Noriko Ogawa arrived back safely from Japan, and here we are playing piano duets for Woman’s Hour. We’re also talking about my book ‘Out of Silence’ which Noriko is translating into Japanese. The broadcast is on Tuesday 29 March sometime between 10 and 11am, and you can listen on iPlayer for a week afterwards. Noriko’s fundraising [...]

Woman’s Hour, the iconic BBC Radio 4 programme, is to feature an interview with me and fellow pianist Noriko Ogawa on March 29. The interview was originally planned as a discussion between me and Noriko about my book ‘Out of Silence’, which Noriko is currently translating into Japanese. This is a very unusual collaboration between [...]

Here’s the Florestan Trio on stage at  Wigmore Hall at the end of our Monday lunchtime concert. It was broadcast live on Radio 3 and will be repeated this Saturday 19 March at 2pm. It’s also available this week on iPlayer.
It’s always a delight to play at Wigmore Hall, and the quality of the audience’s [...]

I have been in Germany, where one of the Florestan Trio’s performances was in the beautiful 18th century Schloss Bruchsal, a place I admit I hadn’t heard of. It turned out that Mozart had visited there, not to play, but to have a meeting with the powerful prince-archbishop who might have offered him patronage. The [...]

After coaching chamber music at various music colleges this week, I’m still baffled about how chamber music can attain its proper status in higher education. My visit often begins with students explaining that they have struggled to find time to rehearse together; this is the reason they are not properly prepared, etc. I’m warned that this [...]