One of the pieces we’re playing in Luxembourg tonight is a piano trio arrangement of Janacek’s first string quartet, known as ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’ after a short story by Tolstoy. The story recounts how the narrator becomes jealous of his wife after she forms a musical partnership with a violinist, and in a fit of […]

I’ve written an article for The Guardian, due to be published tomorrow (Friday 5 June) in the Film and Music supplement. It’s about the trio’s festival plans to perform Beethoven’s Second Symphony in the composer’s arrangement for piano trio. This year there are several works in our festival which are cut-down versions of works originally […]

I’ve been putting together a special performing score of my Haydn piano concerto for the Florestan Festival. I’m going to be directing the performance ‘from the keyboard’, and I don’t want to have too many pages to turn. There’s so much else going on in the festival – both musical and non-musical – that I’ve […]

I spent a long tube journey today reading the newspaper articles and special supplements about tonight’s Champions’ League Final football match between Manchester United and Barcelona. I’m not much of a sports fan, but anything can become interesting once you take the trouble to know something about it, and I can see that in any […]

Today was a Bank Holiday, but I hardly noticed. To me it was just a valuable practice day in the week leading up to the rehearsal period for the trio’s festival. Next Monday marks the beginning of a ten-day period in which we have to prepare all the pieces we’re playing in eight concerts. Once […]