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 to post reviews of the third and final concert on 13 January, but to my surprise there don’t seem to have been any. If you know of any reviews, please drop me a line to susan@susantomes.com

Florestan Trio reviews is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Our waiter glided away and came back with two more carrot muffins which he said would ‘make up a nice number for the family’. He took the three muffins away to pack them up. When it was time to leave, however, I had forgotten all about them. We left the restaurant and had walked a block away when we heard running footsteps behind us, and there was our beaming waiter in his stripey apron, pursuing us with a beautifully-packed blue bag of muffins. Talk about looking after your customers!

Exit, pursued by a waiter is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

You can listen again to Erica Jeal’s recommendations here.

‘Best modern recording of Schumann’s D minor Trio’ is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Off to the Florestan Festival is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

I vividly remember the impact that the new format had on us musicians. I and my colleagues had started by recording on LP – two sides of about 25 minutes each, enough to record two substantial works of several movements each.

When the CD format came along, however, record buyers started to expect 75 minutes of music. Soon it was considered ‘not value for money’ if a CD offered much less than this. For us, this meant that two works were no longer enough – we were now expected to record three. This, of course, meant more preparation, more pressure in the recording studio, more challenges to our stamina, concentration and temper. Personally I’d always found it more than enough to tackle two complete works for a disc. Now we had to do three, or whatever amounted to 70-75 minutes of music. The recollection is relevant to the Florestan Trio’s new disc, just out on Hyperion. We planned to record just Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio, and the Seven Songs of Alexander Blok for soprano and trio (with Susan Gritton), two works we felt were musically intense enough to stand on their own. But when it was found that the our performances totalled 55 minutes, we were asked to go back into the studio and record the First Trio as well, so that the disc would jump over the magic 60-minute mark and become ‘value for money’. We did, and the result is just arriving in the shops. Early reviews have been lovely.

Shostakovich CD just out is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

It’s always a delight to play at Wigmore Hall, and the quality of the audience’s rapt attention is inspiring. Just to play such a fine (and finely-maintained) piano as the Wigmore’s Steinway always gives me fresh ideas in performance about what could be done with tonal variety.

It’s also fun to bump into visiting international artists backstage. On this occasion I overlapped in a practice room with fellow pianist Joseph Kalichstein who was due to appear in the Wigmore with his own long-standing trio with Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson. We had a brief but deeply satisfying chat about what it is like to be the pianist in a piano trio.

At the Wigmore is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Bruchsal itself seemed handsome and peaceful, and my hotel room looked out over baroque spires to the forests and hills beyond, misty in early spring sunshine. It seemed awfully far from London. I spent some time wondering what it would be like to live there, and as I turned from the window to pack, I was feeling calm. I switched on the television. The first news of the earthquake and tsunami in north-east Japan was just starting to come through, with dreadful pictures. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I watched a huge wave, dark and clotted with debris, roar across the Japanese countryside. It was a sickening contrast with what I had just been seeing and imagining as I gazed peacefully out of the window. It felt like one of those moments in a train when the reflection in the window deceives you into thinking you’re travelling in one direction, and then suddenly you realise you’re travelling in the other.

In Bruchsal is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Florestan Trio’s final season is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

An extra hour in bed is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

The first piano trio was written at around the time that the teenage Shostakovich (now why is that such a hard image to conjure up?)  took a job as a cinema pianist, playing for silent movies, though there seems to be some doubt as to whether he wrote the piece before or during that period. Whatever the case, it’s easy to imagine him dreaming up ‘film scenes’ as he wrote these dramatic episodes intercut with bursts of romantic longing. He dedicated the piece to Tatiana, a girl he had met the previous summer on holiday in the Crimea. His composing style is slightly wobbly, as if he couldn’t decide whether he was a heart-on-sleeve romantic or a grim sceptic, but it’s interesting to see him when he was still wondering which way to go.

Completing our Shostakovich CD is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Before the rehearsal, Bob and I walked along that same path in the gentle autumn mist, enjoying the feeling that we were seeing what Constable saw – though sadly we could not follow his lead in turning what we saw into beautiful paintings. Bob recalls that when Kenneth Clark spoke about Constable in his 1969 television series, ‘Civilisation’, he said that when Constable first submitted a painting of this landscape to an exhibition in London, one of the assessors said, ‘Take that horrid green thing away.’

In Constable country is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

What is it about Schumann which makes him such a favourite of musicians? He isn’t always a favourite at the box office; in fact promoters sometimes sigh with disappointment on hearing that we want to play Schumann. His music is regarded as introvert, enigmatic, obsessive, and private. However, it’s also imaginative, touching, sincere, and memorably beautiful. Working on it is an absorbing puzzle, and it can stick in your mind almost more than the music of any other composer.

I think what Schumann-lovers sense is that his musical personality is not manipulative. His strange gestures, his sudden inspirations, his manic repetitions are not designed to be theatrical, as they would be in the work of some other composers; they’re signs of Schumann’s vulnerability, and they make us feel protective.

Schumann at Wigmore Hall is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

This year’s festival, the 13^th Florestan Festival, celebrates the work of Robert Schumann whose 200^th birthday was on 8^th June. Schumann has always had a special meaning for us because our trio is called after one of his imaginary characters, the Florestan who symbolised his active, energetic side. We’re playing all Schumann’s piano trios, and I’m also playing his wonderful ‘Davidsbuendler’ for solo piano. Robert Philip will be giving a talk on Sunday afternoon about Schumann’s struggle to ‘let both man and musician speak at once’ in his music. These are just a few of the events on offer during the festival, which also features the London Haydn Quartet, the cellists Jonathan Manson and Sally Pendlebury, and educational events provided by the Lawson Trio and by Sam Glazer. Normal service on this blog will be resumed next week.

The Florestan Festival at Peasmarsh is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

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 of physical prowess are somehow within one’s grasp; under recording conditions, where you have to play things over and over again without any lapse of intensity, it’s hard to keep up the required energy levels. Nevertheless I think we all feel proud of the way this disc has turned out.

Czech piano trios is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Finishing his survey with a summary of his favourite five recordings, the reviewer recommends ‘the Florestan Trio ‘for the marriage of intelligence and athleticism in its performance…  and they take authenticity to the extent of having a young lady pianist.’ Poetic licence in that adjective, I’m afraid, Mr Threasher, but thank you!

Haydn’s Gypsy Rondo trio is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

New website for Florestan Trio is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Under the pyramid is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

But when I look at next season’s programmes, I notice disturbing signs of a policy change. Almost half the concerts follow the format of ‘Celebrity + unnamed others’. The only ‘dedicated’ groups are string quartets. Otherwise:

‘Daniel Hope and musicians’.
‘Julia Fischer and Martin Helmchen’ (with a photo of Julia Fischer only).
‘Tetzlaff String Quartet’ (with a photo of Christian Tetzlaff only).
‘Simon Rattle and members of Berliner Philharmoniker’.
‘Mitsuko Uchida and soloists of Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra’.
‘Mark Padmore and friends’.
‘Lang Lang, Vadim Repin and Mischa Maisky. Programme to be announced.’

This last – illustrated with a dramatic photo of Lang Lang - is the most disturbing for me as a member of a long-standing piano trio. I have enormous admiration for all that Lang Lang has done to spark worldwide interest in the piano, but how confident can one feel in a trio programme offered by three busy soloists who haven’t even decided what to play? Theirs is the only trio in the series.

Of course spur-of-the-moment collaborations can be exciting, and there’s definitely a place for them in festivals and so on, but do they belong in a major chamber music season? When we started the Florestan Trio – which has always had the same members – we were determined to prove that we were serious about being a trio. Now it seems that an ad hoc collection of soloists, or ‘a celebrity’ plus some anonymous collaborators, qualifies for inclusion in a prestigious series of chamber music. I can’t even imagine a situation in which it would be OK for the Florestan Trio to advertise its concerts with a photo of one person only.

An equal music? is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

There never seems to be a blueprint for how to behave in such situations, which fortunately are quite rare. Every concert organiser and every audience seems to react differently. Yesterday the whole evening was spent, with the help of our concert agent,  in contacting everyone concerned and trying to decide what to do. We felt dreadful because the poor people of Cockermouth have had so much to contend with recently, and they had already had to re-locate our concert because of flooding in the original venue. Various alternatives having been discussed and pursued via rounds of phone calls, a solution to the concert problem was found very late last night. By a stroke of good luck, the Gould Trio was able to take our place at incredibly short notice. So now I’m at my desk instead of on a train, with  my suitcase still packed on the bed beside me, and the imagined landscape of Cumbria receding from my inner eye.

No journey to the north is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

seen round the corner from Henry Wood Hall

A very busy week ended with a concert and party for the Friends of the Florestan Trio. What a nice thing a Friends’ Organisation is! So much of a musician’s time, especially a pianist’s time, is spent working alone or with just a few other people. It’s easy to lose the sense that anyone out there is following your progress, or is even aware of your activities. Concerts, of course, bring you suddenly face to face with large numbers of people, but they are, in effect, strangers, perhaps all hearing and seeing you for the first time.

A Friends’ Organisation is different; its members have signed up precisely because they don’t want to lose touch with you. Last night we had about a hundred Friends gathered together for our annual party. It’s really quite touching to see all these people, many of them experts in fields completely unrelated to music, who have come together for the specific purpose of giving us moral support. The atmosphere in the concert is subtly different; there’s a warmth there right away. And it does really help to feel that there are people out there wondering how you’re getting on as you move about the world.

Moral Support is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog