Early Music Show

Lucie Skeaping explores the story of the virtuoso German violinist Thomas Baltzar, nicknamed "The Incomparable Lubicer". He caused a storm in early 17th Century England and was acclaimed as the greatest violinist in the world.

Early music stalwart, the soprano Dame Emma Kirkby chooses some of her favourite seasonal music from the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque.

Lucie Skeaping talks to chef Clarissa Dickson Wright about Handel's love of food. Contemporary pictures and biographers depicted the composer as being over-interested in food, and having a 'great appetite'. From the famous London chop houses and al fresco picnics along the Thames to new spices and curries, Lucie and Clarissa explore eating and drinking habits in Handel's day.

In 1609, one of the "most eccentric characters in an age of professed eccentics", one Thomas Ravenscroft edited Pammelia, the earliest English printed collection of rounds and catches. Lucie Skeaping explores the life and music of the man who wanted to produce "Harmony to please, varietie to delight".

Lucie Skeaping celebrates the 40th anniversary of the UK's pioneering period orchestra, the Academy of Ancient Music, in the company of Music Director Richard Egarr. Together they look back over the orchestra's history and listen to some of its most important recordings.

Lucie Skeaping explores the relationship between Jean-Philippe Rameau and his main patron Alexandre Le Riche de la Poupelinière.

Lucie Skeaping in conversation with Peter Phillips, director of the Renaissance choral group the Tallis Scholars, which maintains its world wide popularity 40 years after it was founded. Over the years, many of their 60 or so CD recordings have reached iconic status and Peter will be choosing some of the highlights as he talks about the group's history, the important part it played in the early music revival during the 70s and 80s, and how they are now broadening their horizons by commissioning and performing works by contemporary composers.

Chorales, or German hymn tunes, played a central role in the sacred music of German composers right from the time of Martin Luther (who wrote some of them himself) up to that of JS Bach. Lucie Skeaping explores some of the ways in which these composers used them.

Lucie Skeaping presents a profile of one of the earliest and best-known English operas - Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas", the love story of the Queen of Carthage and her Trojan hero.

Lucie Skeaping talks to musicologist Ian Gammie about the life and travels of the inimitable Charles Burney. The 18th century music-writer, teacher, organist and composer was well known for having opinions on just about everything and, during his extensive travels through Europe, he met some of the great musical luminaries of his day, including Padre Martini, Scarlatti and even the young Mozart.

As part of the BBC's Sound of Cinema season, Lucie Skeaping presents a profile of the harpsichord in film scores. Lucie looks back on the pioneering work of Wanda Landowska in stimulating a renewed interest in the instrument in the first third of the 20th Century, and how the distinctive sound of the instrument quickly found a use in the cinema. She considers how the harpsichord has been used in film to suggest a sense of the past; a sense of the present; and how its created a particularly effective colour in the world of horror films.

Lucie Skeaping introduces a diverse selection of early music inspired by Greek myths.

Virtually unknown a few decades ago, Georg Philipp Telemann's orchestral suite 'Hamburger Ebb' und Fluth' (Hamburg Ebb and Flow) is fast becoming a rival to Handel's 'Water Music'. Written in 1723 to celebrate the centenary of the Hamburg Admiralty it tackles watery subjects such as the sea deities Thetis, Neptune and Triton, sporting Naiads and even the city's drainage channels! Lucie Skeaping explores the work and its musical context.

Catherine Bott looks at the vocal and choral music of Domenico Scarlatti, best known today for his 555 keyboard sonatas. Having grown up in Italy with a rather domineering opera composer as a father, it was inevitable that Scarlatti should have picked up some of his musical influences from the stage, and from the church. By the time Scarlatti settled in Lisbon in the 1720s to work for the Portuguese royal family, he was already one of the best-known opera composers in Europe and had a reputation for his sacred works, approved by the Vatican. Now, most of his vocal and choral music is lost (a good deal of it in the disastrous earthquake which hit Lisbon in 1755), and his reputation rests on the more than five hundred keyboard sonatas he wrote for his famous pupil, Princess Maria Barbara of Portugal.

As part of the Sound of Cinema season, Catherine Bott looks at the story and the soundtrack of the 1994 film "Farinelli" - a biopic of the great 18th century castrato and his colourful relationships with women, with his older brother and with the composers Handel and Porpora.