‘If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.’ Albert Einstein

‘After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.’ Oscar Wilde

From Mozart’s letters to his wife, Constanze, to the Heilgenstadt Testament of Beethoven; from Tchaikowsky’s letters to his brother and Nadezhda von Meck, to the music of Gilbert and Sullivan and the letters of Groucho Marx, Michael Lankester explores the innermost connections between composer’s correspondence and the music that resulted. Just think of some of the composition’s titles – Sonata Appasionata by Beethoven, Voices Intime by Sibelius, Chanson de Matin and Chanson de Nuit by Elgar, Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night, The Maiden and Nightengale by Granados, Messaien’s Quartet for the End of Time, and Janacek’s String Quartet No. 2 ‘Intimate Letter.’ Chamber music is, perhaps, the most private and personal of musical forms.