The Listening Service

BBC Radio 3’s weekly journey of imagination and insight poses the question: “How do you set words to music”? The composer and pianist Richard Sisson, who wrote the score for Alan Bennett’s The History Boys at The National Theatre, and who is one half of the cabaret double-act Kit and The Widow, joins presenter Tom Service at the piano to work out how composers from Schubert to Sondheim, Beethoven to Bacharach, have fused poetry and music to create some of our best loved songs. As an added challenge Richard will set some poetry to music live before the eyes – and ears – of the audience.

To be broadcast on Sunday 4 June at 5PM on BBC Radio 3