Alexandra
The first sound that made me stop and listen wasn’t a symphony at all — it was a single note, held by a violist in an empty rehearsal room at the Royal Academy of Music. I remember the air vibrating, the faint echo of bow hair on string, the way the sound lingered just a moment longer than expected. That resonance — both physical and historical — is what I’ve been chasing ever since. My name is Alexandra. I’m a musicologist, violist, and lifelong explorer of the many voices that have shaped London’s classical soundscape. I’ve written for BBC Radio 3, contributed to festival programmes, and spent years digging through archives that smell faintly of dust and rosin. Each score, each recording, each artist tells a fragment of the same story — the story of a city that listens, evolves, and remembers. I created The London International Players Society as both a journal and a listening companion — a space where analysis meets emotion, where the phrasing of a string quartet can open a conversation about identity, pedagogy, or craft. This is not a site of celebrity or nostalgia, but of continuity: tracing how interpretation lives on, how today’s performers inherit and reshape the legacies of yesterday. Here, you’ll find portraits of musicians, essays on interpretation, and guided listenings that invite you to hear — really hear — what makes the British classical tradition so distinct. Every article is fact-checked, sourced, and written with care, balancing academic precision with warmth and curiosity. Whether you’re a seasoned listener, a student, or simply curious about why the English horn sounds the way it does in Elgar, this place is for you. I write with one conviction in mind: music is memory made audible, and London still has much to tell us — if we learn to listen closely enough. — Alexandra Founder & Editor, The London International Players Society