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Nicholas Till and Richard Wigmore join James Jolly to explore Mozart's Vienna, seat of the Hapsburgs, administrative capital of a growing empire and centre of the musical world.

It was less than a century before Mozart's birth that the Viennese and their allies drove the Turks from the gates of Vienna and pushed south creating a large empire. By the time Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were walking its streets it had become a vibrant cosmopolitan city where the aristocracy lived in close proximity to the lower classes and catholic German speakers rubbed shoulders with immigrants from across the empire. With the ideas of the enlightenment being discussed in every coffee house and a population with money to spend, the scene was set for the composer of The Marriage of Figaro, Die Entfuhrung and The Magic Flute to entertain them.

Recorded earlier this evening at the Royal College of Music.