Camera lens gives a face to the music

Portraits of Victorian composers will sit alongside large exhibition prints such as that of Benjamin Britten by Karsh and modern studies such as Annie Leibovitz's 1970 picture of John Lennon in a new exhibition celebrating 150 years of photographs of British composers, writes David Lister. The show, "Variations On A Theme", opens at the National Portrait Gallery in London today. Many of the exhibits come from the gallery's archives and are rarely on view. A series of concerts in the gallery will feature music by composers from the exhibition.

The exhibition has a large sepia bromide of Sir Edward Elgar by the amateur Dr Grindrod, and a group of snapshots by Elsie Gordon in the early Twenties including Sir Arnold Bax, Percy Grainger and a rare glimpse of Maurice Ravel. Emily Andersen's Judith Weir, taken this month, is the most recent offering.