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£10.99
In 1924, Beatrice Harrison broadcast a miracle to the world: a wild nightingale singing with her cello. Over a million people tuned in to hear the nightingale that night, and the BBC went on to broadcast their duet worldwide every spring until 1942. This transformed the public interest in nightingales – a species already in decline. If Beatrice’s duets with the nightingales touched a chord with the world, her own life proved to be as musical, free-spirited and inspiring. From her early years as a musical prodigy to recording with the most important composers of the day or playing for the wounded in the Second World War, Beatrice’s warmth and love for sharing music are as endearing now as they were to her original audiences.
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£20.00
Leah Broad’s group biography of composers resurrects these forgotten voices, recounting lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces. Lighting up a panoramic sweep of British history over two World Wars, ‘Quartet’ is a stunning debut that revolutionises the classical canon forever.
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£14.99
In this follow-up to her much-loved ‘Year of Wonder’, award-winning broadcaster, journalist and violinist Clemency Burton-Hill continues her mission to demystify and open up the world of classical music to everyone, offering up one extraordinary piece of music to listen to every day of the year.
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£18.99
This is the impassioned and exhilarating story of the composers who dared to challenge the conventional world of classical music in the 20th century. Traversing the globe from Ethiopia and the Philippines to Mexico, Jerusalem, Russia and beyond, journalist, critic and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Kate Molleson tells the stories of ten figures who altered the course of musical history, only to be sidelined and denied recognition during an era that systemically favoured certain sounds – and people – over others. A celebration of radical creativity rooted in ideas of protest, gender, race, ecology and resistance, ‘Sound Within Sound’ is an energetic reappraisal of 20th-century classical music that opens up the world far beyond its established centres, challenges stereotypical portrayals of the genre and shatters its traditional canon.
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£9.99
Ludwig van Beethoven: to some, the greatest ever composer of Western classical music. Yet his life remains shrouded in myths, and the image persists of him as an eccentric genius shaking his fist. In this book, Oxford professor Laura Tunbridge cuts through the noise in a refreshing way – with each chapter focusing on a period of his life, a piece of music and a revealing theme, from family to friends, heroism to liberty.
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£14.99
The music of the British composer Michael Tippett – including the oratorio ‘A Child of Our Time’, five operas, and four symphonies – is among the most visionary of the twentieth century. But little has been written about his extraordinary life. In this long-awaited first biography, Oliver Soden weaves a century-spanning narrative of epic scope and penetrating insight. Soden has discovered troves of unpublished letters and manuscripts, and recorded moving interviews with Tippett’s friends and colleagues.
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£20.00
András Schiff is one of the most important pianists of our time. This account of his life and work, told in two parts, takes readers on an intimate journey from Schiff’s childhood in Hungary through to the present day. In conversation with Martin Meyer, Schiff discusses a diverse range of topics from his experiences with anti-Semitism and communist rule to his musical training with maestros such as Pál Kadosa and Ferenc Rados, as well as his thoughts on playing techniques and musical interpretation.
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£26.00
The life of an extraordinary artist and intellect: the composer, author and socialite Alma Mahler, whose life spanned one of the most captivating and dramatic periods in history Born into the dying days of the Hapsburg Empire, Alma Mahler was at the epicentre of fin de siècle Vienna’s artistic and intellectual circles. A talented composer in her own right, she was open, impulsive, astonishingly creative, irrational, destructive, wild, and curious. Artists, architects, musicians and writers jostled to join her coterie. Gustav Mahler was her first husband; Gustav Klimt her first kiss. Great men would be drawn into Alma’s wake and be indelibly touched by her power and brilliance: from her second husband Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus and modernist architecture, to the Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka and her last husband, writer Franz Werfel. But her life was inflected by tragedy.
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£30.00
Published to mark the beginning of the Britten centenary year in 2013, this is the definitive biography of Britain’s greatest modern composer. In the eyes of many, Benjamin Britten was our finest composer since Purcell (a figure who often inspired him) 300 years earlier.
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£10.99
This collection of poems contains erotic, playful and provocative line drawings by the author, which interact in unexpected ways on the page with poetry that is at times darkly humorous.
How To Catch A Star 
