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

outside Henry Wood Hall

Just finished three days of recording in Henry Wood Hall, a converted church in south London. I feel stiff and aching all over, as if a horse has been jumping up and down on me. Recording is such an arduous process!

Every time I do it, I wonder why on earth it is that, even though the microphones are inches away from the piano, I have to play extra-loudly to give the effect of strength and grandeur on the recording. Common sense seems to say that having a microphone close to you would make it far easier to give the impression of power. Yet for some weird reason it does not work like that at all. I listen to what we’ve done and often feel that what sounded gigantic as we played it sounds underwhelming on the playback.

I feel I end up bashing the piano harder than I do in concerts, where the listening ears are a lot further away than the microphones of the recording studio. I’ve asked sound engineers to explain this to me, but they say it’s a complex phenomenon with all kinds of factors, both physical and psychological. I should be used to it by now, but it still surprises and perplexes me.

What the microphone hears is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

the view from the window

Sometimes the old saying, ‘every cloud has a silver lining’, seems true. Today my trio was due to start making a record, at a studio in a rural location near the Welsh border. It’s a good four hours’ drive from my house at the best of times. We only agreed to go so far afield because Henry Wood Hall, our favourite London recording venue, was not available.  But Britain is in the grip of unusually harsh winter weather; travellers’ tales filtered through, and the journey began to look foolhardy.

We agonised about whether to attempt it anyway. Making a record feels like an important occasion, to which we have been building up for some time, and it goes against the grain to postpone.  But would we be risking life and limb? Fortunately, the director of the record company looked at the weather forecast for this weekend and sensibly took the decision out of our hands. The sessions in the West of England were cancelled.

By now we had heard of so many travel problems that we realised there must also be people who had been unable to reach London in the snowy conditions. So we began to wonder if we might have a chance of finding a studio in London at short notice. 

Lo and behold, it transpired that Henry Wood Hall had just received notice of a cancellation for the exact three days that we needed. And even better, it turned out that one of my favourite Steinway pianos was suddenly available for those three days as well. So a week of staring out of the window at the snow and worrying has ended with our whole project being rescheduled in London. We can all go home at the end of each day’s work. No long drives in the snow, and even better, no long drive back at night after the final session.

Silver linings is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

LSO St Luke's Centre

London is blanketed in snow at the moment. Dragging my little suitcase gingerly over the icy pavements, I managed to get in to the LSO St Luke’s Centre this morning  to rehearse for my first concert of the year, the first of four concerts by the Florestan Trio in the LSO St Luke’s on consecutive Thursdays this January.

Today, unusually, we played two arrangements: Janacek’s string quartet nicknamed ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ in a version for piano trio, and then a trio version of Beethoven’s Second Symphony. In theory the latter arrangement was made by Beethoven himself, though the historical proof is not watertight. Some think that the arrangement was made by a pupil or friend of the composer. However, the piano trio version was published in Vienna, with Beethoven’s name on it as composer and arranger, while Beethoven was living there, and knowing his character it seems inconceivable that he would not have protested if the publisher had taken his name in vain.

When we first played the 2nd Symphony as a piano trio, the audience seemed divided as to whether it was a worthwhile exercise or not. Some were very enthusiastic, others disdainful. Some thought that it was really just a way for 19th-century music lovers to get to know the work at home in the days before recordings were available. So I was not sure if I was looking forward to playing it in concert again, and having it recorded by the BBC for radio broadcast on Tuesday 2 February. But today the audience seemed thoroughly gripped, and after the concert we had a very enjoyable hour in the downstairs café with lots of people coming up to our table to say nice things about the performance. Perhaps we played it with more conviction than formerly.

First concert of the year is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

‘The Florestan Trio display their customary virtuosity, elegance and caprice, once again capturing the full emotional range of what may, on the surface, appear to be merely domestic entertainment music… Peter Quantrill has already chosen this disc as a highlight of the past year (in the issue of December 09) and I can do little better than echo his description of it as ‘a disc of good, serious fun’.’

Gramophone, Jan 2010

Gramophone magazine is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

outside the Gulbenkian Foundation

This photo shows me outside the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, standing beside the poster for the Florestan Trio’s three concerts.

On the day after the concerts, Bob and I caught the old tram up the hill of the Alfama district to visit the castle. While we were standing on the crowded tram, Bob’s wallet was stolen. We knew nothing about it until an Italian tourist, sitting near us with his wife, tapped me on the shoulder and handed me Bob’s wallet. I couldn’t imagine how Bob’s wallet came to be in his hand until he indicated to me what had happened: a pickpocket standing next to Bob had stolen the wallet, the Italian tourist had seen it happen and had reached forward, grabbing the pickpocket’s arm and wrenching the wallet away from him. We knew nothing of it until I turned to see the Italian man handing me the wallet and the pickpocket frantically jostling his way to the back of the bus.

The pickpocket jumped off at the next stop and disappeared. At the following stop, there were a number of police standing about. By this time the whole tram was full of the excited chatter of passengers  exclaiming to one another about the incident. As we drew up next to the police, several passengers leaned out of the tram windows and told the police what had happened. The police asked us to get off the tram and tell them ourselves. So we dismounted, and so did the Italians. As I spoke no Portuguese and the police no English, we spoke French. The Italian man was by no means eager to explain his part in the event, but when I had told the police of his brave action, they all turned and congratulated him. I made a speech of praise in schoolgirl French, and then we all shook hands and wished each other well.

Afterwards, we realised what an extraordinary thing our hero had done, especially when the Lisbon guidebooks advise tourists not to resist if they are robbed. He came to the aid of a complete stranger when it would have been so easy to turn a blind eye. He will probably never see this page, but we will always remember him with admiration.

Our Italian hero is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Trumpet, my own, blowing is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

thinking about casseroles

Bob and I went for a walk on Wimbledon Common. A film crew must have been working nearby, because several of their vans were parked there. Outside the catering van, a large table had been set up in the open air, beautifully laid with plates of cakes and muffins, pots of coffee, and even two large vases of exotic flowers. At the side of the van was a serving hatch outside which hung a blackboard with a hand-chalked menu of the day, including tasty soups and stews. We briefly wondered if we could saunter up to the hatch, pretend to be actors, and ask for a plateful of feta cheese and butternut squash casserole, but we didn’t think we could muster the right intonation.

As we walked down into the woods in the autumn sunshine, I fantasised about how great it would be to be followed around on concert tours by such a catering van. Instead of running out into the nearby streets between rehearsal and concert, searching for somewhere that’s open and serving the right kind of food at the right speed, we would be looked after by a dedicated team of chefs waiting in the wings with vases of lilies and plates of nourishing snacks. Lucky film actors!

Catering van fantasies is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

the historic 'Green Room' at Wigmore Hall

A memorable evening last night at Wigmore Hall. We’ve played in a few less-than-ideal acoustics recently (some too resonant, some too dry) so it was a real pleasure to hear the sound ringing through the air of the Wigmore Hall. Such an acoustic actually makes the performers feel inspired to dig out every last detail, because they know it will be heard.

There was a wonderful piano, a great audience, and the world premiere of Huw Watkins’s piano trio – a new contemporary work which, for once, everyone liked on first hearing. This doesn’t happen very often, at least not in my experience. The audience was as quiet and concentrated for the new piece as they were for the two Beethoven trios on either side of it. Indeed, people later commented that having heard Huw’s new piece, they heard connections between it and Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ trio which we played afterwards, and one or two people even said they heard the Beethoven in a new light because of what they’d heard in the new piece. Surely that’s a fine compliment to Huw.

We had supper afterwards, and Huw thanked us for including him in what he called ‘a Beethoven sandwich’. But, as I pointed out, it was actually a Watkins sandwich. After all, a sandwich is called after the filling.

Watkins Sandwich is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

dusk was falling as we arrived

We went to Cambridge to play a concert in Peterhouse, the oldest and smallest of Cambridge University’s colleges. Our travel plans had gone awry, and we arrived an hour late and a bit agitated. Dusk was falling, and by the time we finished our rehearsal it was dark. We went out for a bite to eat before the concert.

As we made our way to the street through a succession of small, dimly-lit stone courtyards, the fellows of the college were emerging from various staircases and heading towards dinner in their mediaeval hall. It was a windy night, and as these shadowy figures appeared from one archway and disappeared silently into another, their long black academic gowns rose up and swirled about them in the lamplight, making them look like a Mervyn Peake drawing come to life. Lights glowed gently in study windows. It was easy to imagine that the scene had scarcely changed for the past few hundred years.

Sometimes a sight like this makes me impatient because it seems unreal and anachronistic, detached from the hurly-burly of ‘life outside’. On this occasion, however, I stood at the gate looking back at them with a feeling of envy.

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

‘I can’t remember a disc of more good, serious fun than the envoi to Haydn Year from the Florestan Trio… Not a phrase is left to chance. It’s a disc full of bushes and briars, and the cold fresh wind of sense on a sunny winter morning.’  We’re slightly perplexed by the reference to bushes and briars, but we’re also mysteriously pleased by the image.

Bushes and briars is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

I would love to know whether, as I first thought, the canary was thrilled by the sound of live music in his home, or whether in fact he was alarmed by what he perceived as rival chirruping. Perhaps his vigorous calling and singing was actually a display of territorial power, a warning to us to get off his patch. What sounded like lovely music to us may have seemed to him like a coup d’état.

Territorial display is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Today we were rehearsing, amongst other things, an early Beethoven trio and also a late one.

When I went to hear the Takacs Quartet play Beethoven in the Queen Elizabeth Hall last week, I enjoyed reading in a the programme booklet a remark made by the quartet’s first violinist, Edward Dusinberre. He said, if I remember rightly, that he doesn’t consider Beethoven to have ‘got better and better’ throughout his composing career, because even his very first pieces for string quartet, the opus 18 set, are a treasure-house of ideas, as well as formidably challenging in a technical sense. Ed said that he rather thinks of Beethoven posing certain questions to himself throughout his composing career, and answering them in different ways at different times. His later answers are not simply ‘better’, just different. He clearly works on the idea of transforming little cells of musical material from his first works through to the last, though what he wants to transform them into, and how, undergoes subtle change as the years go by.

I found this a very helpful insight. There’s no unbroken line of progression, and no sense in which only the late works are ‘sublime’; you can suddenly find a movement of great depth and poise – such as the slow movement of opus 1 no 2 – in one of his earliest published works.  Equally, you can find silly humour and simple dance music in the most revered of the late works, though in some extraordinary way the inclusion of such ingredients only makes the music feel more profound.

Beethoven’s questions is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog