews with his daughter Monica Mancini, and son in law Gregg Field, as well as film historian Jon Burlingame and pianist Tom Poster.

18.45-19.15 Between the Ears

19.15-19.30 Sunday Feature: New Generation Thinkers – shorts

On Oscar night, New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester celebrates a film that's often included in lists of 'great movies' but struggles to be viewed other than through the lens of its own notorious reputation. Flaming Creatures fell foul of New York obscenity laws in the early 1960s, when it was first seen. The creation of avantgarde film maker Jack Smith, it follows an ensemble of artists, including for the first time on film drag performers. It was made in the rooftop studio Smith shared with Tony Conrad who provided the soundtrack. But the look, the challenge and the concept of the film was very quickly swamped by its reputation as 'pornographic' and, according to New York legislation of the time, 'obscene'. Diarmuid talks to people who knew Smith, and visits the filmmakers archive to see what Smith himself thought of both the film and its reputation, over which he had increasingly little control.

19.15-19.30 Sunday Feature: New Generation Thinkers – shorts

19.30-21.00 Drama on 3 – Benny & Hitch

The extraordinary and explosive relationship between director Alfred Hitchcock and the film composer Bernard Herrmann is explored in a radio drama directed by Tracey Neale, starring Toby Jones and Tim McInnerny. Recorded at Alexandra Palace with the BBC Concert Orchestra playing Herrmann's scores from the partnership's iconic films - Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho.

19.30-21.00 Drama on 3 – Benny & Hitch

Feature – Moon River: The story of the 1962 Oscars Best Song winner

"Wherever you're going, I'm going your way..." The story of Henry Mancini's unmistakable and Oscar-winning theme to Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which starred Audrey Hepburn.

Feature – Moon River: The story of the 1962 Oscars Best Song winner

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