Yesterday I was in Perth, recording Mozart and Beethoven quintets for piano and wind instruments with principal players of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra – Adrian Wilson, Timothy Orpen, David Hubbard and Chris Gough. The performance will be relayed as a Radio 3 lunchtime concert on April 9 at 1pm. We conformed to Covid restrictions […]

Thank you to everyone who sent me a nice message after last night’s streaming of the latest concert in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra‘s digital series – on this occasion, a programme curated by their principal cellist Philip Higham and presenting two piano quartets by Mozart and Fauré. Once again I had the impression that everyone […]

After a long winter in the deep freeze (in more ways than one) – at last! – a concert to tell you about. It won’t be performed in front of a live audience – that long-awaited moment is probably still months away-  but it will be broadcast on YouTube and Facebook on March 11. I’ll […]

In a cheese shop the other day, conversation turned to exotic cheeses and someone mentioned Gjetost, the Norwegian goat’s milk cheese which looks like a block of fudge and has a distinctive, caramel element to its taste. It’s a cooked cheese made with whey and cream, very rich and usually eaten in wafer-thin slivers. Mention […]

One of our regular walks in the nearby hills takes us past a cornfield, which we discovered in the first lockdown. It was Spring then, and the field was softly green. We were thrilled to see larks emerging from their hiding-places among the rows of corn, rising up into the sky and singing when they […]