At the Edinburgh Festival this week we went to the Usher Hall to hear the French orchestra Les Siècles performing Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring on instruments of the period. (The difference in those instruments was not immediately apparent, though there was a soft grain to the famous bassoon solo which opens the piece, and other […]

Hearing of the death of renowned theatre director Peter Brook, I went back to my book Beyond the Notes in which I described going to Paris in 1982 to ask his advice about how to keep our chamber music group Domus alive and in good heart despite the many difficulties we were grappling with. His […]

A couple of readers said they’d like to hear more about Radu Lupu. I only met him a few times and didn’t know him well, but I vividly remember the impression he made. When I went for my lessons, I was probably focusing on trying to play each phrase as beautifully as I could. It […]

Very sad news today that the great pianist Radu Lupu has died. He was probably the first ‘favourite pianist’ I chose for myself rather than taking my teachers’ choices on trust. I tweeted something about having once had a couple of lessons with Radu Lupu when he was living in London. In response, American pianist […]

At the end of December, I usually reflect on my favourite concerts of the year. This year however, as you will know all too well, we spent the entire year in a pandemic. Concert life is still badly impacted, and freelance musicians have been more impacted than most. For me, the big event of the […]