Recordings, paintings and places

Guided journeys

Each journey is a sequence of excerpts from recordings in the Hall.
Each excerpt has a text and an exhibit: a painting, a page of the score, a map or a connection from the Web of Influence.

Pause at any station · Place saved in this browser

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, c. 1562. Skeletons overrun a barren landscape.

21 minutes · 8 stations

Death and the Dies irae

A medieval funeral chant and its later uses

Gregorian chant · Berlioz · Liszt · Verdi · RachmaninoffOpen the journey

A concert in London’s Hanover Square Rooms. Engraving in The Illustrated London News, 24 June 1843.

24 minutes · 8 stations

How the symphony grew

From Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony to Mahler’s Ninth

Haydn · Mozart · Beethoven · Brahms · Bruckner · Tchaikovsky · MahlerOpen the journey

Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant, 1872, Musée Marmottan Monet. An orange sun over the boats in the harbour at Le Havre, in mist.

21 minutes · 9 stations

Paris, 1900–⁠1913

From Satie’s first Gymnopédie to The Rite of Spring

Satie · Debussy · Ravel · StravinskyOpen the journey

Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1925, eight years after leaving Russia. Portrait by Konstantin Somov.

24 minutes · 9 stations

Rachmaninoff in exile

Russian scores and American recordings

RachmaninoffOpen the journey

Francis Barraud, His Master’s Voice, 1898–99. Nipper the dog listens at the horn of a gramophone.

24 minutes · 9 stations

The recorded century

Performers on record: acoustic horn and microphone

Leoncavallo · Beethoven · Chopin · Rachmaninoff · Rimsky-⁠KorsakovOpen the journey

The embracing lovers at the end of Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, painted for the Vienna Secession in 1901–02.

23 minutes · 9 stations

Vienna, 1900

Mahler, Schoenberg and the Vienna Secession

Mahler · SchoenbergOpen the journey