Today’s Glasgow Herald has an article about the Scottish International Piano Competition, which starts next week in Glasgow. I’m  on the competition jury.

The board of the competition have made some wise and welcome changes to the requirements, which we all hope will encourage well-rounded and deep-thinking musicians to apply. The finals are now divided into two parts, one with the usual concerto with orchestra, and one in which the finalists play a major work of chamber music with the Brodsky Quartet in a public concert. They hope it will make everyone realise that accomplished pianists should be able to listen to others as well as to themselves. The winner of the previous competition in 2007, Tom Poster, is already a role model in this respect with his dual commitment to solo and chamber music.  Read the Glasgow Herald article here.

All right, natural science correspondents, I may have got the deer species  completely wrong, but I couldn’t resist the pun.

After so much bad weather here recently, with autumn seeming ever closer, the wind dropped today and the sun seemed to gather itself for one renewed effort on the last day of August. The bracken in the park has grown very tall, hiding the deer until a moment before you see them. The deer have grown big antlers. I was so pleased to snap this little beauty today.

What a pleasure to hear the John Wilson Orchestra in their Rodgers and Hammerstein Prom, which I heard on television. John Wilson’s arrangements are simply spellbinding. His hand-picked orchestra, with many individually distinguished musicians playing in it, reminded me of the old joke that ‘the ideal orchestra would have Jascha Heifetz as its leader.’ ‘No, it wouldn’t’, comes the response. ‘The ideal orchestra would have Jascha Heifetz sitting on the back desk of the second violins, because everyone else would be better!’

This time last year I was in ecstasies about John Wilson’s MGM Musicals Prom, and if I wasn’t quite so bowled over this year it was only because the repertoire was restricted to the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein, which doesn’t strike me as quite so inventive. How can I say that, when their partnership was the most successful in the history of American musical theatre? Their songs are loved and have been effortlessly memorised by half the world. And yet to me the songs which Rodgers wrote with lyricist Lorenz Hart are more delicious and piquant than his work with Oscar Hammerstein. Rodgers and Hammerstein play with a straight bat, I feel. I like them for it, but occasionally I miss a bit of musical topspin.

I was in Italy last week and was lucky enough to be in Siena on the day the fragile mosaics of the cathedral floor were uncovered, as they are each summer for a short period. My photo shows one of the central mosaics, King David who was also a musician.

The cathedral was full of people quietly moving about, enjoying their opportunity to gaze at the intricately patterned floor. Yet though there was no more than a gentle murmur of appreciation, we were subjected every few minutes to a forceful announcement, ordering us to be silent. It blared out at incredible volume from loudspeakers on high, making everyone jump and destroying the very silence it was demanding.

It reminded me of my visit to the Sistine Chapel in Rome. When I picture that day, I still see us all cringing at the deafening exhortations to keep quiet. I love Italy and would go there every year if I could, but I can’t understand the Italian attitude to making people behave ‘with respect’, especially in places where they are already doing so instinctively.

I’ve been struggling to get rid of what the Germans call an ‘Ohrwurm’, a catchy tune that goes round and round in your head whether you want it to or not. My Ohrwurm is an early-20th-century Argentine tango, El Choclo, ‘the ear of corn’, which I heard played on the accordion by Pete Rosser in an evening of tangos I took part in recently. Since then it has played itself about 8 million times in my head. I’ve also listened to many versions of it on the internet, enjoying especially the older historical recordings with their wonderful atmosphere.

Searching for old Argentine tangos, I came across the heritage of Carlos Gardel, the  ‘king of tango’ whom I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know about before. On his Wikipedia page (which is fascinating in itself) there’s a sound clip of his 1935 tango ‘Por una Cabeza’. It instantly transports me far from present-day suburban London. It’s from a time and a culture quite different to mine, but through the power of music and Gardel’s enchanting voice I feel completely immersed as I listen.