This morning I was coaching a very nice piano trio. We were talking about those ‘abstract’ works of Beethoven where the composer builds his material out of little musical ‘cells’ rather than obvious melodies and counter-melodies. Such works are sometimes more difficult for audiences to make sense of, yet often very satisfying for musicians to [...]

We enjoyed listening on television to Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto played at the Proms by the excellent pianist Simon Trpceski. It’s strange how those famous themes, which once sounded slightly hackneyed to me, no longer seem that way and instead sound full of warmth and charm.
After the performance, Bob was talking about ‘the Russian crescendo’, [...]

We went to the First Night of the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall on Friday. Thanks to kind friends who invited us, we had wonderful seats and good company. The Albert Hall was packed full of enthusiastic listeners plus the 500 performers needed for Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. It was a colourful, vivacious scene and we [...]

Today’s Independent newspaper has a review of new books on music, with several paragraphs devoted to mine. Click here if you’d like to read the article by the Independent’s literary editor Boyd Tonkin.

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BBC Music Magazine is giving away eight copies of my book ‘Out of Silence’. To enter the draw, all you have to do is answer the question: of which trio is Susan Tomes the pianist? The answer’s easy to find on this website.
The draw closes on the 9th August, so if you’re interested, click the [...]