As one of the three tenors Jose Carreras has long been one of the most famous singers in the world. His modesty and simplicity is, therefore, all the admirable. We talked about his roots in Barcelona (he is a passionate supporter of the football team), the encouragement of fellow Catalan, soprano, Montserrat Caballe, how singing helped him through his struggle with Leukemia and his concern for colleague and friend, Lucian Pavarotti.

My 1999 meeting with Marcel Marceau was, I felt, a particular honour. In addition to his iconic status as an artist I was in awe of the fact that as a teenager he had risked his life saving Jewish children from the Nazis as a member of the French Resistance. It’s hard, of course, to miss the irony inherent in the world’s greatest mime artist appearing on radio. However, in conversation, he is afire with intellectual energy and intensely cultured.

Ren?e Fleming is widely regarded as one of the finest lyric sopranos in the world. She was in Hong Kong, for the first time as it turned out, in 2007, to perform with the Hong Kong Philharmonic in a mainly Richard Strauss programme that included the Four Last Songs. In this interview, which was also filmed for TV, she is warm and engaging. Although insisting on the most uncompromising standards she is friendly, helpful and exhibits none of the less attractive traits of the prima donna.

Words like ‘poetic, ‘sensitive’, ‘thoughtful’ and ‘intelligent’ are constantly used to describe the playing of Murray Perahia. When I met him, in April 1998 (on his 50th birthday), he had been showing a renewed interest in the music of Bach and his con...

For difficult beginnings, my meeting with Julian Schnabel is hard to beat. I was met outside the room of the acclaimed painter and filmmaker, whose exhibition of large-scale plate paintings was opening at Taikoo Place, by the gallery manager who was lo...

The third violinist in the group is Salvatore Accardo who I met in 1998 when he came to play with the Hong Kong Philharmonic the concerto he first played in public, the Mendelssohn E minor. I will never forget how, arriving an hour late for the appoint...

Pinchas Zukerman was one of my earliest interviews. It was back in the 90s that he was here to conduct the English Chamber Orchestra from the violin, playing solo in the Beethoven concerto. Whereas Vengerov described the Beethoven violin concerto as ’...

From my two or three meetings with violinist Maxim Vengerov, I would say that the idea of the child lies at the heart of what he is all about, and this stems from his greatest influence, his mother. As the head of an orphanage, providing shelter for ch...

Princess Diana’s favourite dancer, Wayne Eagling, was for many years a principal with the Royal Ballet. I met him in Hong Kong in 1997 where he was creating a new work, ‘The Last Emperor’, for the Hong Kong Ballet, then under the directorship of Steven...

My interview with Bobby McFerrin was live and long distance. It was a public holiday, Chinese New Year 2004. He was soon to come to Hong Kong to perform at the Arts Festival. When I phoned on a balmy February Hong Kong morning he was in the middle of d...