A big welcome to RTE's new 24-hour national music and arts radio service from Limerick, Lyric FM, which begins broadcasting today at noon (see Saturday's highlights below) with a promise of "beautiful music that is for everyone". To be able to wiggle the knob and, for example, escape the hurly-burly into Lyric Notes (9.30 a.m., Monday to Friday) with Maire Nic Gearailt sounds a tonic - three hours of mainly music to relax and think to, interspersed with features. We could do without the serious sounding personal finance slot and skip cheerfully on to features on food, wine and how to get the most out of weekends.
For those who are often frustrated at hearing only snippets of their favourite works The Full Score (2.30 p.m., Monday to Friday) with Lorcan Murray remedies this with a two-hour show of popular works. Lyric Drive (4.30 p.m., Monday to Friday) may temper bubbling road rage with music to "smooth out the day's edges" and interviews along with the necessary traffic updates. Then we're in The Green Room (7.30 p.m., Monday to Friday), which offers something different each night.
Wander into some musical nooks and crannies with Desmond Graham on Mondays, have an opera choice with Irish Times journalist Arminta Wallace on Tuesdays, P. J. Curtis has world music on Wednesdays, Thursday is stage and screen music with Aedin Gormley, and on Fridays it's Irish traditional music with Ewan O'Doherty. The Lyric Concert (8 p.m., Monday to Friday) presents a variety of concerts, including Russian favourites (Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet, Mussorgsky/Ravel Night on a Bare Mountain) and Nigel Kennedy with the Berlin Philharmonic to name two, which brings us to "a subtle diversion into the depths of musical fusion" in The Blue of the Night with Paul Herriott. All-in-all an impressive music parade from Lyric FM.
The series celebrating post-war British music Sounding the Century: Endless Parade (Monday, BBC Radio 3, 7.30 p.m.) includes the London premiere of Julian Anderson's The Crazed Moon - the work and title inspired by W. B. Yeats's poem combined with a lunar eclipse in March 1996. Beryl Bainbridge sticks to words alone to recapture those crucial four days of the Titanic's maiden voyage to disaster in Every Man For Himself, The Book on One (RTE Radio 1, 2.45 p.m., Monday to Friday) and read by the author.
Another highly acclaimed book features on Monday. Death In Summer by William Trevor (BBC Radio 4, 10.45 p.m.), abridged in 10 parts and read by Robin Ellis, looks at the changes in Thaddeus Davenant's life after the death of his wife. If the doomed Titanic and death is all just too much, then join the flutterers in Win Some . . . Lose Some (Monday, RTE Radio 1, 2.15 p.m.) in stories of the races - the glamorous highs and heartbreaking lows of betting.