This morning we flew back from Berlin. Yesterday’s thunderstorm had been swept away and the sky was a brilliant blue, with hundreds of fluffy white clouds bobbing about beneath us. Sometimes when travelling by plane, especially on a dull day, the glorious sunshine above the clouds comes as a shock. It’s often crossed my mind  that […]

Off early this morning to Heathrow for a concert this evening with the trio in Berlin’s Konzerthaus. We used never to travel somewhere far away on the day of a concert, in case of delays. We’d had one or two nasty experiences which made us conclude that we must always go out on the day before our […]

Practising Schubert’s E flat trio for a concert tonight, I remembered a delightful moment in a talk Bob gave about Schubert’s chamber music at the Florestan Festival a couple of years ago. He told the audience about the earliest known biography of Schubert, written by Heinrich Kreissle von Hellborn, whom Bob described as ‘Schubert’s first […]

Last week my trio played two concerts in Wigmore Hall, one of the world’s premier venues for chamber music. Both concerts were sold out, with people standing at the back and people being turned away at the box office. Yet there was not a single review in any newspaper. These two concerts marked almost the end […]

This morning my trio had a Coffee Concert at the Wigmore Hall. It meant being in central London at 9am for our rehearsal, so  last night I went to bed quite early, in the hope of being well rested. But this strategy rarely works, and as well as sleeping badly, I had one of my […]