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The internationally renowned cellist Steven Isserlis talks to Andrew Marr about his companion guide to The Bach Cello Suites. Isserlis explores why Bach’s Six Suites have become some of the most cherished music, and how Bach takes the audience on a spiritual journey, from joy, through tragedy, to jubilation.Schubert’s heart-breaking song-cycle Winterreise tells of a young man’s desperate wanderings: the music and the poems creating images of fire and snow, of scalding and frozen tears. The baritone Benjamin Appl, accompanied by James Baillieu, stars in a new BBC film, Winter Journey, filmed in a tower on the snow-covered summit of the Julierpass in south-east Switzerland. An album of the music will be released in February.The composer and pianist Kate Whitley is also interested in the importance of place in music. But she has taken a different tack, eschewing the often rarefied atmosphere of concert halls, for the concrete heart of city centres. She runs The Multi-Storey Orchestra which performs in car parks around the UK.Producer: Katy HickmanPhoto copyright: Satoshi Aoyagi

What if virtual worlds become indistinguishable from the real one? In 1999 the science fiction film, The Matrix, depicted a dystopian future in which people are unknowingly trapped inside a simulated reality, run by intelligent machines. As the fourth film, The Matrix Resurrections, is about to be released, the writer Naomi Alderman considers the influence this movie franchise has had in the last two decades, and how far virtual reality has become part of everyday life. The philosopher, David J Chalmers, proposes that the Matrix scenario could be the future, but that rather than trapped, humanity can lead a meaningful life in virtual reality. Chalmers is one of the leading thinkers on consciousness. In his latest book, Reality+ he provocatively argues that VR is not escapism. And that we may even be living in a computer simulation already – and if that is true, it’s not so bad.Philippa Garety is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Kings College London and has been at the forefront of treatments for problems associated with psychosis, including hearing voices and hallucinations. She is currently working on innovative treatments using digital technology, including avatars and virtual reality, to alleviate suffering. In a clinical setting VR can be managed as a safe environment for patients who struggle in the real world, as a place they can confront and understand their delusions. Producer: Katy HickmanPhoto Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. PicturesCaption: (L-r) CARRIE-ANNE MOSS as Trinity and KEANU REEVES as Neo/Thomas Anderson in Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures and Venus Castina Productions’ “THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

The acclaimed actor Kathryn Hunter plays all three witches in the forthcoming Hollywood adaptation of The Tragedy of Macbeth. The film is directed by Joel Coen and starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the central couple. Hunter tells Andrew Marr that she studied the witch hunts of the 17th century and was inspired by the ‘outcast women’ who survived and suffered. Her performance is rooted in something real, but also hints at something created in the mind of Macbeth. Claire Askew’s latest collection of poems, How To Burn A Woman, is a cauldron full of spells, power and love. It’s peopled with witches, outsiders, and women who stand out. It too traces historic atrocities and celebrates the lives of those accused of witchcraft. But it also looks at contemporary relationships, of love bordering on infatuation, and the feelings of loss, bitterness and isolation at the end of an affair.When peculiar things begin to happen in the frontier town of Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, tensions rise and rumours spread of witches and heretics. What follows is a web of spite, paranoia and denunciation – a far cry from the English settlers’ dreams of love and liberty at the dawn of the New World. The historian Malcolm Gaskill retells this dark, real-life folktale of witch-hunting in The Ruin Of All Witches.Producer: Katy Hickman(Image: Kathryn Hunter as one of the witches in The Tragedy of Macbeth, courtesy of Apple TV+)