´óÏó´«Ã½

In honour of Radio 3's New Year celebration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Michael Berkeley delves into the Private Passions archive to recall distinguished former guests who chose Mozart among their greatest enthusiasms. The late crime writer Michael Dibdin kicks off with Mozart's String Quartet in G, K387; then comes opera director Graham Vick, who was hard-pressed to narrow his Mozart choices down, but who eventually settled on a scene towards the end of 'The Magic Flute' . Psychologist and novelist Salley Vickers selected the slow movement of the Piano Concerto No.24 in C minor, K491; while actor Lenny Henry, political commentator Jonathan Dimbleby and Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo all had different reasons for choosing the opening movement of the Piano Sonata in A, K331. Two recent award-winning writers, Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson, and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, both selected extracts from Mozart's darkest and perhaps most psychologically disturbing opera, 'Don Giovanni'; while actor Simon Callow recalls his stage triumph as Mozart in Peter Shaffer's 'Amadeus', with the Adagio from the Serenade in B flat, K361, played to spine-tingling effect at the pivotal point of the drama. Finally, actor Fiona Shaw chooses the opening chorus of Mozart's last, unfinished work, the Requiem.