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Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein

Documentaries

Music

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Suzy Klein explores music's crucial role in the most turbulent years of the 20th century.

BBC Four

BBC Four HD

Tunes For Tyrants: Music & Power with Suzy Klein

Suzy Klein

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

BBC National Chorus of Wales

Otto Tausk

Erik Levi

Albrecht Dumling

Margot Friedlander

Christian Strauss

Gerard McBurney

Gabriel Prokofiev

Julia Maximova

Helena Braun

Archie Baron

Debbie Lee

Wingspan Productions

Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein: Series 1: Episode 2: Dictatorship

Dictatorship

Episode 2

Episode 2: Dictatorship

Series 1

BBC Four - Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein, Series 1, Dictatorship

Suzy Klein investigates how Hitler and Stalin used and abused music for ideological ends.

Series exploring the politics of music. Suzy Klein investigates how Hitler and Stalin used and abused music for ideological ends.

Suzy Klein reaches the 1930s, when the totalitarian dictators sought to use and abuse music for ideological ends. She looks at the lives of Richard Strauss, Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev, who produced some of the 20th-century's best-loved music whilst navigating the precarious tightrope of working for perhaps the most terrifying music lovers ever - Hitler and Stalin.

The political message of the classic musical fairytale Peter and the Wolf is revealed as well as the secret code hidden in Shostakovich's quartets and Strauss's deeply personal reasons for trying to please the Nazis. 

Suzy also uncovers why Hitler adored Wagner but banned Mendelssohn's Wedding March, how Stalin used music to subtly infiltrate minds and why Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, a Nazi favourite, appeals to our most primitive senses. 

Suzy also raises some intriguing questions: can we pin meaning onto music? What are the moral responsibilities of artists? And did the violence and tyranny of those regimes leave an indelible stain on the music they produced? 

The stories are brought to life by performances from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and its chorus - demonstrating Suzy's argument that music's incredible power to bypass our brains and reach for our hearts makes it a potent and dangerous force.

Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein: Series 1

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Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein

Series 1

Episode 2: Dictatorship

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