The year 1853 was crucial for the history of music: Brahms, in his twenties, met Berlioz, Liszt and Schumann; Berlioz and Wagner began the composition of such fundamental pieces as The Trojans and The Ring of the Nibelung respectively, and Schumann, close to the tragic end of it, stopped composing. Hugh Macdonald delves into the daily lives of the protagonists of his story to show how the internationalization of the music scene — thanks to intense correspondence and the rapid expansion of the rail network that stretched from London and Paris to Leipzig and Zurich — made possible that the innovations that would characterize the music of the following decades were born. A vivid chronicle, as rigorous as it is vibrant, of the decisive moment that marked the end of the naive romanticism of Berlioz and Schumann, and the arrival of the powerful musical politics of Wagner, but also - in the opinion of many voices of the time - of its antidote , the work of Brahms.