“I do not bow to anyone, except to my own conscience and our own noble Lady Music” January is a busy time for lovers of classical music as we celebrate the birthdays of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert on

I’ve been going to live classical music concerts since I was a little girl – and not just professional concerts, but also amateur performances when my dad (a clarinettist) played in a local amateur orchestra. As keen music-lovers, my parents

Something very exciting took place on 27 January 1866, the 110th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birth. The city of Frankfurt witnessed the performance of an unknown Singspiel, which Mozart had abandoned to work on Idomeneo. The unknown work carried

Violet Gordon-Woodhouse changed how listeners approached and appreciated Baroque music. She helped spur the revival of the harpsichord and Baroque Era composers, making a big contribution to the beginnings of the historical performance practice movement, which is still going strong

Swiss flautist Emmanuel Pahud has been hailed as the finest flautist of his generation, “admired for the purity and subtlety of his tonal colours, his imaginative phrasing and his command of a broad range of styles.” Pahud auditioned for principal

Cellist Jacqueline du Pré only began to perform publicly at the age of sixteen, “yet her musical genius was evident at a very early age and its special nature was defined by her rich emotional inner world, rather than her

In the caricatures of James Gillray (1756–1815) in the early years of the 19th century, the soprano Mrs. Billington figures large. James Gillray started working as an apprentice to a lettering engraver and in 1778, was admitted to the Royal

In 1899, Erik Satie (1866–1925) wrote a little pantomime ballet for piano entitled Jack in the Box to a scenario by the illustrator Jules Depaquit, an artist who was his very good friend and known for his love of hoaxes.