Gerald Abraham's reputation as an authority on Russian music has tended to obscure his deep interest in the music of Poland and Czechoslovakia, and of the nineteenth-century generally. From ...

Benjamin Britten was one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century. He wrote a feast of music from an early age, first achieving international fame in 1945 with his ...

Thomas Adès is fêted from Los Angeles to London, from New York to Berlin, as the musician who has done more than any other living composer to connect ...

The third volume of the annotated selected letters of composer Benjamin Britten covers the years 1946-51, during which he wrote many of his best-known works, founded and developed the English ...

Among the first of Gerald Abraham's many books were studies of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and his knowledge of Russian literature and culture has provided the key to his extensive ...

Among the first of Gerald Abraham’s many books were studies of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and his knowledge of Russian literature and culture has provided the key to his extensive ...

Richard Wagner is the most controversial composer in the history of music. In this lively pocket guide, Michael Tanner gives crisp accounts of all his operas, showing how important it ...

Theatre Craft is an all-encompassing, practical guide for anyone working in the theatre, from the enthusiastic amateur to the committed professional. With entries arranged alphabetically, Theatre Craft offers advice on ...

Auden often said that metre and rhyme led him down unexpected paths to thoughts he wouldn’t otherwise have had, and in this respect versification and fornication are not so ...

Auden often said that metre and rhyme led him down unexpected paths to thoughts he wouldn’t otherwise have had, and in this respect versification and fornication are not so ...

At last a lively yet authoritative history of England's oldest continuously performing arts company. Susie Gilbert traces the development of ENO from its earliest origins in the darkest Victorian ...

Dido and Aeneas has been one of the most compelling and durable of the great classical myths. The material the story offers has led artists, authors and musicians throughout the ...

Norman Del Mar (1919-1994) was universally recognised as a leading authority on the music of Richard Strauss, and his masterly three-volume study of his life and works remains a classic ...

Norman Del Mar (1919-1994) was universally recognised as a leading authority on the music of Richard Strauss, and his masterly three-volume study of his life and works remains a classic ...

A larger-than-life figure in his time, Handel’s reputation has been less than steady since his death in 1759. Was he (in the words of Berlioz) just ‘a great barrel ...

Henry Purcell has long been acknowledged as one of England’s greatest composers. Little is known about his life beyond his official appointments and their duties, but as a musician ...

In the chaos of the English Civil War and Puritan Commonwealth, churches were defaced and organs broken, but the tradition of fine music survived. When Charles II returned from exile ...

Joseph Haydn was one of the greatest and most innovative of all composers. Two hundred years after his death his reputation has never been higher, yet in some ways he ...

Olivier Messiaen was one of the outstanding creative artists of his time. The strength of his appeal, to listeners as well as to composers, is a measure of the individuality ...

A book unlike anything ever written by a composer, part-memoir and part-description of the creative process, Hallelujah Junction is an absorbing journey through the musical landscape of the life and ...