[Daily Telegraph, 21 January 2006]

Was he poisoned? Did he resent his father? Ivan Hewett uses the latest scholarship to imagine an encounter with the composer, born 250 years ago

I'm due to meet Mozart's ghost at the Elysian Fields, but it's hard to find him among all the other shades. Eventually I find him by a brook, entertaining some ladies at the harpsichord in the shade of a juniper tree. "Ah," he says, "I can tell you're from the other side, your apparel is so odd. Forgive me," he says to the ladies, with a deep bow, before turning to me. "We don't get many visitors here. Why have you come? You're not like that vulgar woman who wants to write down my music from beyond the grave? She must be getting rich from my efforts."