Sacred Music

Production: BBC
Executive Producer: Peter Maniura

Programme run: 4 x 60 mins

A rich visual and musical journey through 600 years of Sacred Music. Turning points in the history of music include the birth of polyphonic or "many-voiced" music alongside the construction of the great Gothic cathedral of Notre-Dame, the Italian Renaissance, how Henry VIII's break with the Roman Catholic Church created dilemmas of faith and music for his chief composers and how Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation prompted a musical revolution for Johann Sebastian Bach.

Discovering Tchaikovsky

Production: BBC
Executive Producer: Francesca Kemp

Programme run: 2 x 60 mins

Conductor Charles Hazlewood and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra explore Tchaikovsky's music through two of his most famous works. The Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, inspired by a love affair which eventually ended in his partner's suicide was completed when Tchaikovsky was only 29. Charles Hazlewood argues that 6th Symphony, the Pathetique, is one of the darkest creations in all music, and Tchaikovsky himself claimed to have put his whole soul into it.

A Waste of Shame

Programme run: 1 x 90 mins

An intense drama about the passionate and destructive love triangle that consumed William Shakespeare, tantalisingly encoded in his sonnets. Emotionally bereft after his separation from Anne Hathaway and the death of his son Hamnet, Shakespeare hurtled into a brooding obsession with the "Lovely Boy" and an extra-marital affair with a "Dark Lady". Rupert Graves, Zoe Wanamaker and Anna Chancellor star.