I played a piano recital the other evening at the home of some friends. It was a lovely evening, and behind the piano, the French doors were wide open to the garden.
About ten minutes from the end of my recital, as I was sailing full steam ahead with the final piece, a black kitten wandered [...]

I’m off to take part in the Florestan Festival at Peasmarsh for the next few days. The festival takes place in a lovely little Norman church in the middle of the East Sussex fields (see photo).
This year’s festival, the 13th Florestan Festival, celebrates the work of Robert Schumann whose 200th birthday was on 8th June. [...]

I did an interview yesterday with Australian Radio’s ‘The Music Show’, hosted by composer Andrew Ford for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It was broadcast in Australia a few hours ago and is now available via their website for downloading or to listen online. If you’d like to listen, or to read more about it, click [...]

This is my 200th blog post! Here’s a photo of me playing for an invited audience recently in someone’s private home. I really like playing (and also going to hear) house concerts, which feel like a variant on the ‘salons’ of previous centuries.
Understandably, such house concerts are usually a money-free zone for all concerned. But since I enjoy playing [...]

After rejoicing that the BBC had improved its ‘Young Musician of the Year’ coverage so markedly in 2010, I had to grind my teeth with annoyance as I watched the ‘Eurovision Young Musicians 2010’ competition on BBC4 this evening. The young musicians were tremendous, but the presentation was horribly bland. Fifteen semi-finalists were whittled down to seven [...]