Music: Danish Maestro

Emperor Nero is supposed to have been a bang-up organist and bagpiper. England’s Henry VIII composed chamber music and religious choruses. Germany’s Frederick the Great was a flute player. Most musical of present-day royal figures is Denmark’s tall, genial Crown Prince Frederik.

Last week Musician-Prince Frederik gave way to an old passion, strode to the stage of Copenhagen’s Royal Opera House during a rehearsal, conducted the orchestra through the last movement of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony and the Overture to Wagner’s Meistersinger.