I’ve just returned from a week in Germany, on the jury of the Joseph Joachim Chamber Music Competition in Weimar (see photo of the splendid Music Conservatory where it all happened). There were groups from most corners of the world. Many of them were living proof of the benefits of cross-European study. Although there were […]

Last weekend I was at a dinner in Christ’s College, Cambridge to celebrate 40 years of women in the college (founded 1505). Women have only been allowed to study at the University of Cambridge since 1869, when Girton College was founded. Newnham followed in 1872, but even for decades after that, women were not considered […]

I seem to have turned into the kind of person who stops what they’re doing in the afternoon in order to tune into live Parliamentary debates about Brexit. Last week I spent several afternoons listening to politicians giving speeches, scripted and unscripted. Being a trained musician is interesting on these occasions. I’m so used to […]

The season of Seville oranges has come to an end and with it the chance to make Seville marmalade, by general consensus the tastiest of all marmalades. We have tried making others with ‘ordinary’ oranges combined with lemon, grapefruit or lime, but nothing quite matches the tart, slightly sour aromatic tang of the Seville orange. […]

I’m preparing for next weekend’s Winterplay, my mini-festival of collaborative music at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh. We have a children’s music-and-movement workshop led by Monica Wilkinson, a music and words event with Janice Galloway, a pre-concert talk by Robert Philip and a trio concert. Violinist Erich Höbarth is about to arrive from Vienna and […]