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In the second episode of this six part series, writer and satirist Chris Addison (The Thick Of It, Veep) explores how music has given voice to the struggles for equality and identity.

Chris has chosen tracks that show how music has been used to inspire social change. This programme features music by Margaret Bonds, Julian Eastman, Joan Tower, Ethel Smyth and more.

In this series, Chris Addison - himself a classical music devotee, keen amateur choral singer and opera buff - takes listeners on a tour of how composers have used their music to question, parody, and challenge power and ideas over the years. Classical music can amplify power, but it can also undermine it - satirising and thumbing the nose of the status quo. Composers have used classical music to critique, undermine and even lampoon - often in cleverly nuanced, surprising ways that reconnect us to the flawed humans - and shared humanity - beneath the pomposity. Each episode in this series takes a big idea, and illustrates it with a playlist of entertaining and diverse music spanning the entire history of Western classical music.

Margaret Bonds: Montgomery Variations 1. Decision & 3. March
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Kellen Gray, conductor

Florence Price: Ethiopia's Shadow in America 2. His Resignation and Faith
New York Youth Symphony Orchestra
Michael Repper, conductor

Ethel Smyth: Songs of Sunrise 3. The March of the Women
Chorus of the Plymouth Music Series
Eiddwen Harrhy, soprano
Philip Brunelle, conductor

Frederic Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated Variations
Marc-Andre Hamelin, piano

Antonio Vivaldi: Juditha triumphans devicta Holofernes barbarie RV.645 Part 1 Veni, me sequere fida
Academia Montis Regalis
Alessandro De Marchi, conductor
Magdalena Kozena, mezzo soprano

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Cosi fan tutte K.588 Act 2.
Miah Persson (Fiordiligi), Angela Brower (Dorabella), Adam Plachetka (Guglielmo), Rolando Villazón (Ferrando), Mojca Erdmann (Despina), Alessandro Corbelli (Don Alfonso)
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor

Joan Tower: Fanfare for the uncommon woman no. 1
St Louis Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Slatkin, conductor

Julius Eastman: Stay On It
Studio Orchestra
Julius Eastman, conductor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: 24 Folk melodies Op.59 for piano Deep River
Randall Goosby, violin
Zhu Wang, piano

Produced by James C Taylor
An Overcoat Media Production for Â鶹Éç Radio 3

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