I’ve been watching Channel 4’s new series, ‘The Piano’, in which amateur piano-playing members of the public put themselves forward to come and play an upright piano in the foyer of one of Britain’s main railway stations. Unknown to them, watching behind the scenes are two judges, the Chinese virtuoso Lang Lang and the singer-songwriter […]

We generally try to make our own decorations for our home-made Christmas cake. We used to attempt traditional scenes of snowmen, sledging, fir trees, snowballs etc. In recent years, after icing the cake, we’ve switched to making animals out of the leftover icing. Each year furnishes its own themes.  During lockdown, an otter appeared on […]

Every winter at around this time, we see a kind of bird we never see at any other time of the year. Fieldfares, which are large thrushes, arrive from Scandinavia and eat the last of the berries on the rowan tree outside our kitchen window. First we notice that the tallest trees in the area […]

In our student days, those of us studying music (and in fact anyone who wanted to continue their piano studies) were allowed to hire upright pianos and put them in our rooms. Not infrequently there were two or more people on the staircase with pianos in their rooms – I remember one year when I […]

I often tweet about music and related matters. Usually the response is small – I’m thrilled if my tweets reach a couple of hundred people. So my experience yesterday was exceptional. I was watching The Queen’s funeral which, as you’ll know, had a variety of music in it – pipe bands, regimental bands, organ music, […]