Last night I attended the Advent Service in the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. The service, which commemorates the events leading up to the birth of Christ, has a simple and irresistible narrative. At the beginning, the chapel is in darkness. Approaching from the west end, the choir pauses at various places in the great […]

Last week a friend was showing me how she can call up musical scores on various electronic devices, linking the devices so that she can use whichever best suits her needs at the time. She even had the option of writing in fingerings and expression marks with an electronic pencil; any changes she made would […]

It was great to be part of the RSNO chamber series in Glasgow yesterday afternoon in its first ‘live’ concert for an in-person audience since the pandemic.  That’s a gap of almost three years! Photo shows (L to R) cellist Pei Jee Ng, me, violist Tom Dunn, violinist Lena Zeliszewska, violinist and RSNO concertmaster Maya […]

The paperback version of my book The Piano – a History in 100 Pieces comes out today in the UK. (It comes out in the US on November 29.) One can’t take it for granted that a hardback non-fiction book will go into paperback, so I’m grateful to Yale University Press for this mark of […]

I’ve been reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Memories and Portraits, published in 1887. RLS, as he’s often referred to, is famous for Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and a few others, though in my local library the collected edition of his works runs to 25 volumes. RLS grew up […]