Curated playlist
Honorary members of the Royal Philharmonic Society
- Igor StravinskyIgor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring caused a near-riot at its 1913 Paris premiere.
- Johannes BrahmsComposer Johannes Brahms once cut off a friend's toast in Berlin to raise a glass to Mozart.
- Maurice RavelMaurice Ravel was twice expelled from the Paris Conservatoire. He later became France's greatest living composer.
- Pyotr Ilyich TchaikovskyHearing his voice on an Edison recording in 1890, Tchaikovsky said, "This trill could be better."
- Aaron CoplandComposer Aaron Copland planned one year of study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger but stayed three.
- Antonín DvořákAntonín Dvořák wrote a string quartet in just three days. He did it on a 1893 holiday in Spillville, Iowa.
- Hector BerliozPaganini knelt before Hector Berlioz and kissed his hand. Days later he sent the composer 20,000 francs.
- Richard StraussRichard Strauss drove to a concentration camp to plead for his daughter-in-law's grandmother.
- Sergei RachmaninoffRachmaninoff left Russia in 1917 with one small suitcase of sketches and scores.
- Katharine, Duchess of KentKatharine, Duchess of Kent, was known to the children she taught in Kingston upon Hull simply as "Mrs Kent". Her royal identity went largely unrecognised in the school community. Born Katharine Lucy Mary Worsley, she was a member of the…
- Alexander GlazunovAlexander Glazunov conducted the disastrous 1897 premiere of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 1.
- Paul HindemithJoseph Goebbels publicly called composer Paul Hindemith an "atonal noisemaker" in December 1934.
- Johann Nepomuk HummelMozart taught Johann Nepomuk Hummel piano for free when the boy was eight.