I spent a long tube journey today reading the newspaper articles and special supplements about tonight’s Champions’ League Final football match between Manchester United and Barcelona. I’m not much of a sports fan, but anything can become interesting once you take the trouble to know something about it, and I can see that in any [...]

Today was a Bank Holiday, but I hardly noticed. To me it was just a valuable practice day in the week leading up to the rehearsal period for the trio’s festival. Next Monday marks the beginning of a ten-day period in which we have to prepare all the pieces we’re playing in eight concerts. Once [...]

Bob’s new vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden is being sabotaged by slugs. They emerge at night to munch on his tender lettuces and fledgling bean plants. We know the slugs dislike crawling over certain things, so for a while we collected our coffee grounds and spread them around the plants, but rain [...]

I find that Piotr Anderszewski’s views on chamber music have begun to prey on my mind. Yesterday I said it was no hardship that chamber music has to be performed in an upright position. Since then I have started to wonder if I was too hasty. Now I suddenly feel that if only I could [...]

I’m still mulling over a remark made by the marvellous pianist Piotr Anderszewski in a Telegraph interview I read on the plane to Berlin. Asked why he doesn’t play much chamber music, Anderszewski replied, ‘Well…I’m a solitary person. But also I like to lie down, and you can’t do that if you’re rehearsing with another [...]