Mark Pentleton

This is a beautiful song from the finale of the musical Chess. I’ve already played other songs from this show, but I think this one is my favourite. The chord progressions of the verse are complex and challenging, and the chorus is beautifully lyrical, especially when sung in sixths by Florence and Anatoly. There are [...]

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Today’s song is taken from the musical Chess. When Benny and Björn were writing the musical, Björn would add lyrics to Benny’s music to help give the song more rhythm and meaning. They then sent their “demos” to Tim Rice who wrote the final version of the lyrics. Heaven help my heart was actually recorded [...]

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Today’s song is the beautiful Someone else’s story from Chess. It was not in the original concept version of the musical when it was first released, but added to later versions and has now become one of the best-loved songs from the show.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 3:32 — 4.9MB)

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I just heard last night that the musical Chess is coming to the Edinburgh Playhouse in September so I thought I’d do something from Chess for today’s song. Anthem is the powerful hymn-like song which is the first act finale from the show. In this song Anatoly Sergievsky (”The Russian”) sings “my land’s only borders [...]

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Today’s song is the famous duet from the musical Chess, first performed by Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson on the concept album for the show back in 1985. It was number one in the UK for four weeks at the time.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 3:59 — 5.5MB)

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