I’m pleased to say that my audience for the Beethoven lecture-recital yesterday was much bigger than I or the organisers had anticipated. Extra chairs needed to be put out, and there was a lovely buzz in the room when I came in. It seemed that people were pleased by the prospect of hearing a player’s […]

I’m preparing for a lunchtime lecture-recital on Tuesday in which I’ve been asked to speak about, and then play, a late Beethoven sonata, the A flat major opus 110. It’s an experiment for all concerned; I’ve performed the sonata before, but have never tried to speak about it publicly, and certainly not during the same […]

I’ve been reading the wonderful ‘Memoirs of a Highland Lady’, written by Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus. What a series of unforgettable pictures she paints of her life in the Highlands of Scotland in the early years of the 19th century! As a teenager, I used to get up early to practise the piano, feeling sorry for myself on […]

At New Year we played a game we hadn’t played for ages – Ex Libris. It’s a game where all the players have to write the opening or closing sentence of a book which already exists. Each player in turn selects a book from the shelves (obviously you have to have lots of books to hand […]

I’ve been listening to recordings of pieces I’m currently working on. One is a Moment Musical by Schubert, represented by many different performances, including a YouTube clip of Horowitz playing it in front of a rapt audience in, I think, Carnegie Hall. Horowitz’s touch is wonderful, and he clearly had the audience in the palm of his […]