BBC Radio 3’s ‘Record Review’ programme this morning contained a ‘Building a Library’ feature on the Ravel Trio. Reviewer Jeremy Sams, a well-known Francophile, compared the available recordings. Mentioning the enormous technical difficulty of all three instrumental parts, he quoted Ravel as having said that he loved the fact that it was difficult because it […]

Over the years, my recordings have often featured on BBC Radio 3’s Saturday morning programme, Record Review. They have a long-running feature called ‘Building a Library’, where each week a reviewer sifts through the available recordings of a classic piece and recommends their favourites. This is always interesting because it gives listeners the chance to […]

Here are a couple of reviews of  the Florestan Trio’s Beethoven trio concerts in the Wigmore Hall this week. The series came to a memorable close on 13 January with a standing ovation from the Wigmore audience. The Independent five-star review of the first concert The Guardian review of the first concert The Guardian five-star review of the second concert I was hoping […]

On the day after the first of the Florestan Trio’s Beethoven Cycle concerts in the Wigmore Hall on Friday, a kind member of the audience invited me to lunch in Le Caprice, a lovely restaurant to which I had never been before. The bread basket on our table contained a a very superior freshly-baked carrot […]

Yesterday Radio 3’s ‘Building a Library’ feature on CD Review focused on Schumann’s first piano trio, in D minor opus 63. Erica Jeal’s overall recommendation was for a 1958 recording of Emil Gilels, Msistlav Rostropovich and Leonid Kogan, and her choice for the best modern recording was the Florestan Trio. Schumann’s first trio was a […]