Yesterday I was in Perth, recording Mozart and Beethoven quintets for piano and wind instruments with principal players of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra – Adrian Wilson, Timothy Orpen, David Hubbard and Chris Gough. The performance will be relayed as a Radio 3 lunchtime concert on April 9 at 1pm. We conformed to Covid restrictions […]

Thank you to everyone who sent me a nice message after last night’s streaming of the latest concert in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra‘s digital series – on this occasion, a programme curated by their principal cellist Philip Higham and presenting two piano quartets by Mozart and Fauré. Once again I had the impression that everyone […]

It’s now a whole year since concerts started being cancelled in anticipation of the pandemic. I remember very well that I had been to a birthday coffee party where the extended family sat around a big circular glass-topped table while our reflections ate scones and drank coffee in mirror image. I got home and there […]

After a long winter in the deep freeze (in more ways than one) – at last! – a concert to tell you about. It won’t be performed in front of a live audience – that long-awaited moment is probably still months away-  but it will be broadcast on YouTube and Facebook on March 11. I’ll […]

This week we watched Amy Berg’s 2015 documentary about Janis Joplin, ‘Little Girl Blue‘, which tells Janis’s story with the help of letters she wrote to her family while on tour. It’s an absorbing watch, full of great footage, excellent interviews with her family, friends and bandmates, and touching insights into Janis’s evolution from spiky […]