A friend has been telling me about a DVD of cellist Bernard Greenhouse giving masterclasses. Greenhouse spoke about the great Catalan cellist Pablo Casals, with whom he had studied. Casals was well-known for his love of smoking a pipe. Asked how much he smoked, he once replied, ‘As much as possible.’ Lighting his pipe when [...]

This is our cat at her 14th birthday party. She has been having chemotherapy for 15 months now. She’s responded to it extremely well, but all the same we felt that her 14th birthday was something to celebrate.  Now that the cat is on steroids, she has changed the habits of a lifetime and now likes [...]

I recently made up a couple of cadenzas for a Haydn piano concerto. I kind of improvised them at the piano, and played them in the concert without ever writing them out. Afterwards, I thought I’d try and note them down before I forgot them entirely. Cadenzas are supposed to be, or at least sound, [...]

Whenever I delete spam mails from this blog I’m intrigued by their prose style. Sent by shadowy advertisers, this special type of spam is targeted at blogs. I’m still fooled sometimes because they quote the title of one of my own blog posts, and appear to be a response to something I’ve said. The very first [...]

Last night’s Prom offered the invigorating spectacle of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra playing beautifully under their fine young conductor Ilan Volkov. One of the good effects of globalisation has been on the standards of orchestral playing. Because of the widespread availability of music both live and recorded, nobody can now hide in a corner [...]