I have a new book, Speaking the Piano, due out in June from Boydell Press. My previous four books are about performance. This new one is about my experiences of learning and teaching (though performance sneaks in too). The title was inspired by a remark of Artur Schnabel’s teacher, Leschetitzky, to the effect that he […]

I’ve been reading ‘Tales and Travels of a School Inspector‘ by John Wilson, an account of travelling round the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in the Victorian era, in the years after the groundbreaking 1872 Education Act which gave every child between the ages of 5 and 10 the right to schooling. If the children […]

I’m reading Andrew Solomon’s fascinating ‘Far from the Tree’, a 900-page study of parents ‘who learn to deal with their exceptional children and find profound meaning in doing so’. Many of the chapters focus on conditions which are obviously challenging for families: autism, schizophrenia, deafness, disability, crime, sexual orientation, dwarfs. In the middle of the […]

This week I tweeted a link to my TLS review of pianist Evgeny Kissin’s book, ‘Memoirs and Reflections’. Some readers told me that the Times paywall had barred them from reading the whole review, so for anyone didn’t have a chance to buy the TLS, here is the review: ‘A neuroscientist once told me that […]

Today the Herald has an arts supplement with Books of the Year 2016 chosen by various guest selectors. Broadcaster Sheena McDonald has chosen my book ‘Sleeping in Temples‘ as one of her books of the year: ‘What makes a successful concert pianist? The internationally-acclaimed performer Susan Tomes explains using language as felicitously as she does […]