Wolf set the works of thirty-six poets to music. Here the genial professor of lieder at the Royal College of Music translates the poems, introduces the poets and Wolf's connections with them... read more
Raised in Nazi Germany, at 18, Wulff Scherchen was Britten's muse and lover. When the composer went to the USA during the war, Wulff was interned as an enemy alien and transported to Canada,... read more
An outstanding biography of the great Polish expat, genius pianist, companion of Georges Sand. Showing deep historical knowledge and cultural understanding, as well as detailed musical comme... read more
Argues that role of the unruly, the socially outcast, the revolutionary, the disreputable etc have consistently been overlooked in the history of music, which has in effect been bowdlerised... read more
A personal exploration of Indian classical music, its improvisations that flower from well-established short sequences of notes, its subtle evocations of feeling. By a fine writer and vocali... read more
The marvellous Attlee takes us on the journey, through space and time, of one violin, whose voice "was powerful enough to unbuckle joints". Cremona, Russia, Venice, Alpine forests... (Her la... read more
This magnificent book - which takes its title from a remark of the singer Josephine Baker - gives us the cultural landscape of black genius from the mid C20th to the present. We are in extr... read more