Perry Keenlyside

This is the poignant and compelling story of perhaps the most naturally gifted musical genius of all time. It tells of Mozart's extraordinary childhood travelling the courts of Europe, and of how, after a brief period of fame in Vienna, his fortunes declined until his early death and last resting-place in a pauper's grave. More than 70 excerpts from the symphonies, operas, concertos and chamber music of Mozart.

Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and, the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past.