Bpo Listening Club: Women In Music (Bad Girls And Heartbreakers)

Joanna MacGregor is back at Brighton Unitarian Church on Friday 30 October for another session of the Bpo Listening Club. It's part of the series run by the Brighton and Hove Philharmonic Orchestra, and the format is pretty straightforward: MacGregor takes a concert the orchestra has already played and spends an evening diving deeper into the music with the audience. This one looks back at Bad Girls and Heartbreakers, the concert they performed back in February.

She'll start with the songs that made Kurt Weill famous and the story of his relationship with Bertolt Brecht, the playwright with whom he collaborated on some of his most enduring work. From there, she'll trace the tension between Weill's serious orchestral writing and his Broadway music — the two sides of his career that didn't always sit comfortably together. The second half of the session turns to Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and the turbulent history that surrounds it. It's a piece that caused a huge stir when it first appeared, and MacGregor will be talking through the story behind it.

If you're not familiar with the Bpo Listening Club, it's less of a lecture and more of a guided look at a specific programme. The orchestra plays the concert, and then MacGregor takes the time to unpack the music, the composers, and the context that doesn't always make it into a performance. It's a good way to get a proper handle on the pieces before you hear them again, or to pick up the threads if you missed the original concert in February. Tickets are £10, and it all happens at Brighton Unitarian Church on Friday 30 October.