A nice surprise this morning – my Cobbett Medal (to be presented next week at a dinner of the Worshipful Company of Musicians) is mentioned in the Herald newspaper. I was re-reading a chapter from my first book the other day, in preparation for yesterday’s event at the Anglo-Japanese Foundation. Writing about a tour of [...]

We have been in snowy Vienna, where we were invited to hear a performance of Beethoven’s opera ‘Fidelio’ in the very theatre where it was premiered (see photo). We were sitting right behind Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the conductor. It was thrilling to be in the Theater an der Wien which, despite renovation of the foyers, must [...]

I have had a delightful letter from a piano trio in Tokyo, asking for advice about how to perform Judith Weir’s first Piano Trio. The work ends with the pianist banging shut the lid over the piano keyboard, dryly snapping everyone out of the realm of music and back into the real world. The moment [...]

Yesterday I gave some coaching to the Minerva Piano Trio, who had brought the first version of Brahms’s B major Trio opus 8. He composed it around 1853-54, at the time when he first got to know the Schumanns, Clara and Robert. It’s well known that he became very close to the Schumann family, and [...]

Out of the blue has come a letter from the Worshipful Company of Musicians, telling me that I have been awarded the 2013 Walter Wilson Cobbett Medal for distinguished services to chamber music. WW Cobbett was a successful businessman whose true passion was chamber music. Groves’ Dictionary observed that he ‘gave to commerce what time [...]