Here’s something I hadn’t seen before: an asymmetrical viola. Its owner, Rivka Golani, showed it to us when Bob interviewed her for Putney Music society this week.
Rivka explained that the maker of the viola, Otto Erdesz, believed that the unusual cut-out on the treble side of the viola (that’s the left-hand side as we look [...]

At ChamberStudio yesterday we were working on a piece by Prokofiev. We were discussing the kind of piano writing that’s often found in works by Russian composers of the Soviet era. As the writing is typically rather spare and empty-looking on the page, with a deliberate avoidance of opulence, it’s very difficult to intuit the [...]

I was teaching at the Guildhall today. All the students were excellent – that didn’t surprise me, because I know what a high standard there is at London’s big music colleges these days. Not one of my students was British – that didn’t surprise me either. What did surprise me was how beautifully they were [...]

This Thursday morning, 11 November, from 10am-1pm in the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, I’m giving a masterclass in ‘the art of piano chamber music’, working with chamber groups from the Guildhall. The class will be in the Music Hall.
The event is free and open to the public, so please come along if you [...]

Today, 27 October, at 1pm on Radio 3 you can hear the broadcast of a bassoon and piano recital given by Rachel Gough, the excellent principal bassoon of the London Symphony Orchestra, and me. The concert was part of a series at LSO St Luke’s in the City of London, focusing in turn on the principal [...]