Music: Contrast

In the heart of wartime London, on Trafalgar Square, there was one place where you could hear music every weekday: the National Gallery. In noontime concerts there Pianist Myra Hess provided a music-filled haven for weary, worried war workers, fighting men and blitzed citizens. By war's end she had sold 800,000 tickets — at a shilling a head — to 1,698 concerts, 147 of which she played herself. King George made Myra Hess a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for it. She was even prouder of the fact that "taxi...

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