In this episode, BBC Music Magazine’s editor Oliver Condy talks to the former Guardian editor and now principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Alan Rusbridger.

While the editor of a national paper during the Arab Spring, Wikileaks controversies, the newspaper hacking scandal, riots in the UK and more, Alan Rusbridger found time to learn and perform Chopin’s Ballade No. 1, a feat he describes in his book Play It Again: An Amateur Against the Impossible.

Recordings featured:

Chopin: Ballade No. 1

Murray Perahia (piano)

Sony Classical 

Britten: Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra

New York Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein

Sony Classical 

Bach arr. Busoni: Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland

Alfred Brendel (piano)

Decca

Beethoven: String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131

Takacs Quartet

Decca 

Schubert: Variations on an Original Theme

Andreas Staier & Alexander Melnikov (piano)

Harmonia Mundi

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