In person.” Heath shakes his head and Scargill reaches into his pocket and produces a grimy lump of coal. “What smooth, elegant hands you have,” says Scargill. Union representative Arthur Scargill raises the fact that the prime minister plays the organ and the “pianoforte.” Later, the mineworkers sit opposite Heath and his team at a conference room table in No. Heath clumsily believes the impasse with the miners will run its course.
The deftly edited scene then toggles between a somber Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman) watching the protest on TV and Heath (Michael Maloney), alone and playing Chopin, with several closeups of the glossy keyboard. A TV reporter explains how a blockade threatens to cut off the government’s last remaining stockpile of coal. Chopin’s roiling sonata continues under a raucous demonstration by the mineworkers.
15, the “Raindrop.” After a few chords, we’re back in 1972. He launches into an immaculate rendition of Chopin’s Prelude, Op. 28, No. “Thank you, but we can’t afford it,” the surprised boy protests to his mother. Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath has installed a Steinway grand in 10 Downing Street and it becomes a symbol in a standoff between striking miners and his government.Īfter a prologue involving Prince Charles and Camilla Shand, the episode begins with a flashback to 1925, when Heath, then age 8 or 9, is given his first piano as a birthday gift. Episode 9, subtitled “Imbroglio,” focuses on the coal miner’s strike of 1974. As in the first season and second season, music is often tied to on-screen sources, as when Princess Anne blasts Bowie’s “Starman” on a car radio as she speeds to the palace one night.Ĭlassical music also makes a notable appearance in “The Crown” Season 3. American songbook standards give way to rock anthems by the Kinks, the Four Seasons, Deep Purple, the Who and David Bowie, among others.
In the third season of the Netflix series “The Crown,” the story spans the mid-1960s to the late ’70s, a period that allows producers to draw on a rich array of popular music.