Classical Destinations: An Armchair Guide to Classical Music

by Simon Callow

(Amadeus). With more than 200 stunning color photographs by noted photographer Wendy McDougall, Classical Destinations takes readers on a tour of the history and geography of classical music, examining the lives of the great composers as related to their places of birth, education, triumphs, and failures. For today's traveler the book comes full-circle, describing how, through their achievements, the great composers came to influence the places where they lived and performed. In these pages readers can visit Venice when it was home to Vivaldi, Salzburg as Mozart's prodigious talents emerged, Leipzig during the time of Mendelssohn and Schumann, Prague as growing Czech nationalism gripped Smetana, and the Vienna where Beethoven faced incurable deafness. The reader will accompany J. S. Bach through the towns of central Germany and tour St. Petersburg as Tchaikovsky knew it. Beyond the cities, Classical Destinations includes the dramatic landscapes of Norway and Finland that made so much of an impression on the music of Grieg and Sibelius.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

235 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2007

About the author

Stage and screen actor