Jeremy Siepmann

The life of Franz Liszt was as daring and spectacular as his music. Famed throughout Europe as the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century, he was one of the most original and prophetic composers who ever lived. Beautiful in youth, glowering in age, his high-profile love affairs were the talk of the town wherever he went and his generosity to young musicians was legendary. In this account of his epic life, actors’ readings combine with plentiful musical excerpts to paint a living portrait of a highly complex man.

Fryderyk Chopin is the pianist-composer par excellence. Regarded as one of the most mesmeric performers of his day, he lives on in his music – his waltzes, mazurkas, études, preludes, nocturnes, three piano sonatas, two piano concertos and much more. Here, his life, from his birth in Poland, his famous affair with the French writer George Sand, and his death at the age of 49 in Paris, is told with his music featuring prominently.

Symphonies, quartets, concertos and keyboard works poured from the pen of Joseph Haydn, making him one of the most important figures in classical music. Jeremy Siepmann tells the story of the man and his work in this lively autobiography, enhanced by numerous examples of the music itself, taken from the Naxos catalogue. There is no better programme with which to mark the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death.

Amid a background of wars and revolution, the 19th century produced many of the world’s best-loved composers including Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and Tchaikovsky. Discover Music of the Romantic Era charts the course of music through these turbulent but exhilarating times with more than 20 music excerpts. Lighthearted but authoritative, it tells the fascinating, often scandalous life stories of the nineteenth century’s greatest composers and describes how they created musical history.