I’ve written an article for The Guardian, due to be published tomorrow (Friday 5 June) in the Film and Music supplement. It’s about the trio’s festival plans to perform Beethoven’s Second Symphony in the composer’s arrangement for piano trio. This year there are several works in our festival which are cut-down versions of works originally [...]

The new little convolvulus plant in our garden has just flowered for the first time. Its six delicate purple flowers will be gone by the end of the day. Bob says there should be new flowers tomorrow. We bought the convolvulus plant in homage to a wonderful sight in the Swiss town of Bern, where [...]

Today I’ve been rehearsing a quintet for piano and strings with some very fine players using some very fine old Italian string instruments. I’m never sure if it’s good to say who owns what, so I’ll just say that these top-league instruments sounded incredible. One of my colleagues said that when she acquired hers, she [...]

I’ve been putting together a special performing score of my Haydn piano concerto for the Florestan Festival. I’m going to be directing the performance ‘from the keyboard’, and I don’t want to have too many pages to turn. There’s so much else going on in the festival – both musical and non-musical – that I’ve [...]

Last night we attended the dress rehearsal of Handel’s opera ‘Giulio Cesare’ at Glyndebourne, thanks to a friend in the orchestra who kindly gave us tickets. Dress rehearsals at Glyndebourne, which are free but reserved for friends, family and supporters’ groups of the cast and crew, are possibly more fun than attending a ‘real’ performance because [...]