Mengelberg in 1919 by Jacob Merkelbach By Jonathan Summers Curator, Classical Music Willem Mengelberg (1871-1951) was one of the greatest conductors of the first half of the twentieth century. A friend of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, Mengelberg championed their works with his expertly disciplined orchestra, the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam….

This week’s selection comes from Georgia Dack, Web Content Developer for Unlocking our Sound Heritage. The British Library recently launched its new website Speaking Out, an online learning resource exploring the power of public speaking, protest and debate through its sound archive. Featured in Speaking Out, is an interview with…

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…