The final concerts of my season took place last week at the Cerne Abbas Music Festival in Dorset with the Gaudier Ensemble. During the festival we gave a late-night performance of Messiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time’ in a candlelit church, with no other lights except for reading lights clipped to our music stands. […]

Controversy in the press about whether Proms audiences should be discouraged from clapping so much. What’s under the spotlight is the Prommers’ habit of clapping in between movements, and the growing sport of racing each other to be the first to applaud vociferously when they recognise the closing chords of a piece. The classical music […]

Listening to Desert Island Discs on radio this morning, I was startled to hear impresario Harvey Goldsmith discussing the ‘riders’ – or additional contractual requests – demanded by some of his pop artists and their entourages to make their lives more pleasant on tour. He said his view was that a happy crew made happy […]

I’ve started to prepare for the next festival I’m involved in, the annual chamber music festival of the Gaudier Ensemble. It takes place in the lovely old village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset in July. This year I have a few little piano solos and ten different chamber works to prepare, ranging from a Haydn […]

It’s now a week since the Florestan Festival ended, and lots of people have been kind enough to write and say what they thought of it. One thing is very interesting: there’s enormous variety in what people enjoyed best. Some relished the things which were new for them, others treasured the old. Some liked things […]