The other night, at the theatre, I was amazed by how freely people in the audience were coughing. At one point, the coughs became so frequent that it was like hearing bull-frogs calling to one another at night from different parts of the swamp. I actually started to count the coughs, which was counter-productive because when […]

At last the printed score has arrived for the trio by Huw Watkins. We’re giving the world premiere in the Wigmore Hall on November 25. When the newly published score arrived, I already knew the notes of the piano part, because I’ve been working from an electronic PDF which I printed out on loose A4 […]

I’ve just realised that this is my hundredth blog post on this website. I am a centenarian! To celebrate, here’s a sweet story I heard from Mark Morris when I attended his question-and-answer session the other night at Sadler’s Wells. He was complaining about someone sitting in the balcony at one of his shows last […]

Yesterday I was astounded to hear a golfer talking on the radio about the current trend whereby competitors in golf championships are ferried from tee to green in little buggies. When asked whether it was really so hard to walk that short distance, the golfer replied that hitting a golf shot is a demanding physical skill which takes […]

One of the professors at the RSAMD said a very interesting thing when I was there the other day. We were talking about the difference that the existence of recordings has made to learning new works. He said that it’s quite common for his students to come to their lesson and say things like, ‘I’m […]