Aurora's Grand Tour, Kings Place

At the age of only six, the tiny and prodigiously talented Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was plucked out of his native Salzburg, by his ambitious father, Leopold, and bundled off to Munich. There he was put to work at the keyboard, to entertain and stupefy Maximillian III of Bavaria with his feats of playing, memory and improvisation.

This was the first of many such expeditions, undertaken over demanding and arduous distances, as Mozart, and then other highly talented musicans, trekked the length and breadth of Europe with their dazzling performances and compositions. While young gentlemen were embarking on the Grand Tour to sow their wild oats and learn about culture, these travelling musicians were playing their fingers to the bone and taking culture to the European seats of power and influence.

Aurora Orchestra recreates such breathless itineraries in its concert dedicated to those who toured so exhaustively. The programme opens with the fireworks of the Caprice No 5 by the virtuoso Paganini, played by violinist Thomas Gould. Then Cédric Tiberghien is the soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto No 5, written when the composer was 17, and his Piano Concerto No 6, composed at the age of 20.

Also on the bill are Liszt's Le mal du pays (Homesickness) from his Les années de pèlerinage, which illustrate the Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist's journeys through Switzerland and Italy.

Italy was also the inspiration for the German composer Mendelssohn's Symphony No 4, written when in the German composer's 20s, when he too was on the road. He wrote to his similarly gifted sister Fanny, "It will be the jolliest piece I have ever done, especially the last movement. I have not found anything for the slow movement yet, and I think that I will save that for Naples."

Nicholas Collon conducts the dynamic Aurora Orchestra in this whistlestop tour of Europe, illustrated by specially commissioned animated films.