Marking 250 years since Beethoven’s birth in our joint event with Chipping Campden Music Festival, Charlie Bennett, Artistic Director of the Music Festival, discusses with expert new voice Laura Tunbridge her forthcoming biography. Each chapter focuses on a period of Beethoven’s life, a piece of music and ‘a revealing theme’ from family to friends, heroism to liberty. Much of the material has not been available to the wider public before. Daniel Crewe publisher at Viking says, ‘[Laura’s] writing is a breath or fresh air, and sheer joy to read.’ The book will be published in the autumn.*

Laura Tunbridge, Professor of Music, Henfrey Fellow and Tutor, St Catherine’s College, joined the Oxford Faculty of Music in 2014, having previously been Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester (2004-2014) and Lecturer at the University of Reading (2002-2004). Laura has been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York and at the History of Listening Emmy Noether Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Editor of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association from 2013-2018, in 2017 she was elected to the Directorium of the International Musicological Society. She regularly gives pre-concert talks for Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Halle, the BBC Proms, the Oxford Lieder Festival, and the Southbank Centre; writes programme and liner notes for Wigmore Hall, Barbican, Chandos, and Southbank Centre; and book reviews for The Oldie and Times Literary Supplement; and appears on BBC radio Record Review, In Our Time, and Start the Week. She has contributed to numerous academic publications.

*Borzoi Bookshop will be taking pre-orders and will provide bookplates for Laura to sign