In Tune Highlights

Suzy Klein talks to soprano Lesley Garrett

Royal Opera House director Kasper Holten talks to Louise Fryer about Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and life at Covent Garden

BBC Young Musician 2012 cellist Laura van der Heijden talks to James Jolly about how winning that competition has changed her life.

Sound recordist Chris Watson talks about his work in Aldeburgh following in Benjamin Britten's footsteps and capturing some of his favourite birdsong

Grammy Award nominated Malian musician, ngoni player Bassekou Kouyate, is joined by journalist Andy Morgan to discuss the central place of music in Malian society and the stress it's being put under by the country’s current struggle against military insurgency.

Sean Rafferty takes a wander round the new Manet exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts accompanied by curator Mary Ann Stevens

Tenor Toby Spence and his brother Magnus Spence talk to Sean about a new concert series taking place in Magnus's tudor barn in Sussex

Finnish soprano Karita Mattila on Strauss and playing the second dumbest character in opera.

Acclaimed soprano Dawn Upshaw talks about her career, contemporary music and working with John Adams

Norman Lebrecht on Sir Simon Rattle's resignation from the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja on arts funding, pushing boundaries and fly fishing.

Cellist Matthew Barley on celebrating Britten's centenary year

The Swingle Singers and conductor John Lubbock compare notes on their time in the group and the Swingles introduce their cover of Beyonce's 'Single Ladies'

Conductor John Lubbock talks about his orchestra, his distinguished career and his work with music and autism

Actress Tamsin Greig talks to Sean about narrating Peter and the Wolf, and the special combination that is music and poetry.

In our last In Tune Christmas Cracker, we look at Christmas Carols and Carol Services. Doctor Stephen Rose of London University explains where some of our most popular carols actually come from; and we hear about carol services large and small, from Martin Baker, master of music at Westminster Cathedral, and Christine Ayre, chorister at St Mary’s Primrose Hill in London.

Our third Christmas Cracker! Seeing a performance of Tchaikovsky’s ballet, The Nutcracker, is, for many people, as much a part of Christmas as tinsel, turkey and a tree. It premiered 120 years ago yesterday, in the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. As productions around the country get under way this year, Sugar Plum Fairy Sarah Lamb, and conductor Koen Kessels, both from this Christmas’s Royal Ballet production of The Nutcracker, and Judith Mackrell, The Guardian’s dance critic, share their thoughts on what gives Tchaikovsky’s exquisite confection its enduring appeal.

Our second Christmas Cracker! To unpick what a folk Christmas might actually involve, we spoke to historian Steve Roud and Wiltshire folk impresario Bob Berry, but we started off by searching out a young folk singer who lives round the corner, to see if he has a favourite wintry folk song…

Sir Neville Marriner talks to Sean ahead of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields concert at Cadogan Hall.

Inside our first In Tune Christmas Cracker - Handel’s Messiah. To get to the bottom of the Messiah’s mass appeal, we speak to Westminster Abbey Organist and Master of the Choristers James O’Donnell, organist at Swadlincote Messiah Choral Society Steve Mansfield and musicologist at Oxford University, Suzanne Aspden.