I’ve been listening to recordings of pieces I’m currently working on. One is a Moment Musical by Schubert, represented by many different performances, including a YouTube clip of Horowitz playing it in front of a rapt audience in, I think, Carnegie Hall. Horowitz’s touch is wonderful, and he clearly had the audience in the palm of his […]

Dame Fanny Waterman, who is standing down from the Leeds Piano Competition she co-founded in 1961, has caused quite a storm with her remarks about the decline of piano-playing in the UK. She attributes this partly to the growing popularity of electric pianos (‘a waste of time’) and partly to the late start of piano pupils […]

There’s been a lot in the press recently about coughing in classical concerts, and whether it’s acceptable or not. We classical musicians (and listeners) tend to get upset about performances being marred by loud coughing. However, compared with some musicians, I realise we are very lucky when it comes to the kind of background noise […]

Lots of people have written to me today about coughing. Why? Because of a BBC News report about violinist Kyung-Wha Chung’s comeback recital at the Festival Hall in London. She was disturbed by a child coughing in the audience, and remonstrated with the parents. Her response to the coughing divided the audience. Some were shocked or […]

An interesting discussion the other night with a bunch of student pianists. We were discussing the kind of situation where you have to perform several different pieces in a row without being able to leave the stage. This is sometimes the case in, for example, a competition, where the rules state that you must perform […]