Musical genealogical research often leads to surprising connections.
In addition to biological family trees, other, more subtle ones also play a role in the lives of musicians. It is not genes that are inherited, but musical attitudes, interpretative preferences - and sometimes a certain prestige.
No wonder some musicians like to adorn themselves with famous "ancestors". But musical genealogical research can also reveal astonishing connections with others. Pianist Mao Fujita, for example, is a great-great-great-great pupil of Carl Czerny, who taught Franz Liszt and Beethoven's nephew Karl, among others. Or Thomas Hampson: his teacher Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was a pupil of a pupil of the legendary Lilli Lehmann (who was married to a tenor from whom she broke up when he had an affair with her niece - but then again, that belongs in the realm of biological family trees). And in the case of conductor Semyon Bychkov, you only have to go back three generations of teachers - and you're already at Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Can you also hear such relationships? That is another question.
