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 [...]

This week also sees my mini-residency at King’s College, Cambridge. On Friday 22 Feb I’m giving a pre-concert talk at 7pm and a solo recital at 9pm – music by Haydn, Schumann and Billy Mayerl. On the morning of Saturday 23 Feb I’m giving a three-hour masterclass for music students of the college – piano [...]

It’s time once more for my own London masterclasses. This Thursday and Friday, Feb 14 and 15, I’ll be teaching four young professional chamber groups (see my Concerts and Events page for details). We’ll be working on Beethoven (a piano trio and a cello/piano sonata), a Brahms trio, a Mozart piano quartet, and some Shostakovich. [...]

Tune in to Radio 4′s ‘Today’ programme at 8.35am this morning, Tuesday 29 January, when I’ll be taking part in a short discussion about coughing in concerts. We’ll be discussing the research of Professor Andreas Wagener, who believes that coughing in concerts is both ‘excessive’ and ‘non-random’. Apparently people cough more in concerts than they [...]