Episodes

  • Trailer

    Trailer
    Jan 5 2023
    Joanna Lumley and her husband Stephen Barlow invite you into their home for a fascinating, funny journey into their shared love of music.
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    2 mins
  • The Music Room

    The Music Room
    Jan 17 2023
    Why does music make us feel such emotion? Joanna Lumley and her husband Stephen Barlow invite you into their music room to discuss the big questions of life, music and marriage. In this first episode we take a tour through the music which shaped their childhoods in England and South-East Asia. For Stephen, this meant falling in love with Wagner’s ‘Das Rheingold’ and rocking out to Led Zep. For Joanna, it meant pastoral symphonies on the wind up gramophone in the jungles of Malaya.
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    35 mins
  • Mozart or Beethoven?

    Mozart or Beethoven?
    Jan 24 2023
    It’s the battle of the heavyweights! Stephen couldn’t live without Mozart, while Joanna thinks Beethoven is the most sublime composer who ever lived. In this episode we get to the bottom of an age-old debate, who’s better: Mozart or Beethoven? From ‘Figaro’ to ‘Fidelio’, Joanna and Stephen get to grips with the operas, masses, serenades and symphonies of these two classical behemoths.
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    37 mins
  • What Does A Conductor Do?

    What Does A Conductor Do?
    Jan 31 2023
    Joanna Lumley has a few questions about her husband’s profession. As well as being a composer and pianist, Stephen Barlow is a conductor - but what does that actually mean? What is it that a conductor actually does? Do they set the speed of the music? How long have they been around for? Are they really needed at all? In this episode Stephen answers these questions and takes us behind the velvet curtain into the backstage life of the conductor.
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    35 mins
  • Puccini Unbound

    Puccini Unbound
    Feb 7 2023
    Sex, death, betrayal: all the good stuff. Puccini has it all. If you’re a total beginner or an opera aficionado, this episode is about the amazing operas of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, the glorious melodies and how they capture his characters perfectly. This week Joanna and Stephen peel back the layers of Puccini’s most celebrated operas ‘Madame Butterfly’, ‘La Bohème’, ‘Tosca’ and ‘Turandot’.
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    31 mins
  • The Birth of the Symphony

    The Birth of the Symphony
    Feb 14 2023
    In this episode Joanna Lumley and her husband Stephen Barlow tackle a biggie - the Symphony. We’ve probably all heard these types of composition - usually involving full orchestras and four distinct movements - but where did they originate from? Who wrote the best ones? What are the building blocks of a symphony? And what’s harder to conduct, a symphony or an opera?
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    41 mins
  • The British Greats (Part 1)

    The British Greats (Part 1)
    Feb 21 2023
    The 18th century saw Great Britain referred to as “Das Land ohne Musik” - the land without music by continental Europeans. Quite the damning reviews. But why? And more importantly, is it true? Joanna and Stephen launch into the archives of great British composers like Tallis, Elgar, Byrd, Gibbons and Vaughan Williams in search of our national melodies and some home grown ‘kultur’.
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    32 mins
  • The Good, The Bad And The Film Music…

    The Good, The Bad And The Film Music…
    Feb 28 2023
    From 'Jaws' to 'Genevieve', 'Gone with the Wind' and 'Bond', every brilliant movie has to have a great theme tune. But who were the composers who wrote these iconic pieces of music? In this episode, Joanna and Stephen dive into the greatest film scores ever written.
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    36 mins