Clifford Curzon (photo © Fritz Curzon. Used with permission) By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music One of the great British pianists of the twentieth century, Clifford Curzon is remembered in this podcast by Callum Ross. We trace his life and career from his early days at the Royal Academy…

For Disability History Month Dr Madeline White looks at Geoff Webb’s reminiscences of polio

Written by Val Harding and Julie Begum from the Swadhinata Trust ahead of their British Library event ‘Songs of Freedom: Celebrating Fifty Years of Bangladesh’ on 16 December 2021. In 2016 we set up an oral history project at the Swadhinata Trust aiming to document multi-generational experiences of Bengali music…

Jonathan Summers and Nelson Freire (photo © Jonathan Summers) By Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music When Brazilian Nelson Freire died last month at the age of seventy-seven, the world lost one of its greatest pianists. A naturally talented child whose playing was already formed by the age of seven,…

This week’s selection comes from Jim Hickson, Audio Project Cataloguer for Unlocking our Sound Heritage. In the British Library’s sound archive collections, we have a lot of recordings of temple music – various types of song and music in dedication to any number of religions across the world, performed in…