This week's guest is a giant of British comedy,

whose consistent originality, wit and satirical brilliance

has long since earned him global recognition.

Armando Ayanucci's CV is enviable,

with credits including The Day to Day, Alan Partridge,

The Thick of It, In The Loop and veep, for which he won two Emmys.

His latest project is The Death of Stalin, a so-called comedy of terrors about the power

struggles, which followed the passing of the eponymous dictator in 1953.

The film is available on home entertainment formats now, and I strongly recommend you check it out if you haven't

already. I'm Edith Bowman and you're listening to Soundtracking, a weekly podcast about the sounds

of the screen. Now musically, the death of Stalin allowed Armando to indulge his passion for classical

music with the likes of Shostakovich providing sonic inspiration for Christopher Willis's excellent score.

You'll hear plenty of extracts from that,

as well as the actual recording of a Mozart piano concerto

that may very well have been a matter of life and death.

But we start with Gustav Holst,

which also happens to be where Armando's love affair with the genre began.

Armando, thank you so much for taking the time to chat to us today.

I think what's going to be lovely about this is a lot of people

obviously know and adore the work that you do in comedy,

both on TV and on film, but classical music is, and always has been a huge passion of yours.

For an early age, actually, since it was about 12 or 13 just hearing it played.

...