I played a concert this week and noticed that my page-turner, sitting beside me at the piano, was holding what looked like a generous square of fudge in her left hand. As a fudge fan myself, I didn’t find it hard to imagine why one would wish to have a square of fudge on stage, [...]

A kind person at International Piano magazine has sent me, without comment, a copy of the May/June issue. It turns out to have a survey of recordings of Haydn’s ‘Gypsy Rondo’ piano trio. ‘The Florestan Trio … displays uncommon musical intelligence while refusing to allow any hint of sentimentality of any over-indulgence in the finale. [...]

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear website,
Happy birthday to you!
This blog ‘went live’ one year ago today. To mark the occasion, what better than a photo of the cherry blossom which has just come out in the garden?
The first anniversary seems a good time to take stock.  If you read this blog regularly, do you [...]

‘You’re looking at me with a wild surmise!’ said Bob as I came into the kitchen. I said I was trying to identify the unusual aroma coming from the oven. ‘It’s wild garlic’, he explained.
The clutch of pungent green leaves in this week’s organic veg box was a challenge to our usual cooking routines. After some thought, [...]

We attended a funeral in a small church this week. As we sat waiting for the service to begin, an organist was stumbling through some well-known hymns, their outlines blurred by a haze of wrong notes. Though I tell myself to lighten up, I find I’m very impatient with this kind of stumbling. I can’t ignore it and tell myself [...]