I’m off to take part in the Florestan Festival at Peasmarsh for the next few days. The festival takes place in a lovely little Norman church in the middle of the East Sussex fields (see photo).
This year’s festival, the 13th Florestan Festival, celebrates the work of Robert Schumann whose 200th birthday was on 8th June. [...]

This month the Florestan Trio’s new disc is out on Hyperion Records. It’s a CD of three marvellous Czech piano trios by Smetana, Martinu and Petr Eben.
It was a particularly arduous disc to record because all three works – though particularly the Smetana and Martinu – require a lot of physical stamina. In concert, short bursts [...]

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. [...]

The Florestan Trio has a new website built by the same brilliant guy who designed mine.  Take a look by clicking here!

//

Here I am in Paris, sitting on top of the concert hall where the trio made its Paris debut this week in a concert broadcast live by Radio France Musique. I’m sitting by IM Pei’s celebrated glass pyramid in the courtyard of the Musée du Louvre. Underneath the pyramid is a complex of foyers and [...]