“Without music,” Jane Austen wrote in Emma, “life would be a blank to me.” Although the speaker is Mrs Elton, a domineering and pretentious windbag – and to compound the crime, from new money – the quote might equally apply to the self-effacing Austen herself. Indeed, the importance of music, and in particular the social fillip a young woman might gain from mastery of the pianoforte, crops up in all of her novels.

In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet’s playing attracts the attention of Mr Darcy. By contrast, her sister Mary may be diligent and accomplished, but her “pedantic air and conceited manner” at the keyboard imply mere skill is not enough. In Emma, Jane Fairfax’s talent is thought sufficiently marketable to secure her a position as a governess, while her anonymous gift of a square pianoforte from Frank Churchill is a plot point underlining their secret engagement.

Jeneba Kanneh-Mason. Photo © Johanna Berghorn for Sony Music Entertainment

Austen’s passion for the instrument was grounded in a world of domestic music-making, a world Jeneba Kanneh-Mason also inhabits. Now 22, the Nottingham-born pianist grew up playing chamber music with her famous siblings....