Episode description

Bradley Cooper directs and stars in the new film Maestro about the hugely influential American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein alongside Carey Mulligan as his wife, the actor Felicia Montealegre. Nick Ahad speaks to both of them about portraying a ‘marriage through music’ and how Cooper spent six years preparing to conduct Mahler’s Resurrection with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Fifty years after his death, for many the playwright and composer Noel Coward is very much a figure of the British establishment. However as a new production of his most famous work, Brief Encounter, opens at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Front Row brought together its musical director Matthew Malone and Sarah K Whitfield, co-author of An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre 1900 – 1950, to discuss how Coward’s songs reveal a more radical side of his artistry.

Kirsty Lang reports on the Wien Museum, the Viennese institution which has just re-opened and for the first time includes an acknowledgement of the city’s Nazi past.

Critic Kate Maltby reflects on the news that Indhu Rubasingham has been appointed the next director of the National Theatre. She will be the first female and the first person of colour to lead the theatre.

Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu