Gabriele Finaldi

Private Passions

Gabriele Finaldi, the Director of the National Gallery, talks to Michael Berkeley about his artistic and musical passions.

When Gabriele Finaldi took up his post as Director of the National Gallery in the summer of 2015, one of the first things he did was to install a piano in the corner of his office.

He grew up in a musical household in Catford in South East London, the son of a Neapolitan father and half-Polish, half-English mother. Early in his career he was a curator at the National Gallery, specialising in Italian and Spanish paintings and he was involved in major and memorable shows such as Seeing Salvation and Discovering the Italian Baroque. In 2002 he was appointed Deputy Director of the Prado in Madrid, where he worked until his return to the National Gallery. Gabriele takes Michael on a musical and artistic journey though Britain, Italy, France and Spain and chooses music by Ravel, Messiaen, Puccini and Britten, as well as a 17th-century Neapolitan serenade and a spine-tingling piece of flamenco.

Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3.