A little while ago I wrote about my sudden insight that most printed fingering in the scores of piano pieces was probably devised by men, and for male pianists. Yesterday I had some follow-up to that from a doctor who had done some further reading about male and female hand sizes. He showed me the […]

Yesterday I was at a concert where, just as I was thinking of reading the programme notes, the lights went down and I couldn’t read them. Some concert halls don’t put the lights down; others dim them slightly, and some put them down to ‘theatre levels’, just leaving enough light for people to find their […]

Phew! That was indeed a two-piano marathon at the London Piano Festival. Looking tired but happy after the three-hour concert last Saturday night in King’s Place are, from left to right, Christian Ihle Hadland, Katya Apekisheva and Charles Owen (co-directors of the festival), Susan Tomes, Tim Horton. Thanks to Viktor Erik Emmanuel for this photo, […]

At the Edinburgh Book Festival I went to hear Caroline Criado Perez talk about her book ‘Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men‘. The book has just won the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize. The book’s mission is simple but profoundly thought-provoking: it aims to make us aware of how […]

I’m preparing for my two appearances at the London Piano Festival in King’s Place on Saturday October 5.  At 2pm I have a solo lecture-recital on Schubert’s A major Sonata D959. At 7pm I’ll be joining the other festival pianists in a ‘two-piano marathon‘ concert. Most people think of piano duets as two players sitting […]