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 [...]

Here are Erich Höbarth and me rehearsing Mozart at the Wigmore Hall yesterday for our concert last night. Having done all our rehearsals in my small piano room at home, it was thrilling to transfer to the Wigmore stage and to hear the music sail out into the gorgeous acoustics of that lovely hall. I [...]

On my last evening in Prussia Cove, I was asked to say a few words after supper about the guiding ethos of the place as envisaged by violinist Sandor Vegh, who started the International Musicians’ Seminars forty years ago. I stood up in the dining room by candlelight and reminisced about some of the things [...]

I’m down by the sea in Prussia Cove in Cornwall, at the autumn chamber music seminar of the International Musicians’ Seminar, from which I have had an unaccountably long break. I remember thinking I’d have a little rest from it for a year or two. All of a sudden it was about fifteen years later, [...]

Went to hear a consort of viols playing their own arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which were written for a keyboard instrument. It’s such wonderful music that it has inspired various people to arrange it for different instruments – I have heard it done superbly by string trios using Sitkovetsky’s version, and I believe there’s a [...]