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Debussy's Syrinx, for example, has a certain atmosphere, and you want the audience to feel that you're inside that atmosphere, in another realm as it were. The eyes are fine, but they tend to deafen the ears."Yet while the learning process may be the same, dispensing with the score inflects the performance itself: "There are pieces which really fly if I play them without a score. As you get into that process, you should be practising without the score, so that your ears help your fingers, rather than just using your eyes to follow the score. That's a process of repetition, getting the piece into your fingers.

Once you have the hang of the piece, you work at it to reveal where those technical problems occur. The process begins by sitting down without my instrument, so that I'm seeing and imagining the work without thinking about technical problems.

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The programme will follow her as she prepares for a Wigmore Hall recital in June, including learning by heart a piece by her late husband, Paul Reade.Choosing which pieces to perform from memory is a tricky process, but as Davies says, "Whether or not I perform with the score does not change the way I learn a piece I always learn it inside out. They have the complexities of the score to grapple with, and not only must they do justice to the notes, they must give a performance that amounts to an interpretation. Later this month, BBC Radio 4's Practice Session looks, as its title implies, at the practice and learning processes of three musicians, including flautist Philippa Davies. Most of us think we know a piece of music if we can hum it Classical musicians are not so lucky. "It's about feeling absolutely and totally disenchanted," says Robert Plant.'In My Time of Dying' (from Physical Graffiti, 1975)This ties with "Kashmir" as the high-water mark of Zeppelin's mature style: the blues stress-tested to breaking point over 11 minutes of heavily structured post-Lightnin' Hopkins slide guitar violence.'The Ocean' (from Houses of the Holy, 1973)The most perfect asymmetrical rock riff framing a song about a rock audience ever to finish with a doo-wop square dance Camp? How dare you!.

Cocaine and faking it feature prominently: it's certainly about something. And it shows.'For Your Life' (from Presence, 1976)The most ruthless on-the-one funk blast ever devised, wired up with layer upon layer of guitars dragging every which way. This is the epic lament of flood and sore feet which brought operatic reach to Zeppelin's best-selling ?werk; the moment when Memphis Minnie found herself reborn on the Welsh Marches (and John Bonham would find himself remade on a thousand hip-hop samples).'That's the Way' (from III, 1970)Acoustic melancholy bedecked with pop flowers, conceived in some lovely ravine in Wales. Win a copy of the DVD/VHS in Lucky Bag, page 20Led Zeppelin: an alternative hit list'When the Levee Breaks' (from IV, 1971)Never mind "Stairway to Heaven".

Clowns are a force of nature."And Coco's gone," said Plant, smiling.'Led Zeppelin', a double-DVD/VHS set (Warner Music, £20) is out tomorrow, as is the triple-CD live 1972 album 'How The West Was Won' (WEA). Clowns are big stuff, I said, and they're not about anything at all. Clowns exaggerate, they knock about, they distort, they thrill, they fall over, they have mad hair and outsize appendages, they trample underfoot and terrify and sometimes, just sometimes, they make you laugh. He laughed and allowed me to suggest that clowns are not to be sniffed at. And my daughter hears clown music.I told Plant about The Beezer's appreciation of his oeuvre.