Author: David Hackett

Felix Mendelssohn may well have been one of the most naturally gifted musicians who ever lived. As a young man, he wasn’t far short of astonishing. Aside from the striking preciousness of his youthful compositions (he was even younger than Mozart …

Franz Schubert had a habit of not finishing symphonies. In the last decade of his life alone, he started six and completed just one. The other five were left abandoned, sometimes mid-phrase, and in various states of dereliction – a sketched-out movement here, a few scribbled notes there …

It begins delicately enough: a unison C, reverberating softly across the strings, oboes, clarinets and bassoons. It swells to a forte before dissipating itself in a short fragment of melody. Silence, followed by a brief answering phrase in the violins. The whole passage repeats itself … 

In the 1820s and 30s, Luigi Cherubini was the notoriously short-tempered, officious director of the Paris Conservatoire, an institution he ran with the rigour of a crack SAS unit. Punctuality, order and discipline were all sacrosanct to him. He once physically chased a young student, a certain Hector Berlioz …

There was little ideology behind Hummel’s art – he was not the sort to make sweeping political or philosophical statements. He would not tear up a dedication page in a fit of rage, offer short shrift to any performer who complained his music was too difficult to play, or throw hard-boiled eggs at …

In middle age, Beethoven’s musical ideas were growing ever more expansive – rather like his pianos, in fact. He had a way of getting through the latter with almost indecent haste. His old friend and protégé Ferdinand Ries noted Beethoven’s penchant for accidentally damaging …

When the celebrated French pianist and composer, Marie Kiené Bigot de Morogues, began to suffer serious health issues in her early thirties, there were whispers throughout Paris that it was sadly inevitable: that women were physically and temperamentally suspect and not designed to take on demanding …

The theatre was in Gioachino Rossini’s lifeblood. Born in the small Adriatic city of Pesaro, some of his earliest memories were of touring with his musician parents from town to town, as they sought work in local operatic productions. Rossini senior was a French horn player (and occasional abattoir inspector), while his …

John Field may well have been classical music’s first genuine rock-star. A world-famous pianist, he loved to perform in fashionable salons and glittering concert halls while relishing the money and adulation his fame brought him. Outside of performing venues, he devoted himself to a life of …

It is a measure of Franz Danzi’s versatility that music historians have never quite agreed upon his overriding legacy as a composer. Was he a master of chamber music, especially in the early evolution of the wind quintet? Or was he the all-important mentor of Carl Maria von Weber …