
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


As part of the British music season on Radio 3, poets from across the UK reveal their favourite music.
Sean O'Brien is a perfect choice for Private Passions because his poems capture the musical soundscapes of the north-east of England where he lives: the cries of gulls, the wash of the sea, the rumble of trains. In fact he's obsessed by trains, and for O'Brien, like many other poets, journeys by train are an inspiration and a form of meditation. So one of his choices is Steve Reich's hypnotic work Different Trains, in which the composer mixes fragments of train whistles and announcements. Sean O'Brien's other choices include Little Feat, Schubert, Vaughan Williams, Debussy's La Mer, and Prokofiev's film music for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, a film he first saw when skiving off games as a 16-year-old. He used to be a drummer in a rock band and likes to listen to everything very loud, so Miles Davies is the perfect soundtrack to Sunday mornings ... Michael Berkeley's guest Sean O'Brien reveals his Private Passions.
By BBC Radio 34.4
3131 ratings
As part of the British music season on Radio 3, poets from across the UK reveal their favourite music.
Sean O'Brien is a perfect choice for Private Passions because his poems capture the musical soundscapes of the north-east of England where he lives: the cries of gulls, the wash of the sea, the rumble of trains. In fact he's obsessed by trains, and for O'Brien, like many other poets, journeys by train are an inspiration and a form of meditation. So one of his choices is Steve Reich's hypnotic work Different Trains, in which the composer mixes fragments of train whistles and announcements. Sean O'Brien's other choices include Little Feat, Schubert, Vaughan Williams, Debussy's La Mer, and Prokofiev's film music for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, a film he first saw when skiving off games as a 16-year-old. He used to be a drummer in a rock band and likes to listen to everything very loud, so Miles Davies is the perfect soundtrack to Sunday mornings ... Michael Berkeley's guest Sean O'Brien reveals his Private Passions.

7,728 Listeners

157 Listeners

1,041 Listeners

5,471 Listeners

1,808 Listeners

1,811 Listeners

1,064 Listeners

1,930 Listeners

2,052 Listeners

520 Listeners

108 Listeners

46 Listeners

128 Listeners

163 Listeners

243 Listeners

12 Listeners

37 Listeners

4,176 Listeners

3,184 Listeners

752 Listeners

30 Listeners

112 Listeners

47 Listeners

541 Listeners

41 Listeners