Yesterday I gave some coaching to the Minerva Piano Trio, who had brought the first version of Brahms’s B major Trio opus 8. He composed it around 1853-54, at the time when he first got to know the Schumanns, Clara and Robert. It’s well known that he became very close to the Schumann family, and […]

Out of the blue has come a letter from the Worshipful Company of Musicians, telling me that I have been awarded the 2013 Walter Wilson Cobbett Medal for distinguished services to chamber music. WW Cobbett was a successful businessman whose true passion was chamber music. Groves’ Dictionary observed that he ‘gave to commerce what time […]

On Christmas Day I was sorry to hear that the composer Richard Rodney Bennett had died in his adopted home, New York. RRB and I had been in touch since I made my Billy Mayerl disc. He wrote to me out of the blue to say how much he liked it. I was thrilled to […]

More reviews of my book ‘Out of Silence’, translated into Japanese by Noriko Ogawa, have arrived from Tokyo. I must say these Japanese reviews are absolutely my favourites so far. Their flavour suggests Noriko was right when she said that Japanese people would be on my wavelength, or vice versa. I particularly treasure a review […]

Today is the launch of ‘Astar’, a lovely Royal Scottish National Orchestra CD (see photo) on which I play the piano. ‘Astar’ is the Gaelic word for ‘journey’. The RSNO’s brilliant idea, funded by Creative Scotland, is to give every child born in Scotland, from October 15 until a year later, the gift of a CD […]