‘Desert Island Discs’ is a long-running radio series in which each ‘castaway’ chooses the eight records they’d like to take to an imaginary desert island. In between musical choices, they talk about their lives and speculate about how they’d manage on the island. At the end, they get to choose a book and a luxury they’d like to take with them.

During the week there had been trailers for the programme, mentioning that David Attenborough had chosen ‘a rather surprising luxury’. I was curious to know what it was.

And guess what? It was a piano. Since when is that ‘a rather surprising luxury’?

Yes, OK, as a musician I suppose I’d be bound to feel outraged on behalf of pianos. Perhaps whoever wrote the trailer only meant that it was ’surprising’ for a naturalist to choose a musical instrument – though personally I don’t find it in the least unusual, given people’s breadth of interests. And if I were to be cast away on a desert island, none of my friends would be in the least surprised if my luxury were an raccoon or an otter to keep me company.

Attenborough’s ’surprising luxury’ is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

“I don’t really think people get that absorbed in music at the moment,” says Simons. “They’re streaming it, they’re watching YouTube clips. People say ‘I listened to this’ and you think ‘Yeah, did you listen to it on computer speakers?’

This surprised me for several reasons: first, to hear that people ‘don’t get that absorbed in music at the moment’ (not my impression at all, I must say, but I’m in a different field of music). Second, to hear Ed Simons putting forward computer speakers as the better way to listen to music.

If it had been my interview, I would have answered differently – ‘People are listening to music on computer speakers. People say ‘I listened to this’ and you think, ‘Yes, but have you heard us play live? Recordings are nothing in comparison.’

Listening on computer speakers is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

At the concert there were two different string quartet groups, giving me the chance to listen to two of my favourite violinists as quartet leaders. Readers of this blog already know how much I admire Viennese violinist Erich Höbarth, with whom I’m halfway through a Mozart Series in Perth Concert Hall. The other quartet was led by American violinist Daniel Phillips of the New-York-based Orion Quartet.

Both these players are to my way of thinking ideal examples of how to approach chamber music. Their performances are totally focused, without ever showing off or deliberately drawing attention to themselves for effect. Many musicians add a layer of ‘mime’ to signal their feelings and point out certain musical twists and turns to the audience. I can’t dismiss this kind of approach, as I know from experience that many audience members like it, even rely on it. However, speaking for myself, I’m more fascinated by musicians whose gestures are economical and whose concentration draws the audience in. Any dramatic visual effects arise from their efforts to express the music, but otherwise their understanding is transmitted entirely in sound. It feels as if the music is too important for mere display. This is not to say, of course, that they are not interesting to watch – on the contrary. They are interesting precisely because they are not trying to manipulate what I see.

Not showing off is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Gradually, however, as I acquired more and more performing experience, there came a point when I couldn’t help realising that I did actually know a lot more about certain pieces than my students did. I also discovered how to put certain things into words, or more to the point, I gained the confidence to say them. I’m still inspired by  Sebök’s dazzling powers of observation, but in the meantime I’ve also found that young musicians’ hunger for new ideas can be inspiring in itself.

So I’d like to thank everyone who took the trouble to get in touch over Christmas and say that they’d enjoyed working with me. I enjoyed it too. A very Happy New Year!

New Year greetings is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

You can read the Herald interview here.

Herald interview is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

‘Shall I ask you to try again, or is there no point?’

‘You line the notes up in front of you and shoot them one by one.’

‘Between you and music there is a brick wall forever fixed.’

‘Yours is the sort of playing I’ve spent 25 years of my life trying to stamp out.’

As an occasional teacher myself, I find it distressing that people are so impressed by devastating criticism. Maybe I come from a different tradition; at any rate, I wouldn’t allow myself to say those kind of humiliating things to students. When I’m in the audience at a masterclass I quite often think, ‘Yes, I might have made that same point myself, but I wouldn’t have made it like that, for God’s sake!’  Direct criticism, yes; humorous observations, yes; but not humiliating remarks. As a student I found that mean remarks from a teacher just made me feel very detached and remote. I didn’t respect them more for being horrid to me. Therefore I’m surprised by how many people can somehow persuade themselves that being verbally mauled by ‘a master’ has done them good. They might have been hurt or angry at the time, but they eventually find a way to look back on it and say that it was a transformative experience. At the very least, they come to think that it has enhanced their coping strategies.

For the audience there’s an theatrical frisson to a masterclass in which a student gets savaged. It feels a bit like watching those nature programmes in which a huge aggressive polar bear, rampaging around in a territorial dispute, sits down on a baby bear and crushes it. It’s horrifying but awe-inspiring.

Some ‘masters’ play to the gallery in this respect, courting laughter and the shocked intake of breath. You’d think students on the receiving end of their larger-than-life jibes would hate the teachers for it, but they don’t; there seems to be something in human psychology which makes us feel there is ‘more truth’ in wounding remarks than in the same advice considerately given.

Coping with unkind remarks is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

A year later, however, people in Cambridge were out in their shirt-sleeves in intense November sunshine. Lots of people were still punting on the river (see photo). The light was particularly beautiful, and I annoyed everyone by stopping to try and capture one poetical scene after another. By the time we got back to London, however, mist had descended; we emerged from the tube into dark wintry wetness which made the Cambridge sunshine seem very far away.

There has been a lot of talk about another harsh winter, but we have a young friend who works in weather forecasting, and he told us that it is impossible to predict the weather accurately more than a few days ahead. Anything else is pure guesswork.

November sun is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

I’m particularly pleased about one rose, an Ena Harkness, which has taken ages to get established in our garden, and for the past few years has been producing flowers very tentatively. I chose it because ‘Ena Harkness’ was my mother’s favourite rose. It’s always struck me as the ‘red, red rose’ of Robert Burns’s poem, also a favourite of my mum’s. This month our Ena Harkness has suddenly outdone the other roses in splendour.

‘Oh, my luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June.
Oh, my luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune.’

November roses is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

We went for coffee in an outstandingly beautiful lounge reserved for Fellows of the College. Several older gentlemen were reading or working quietly on laptops. My companion pointed out several of them, names known to me from the world of politics and literature. So as not to disturb them, we took our coffee to an adjoining room where I was startled to see some famous paintings on the walls.  Although I was only there for a short time, I could feel myself starting to relax and enter an enjoyable trance-like state. Imagine the quality of work one could do there! How different life would be if you had access to such a place whenever you wanted it! Alas, all too soon it was time to tear myself away and do some teaching, but I cherished the image of those peaceful rooms for the rest of the day.

In Oxford is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Then suddenly and rather shockingly this week, all the cygnets were gone. There was no corps de ballet any more. The two parent swans were idly pestering passers-by for bits of bread. Where have the young ones gone? Do they take it into their heads to fly away and seek new homes, and if so, do they all depart at the same time?  Will each cygnet try to seek out a separate home, or have they all gone off together? How far do they go? Will they ever return?

Look, no cygnets is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

In the light of that experience, I cringed inwardly when I read the Guardian obituary of Latin-pop bandleader Edmundo Ros. After a long and successful career, Ros finally fell out with his band members after one particular tour, and on his return ‘he sent his orchestra’s sheet music archive to be shredded at the Bank of England’.

What a gesture! I sat there amid my piles of music trying to imagine how it would feel if they were all gone for good. Would it be a huge relief, or would there be a crippling sense of wrongness and regret? There was something deeply operatic about Ros’s behaviour – not simply deciding to shred his sheet music archive, which is already a striking gesture, but sending it to be shredded at the Bank of England. Why there? I felt there was some important information being withheld. Was there some special point being made, and to whom? Can anyone send stuff to be shredded at the Bank of England? I wondered where I’d send my archive of sheet music to be shredded, should I wish to make a point.

Shredding sheet music is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

The photo shows the Cosima Piano Quintet at the start of a coaching session yesterday, part of the first Marryat Chamber Music weekend which ended last night with a wonderful concert by four young ensembles made up of post-grad and young professional players from countries as far apart as Kazakhstan, Israel and Tasmania as well as the UK. Such a rich cultural environment is a great help when we’re all exploring different ideas and ways of doing things. Some people were surprised and amused or bemused to discover that their way of doing things seemed ‘typically British’ (or Eastern European or whatever) to others. It’s good to be surrounded by examples of other ways to do things, because they can often be directly inspiring, without any need for words or theories.

Exploring other ways of doing things is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Everyone who knows the film ‘Amadeus’ will remember the scene in which Mozart’s body is carted off in dreadful winter weather, to be thrown into a common grave outside the city, with no family members present. Strange as it may seem, that was not unusual at the time. The emperor had forbidden the use of new coffins because of a shortage of wood, and he had passed a law that bodies were to be buried in linen shrouds to speed decomposition. Mourners often did not follow the cortege beyond the city walls.

Mozart’s wife Konstanze apparently did not try to find out exactly where he had been buried until almost half a century later, by which time there was a great deal of interest in Mozart’s life. As an old lady herself, Konstanze went for the first time to Sankt Marx to consult the archivists, but so long after the event they could only say that such-and-such an area of the graveyard was in use for common graves in 1791. Now there is a small, rather unlovely monument with Mozart’s name on it (see picture) and even ‘a grave’ marked out in flowers, which must mislead many people into thinking that his body lies exactly there. It probably lies somewhere beneath the lawn, but nobody knows where. Today there is nothing to explain that ‘Mozart’s grave’ is just a well-meaning municipal attempt to supply visitors with a focal point.

‘Mozart’s grave’ is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Piano and violin, I hear you say? Isn’t it ‘violin and piano’? Well, not according to Mozart who called them ‘sonatas for piano and violin’. In his letters, he mentions playing the piano parts himself ‘with the accompaniment of a violin’. That was how they were perceived until the nineteenth century and the age of the celebrity violinist, when things flipped around. These works, and many others like them, started to be listed as ‘violin sonatas’, and the piano part was suddenly ‘the accompaniment’. Even today the violinist is often the one with their photo on the record cover, the one whose name is in bigger font in the programme, or the only one whose name is mentioned at the end of the radio broadcast.

Why does this matter? It matters because the re-labelling tricks people into perceiving things falsely. They expect the violin part to be the leading voice, when in fact the meat of the musical narrative is in the piano part. If you approach these works expecting the violin part to be pre-eminent, you experience a kind of cognitive dissonance as you listen: often the violin is doing something quite modest, and you sense that the piano part is full of interest and information, but you don’t understand why such prominent material should be relegated to ‘the accompaniment’. The answer is that it isn’t an accompaniment. If you switch to hearing the music as piano with violin, everything falls into place. Of course you still need an excellent violinist, and perhaps even more importantly, an excellent musician, both of which I’m fortunate to have.

With more historical awareness, and with the intervention of a few strong-minded pianists, things are beginning to move back to Mozart’s original concept of ‘sonatas for piano with violin’. If you look up all the available recordings on Spotify, you’ll find about half of the duo sonatas advertised with the pianist’s name first, the other half with the violinist’s name first. This shows the confusion around the topic. It’s clearly a situation in transition, but at least there is movement.

Sonatas for piano and violin is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

It was suggested by the panel of experts that classical musicians are more inhibited than other musicians about admitting to their injuries. This is probably in proportion to the length of time classical musicians have been practising their instrument (often since childhood) and planning their future as performers.

Those who had suffered injuries while at college had ‘negative recollections’ of the help offered. The lack of help is a hard thing to quantify, given that sufferers find it hard to admit to their problems in the first place. But there were some very sad stories of students finding that their teachers had nothing helpful to suggest, or were even alienated by the suffering student before them. The situation is improving, but slowly and patchily.

On the positive side, those who had recovered from an injury often felt that the enforced break had helped them to gain perspective, and to ‘let go’ and enjoy music more when they resumed playing. Breaking the obsessive pattern of practising and being forced to find other goals in life, even for a short while, had long-term benefits. Years later, some musicians were even able to say that the injury ‘turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me’. This is not guaranteed, alas, especially if the sufferer has to abandon thoughts of a career in music.

I learned one thing I didn’t know before: that the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine runs free clinics in a number of UK cities for musicians with playing-related problems. (You can book an appointment through their website.) Much of the treatment is free, and in more complicated cases, BAPAM can refer people to specialist help whose cost is often greatly reduced for musicians. I wish I had known this earlier – but at least I know it now.

Performing Arts Medicine is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

I was repeatedly struck by the fact that their selection was never the same as the jury’s. It’s probably simplistic to say so, but I often felt the public’s approval tended to fall on groups with a very showy platform manner, groups who had taken great trouble over their appearance, or groups which happened to feature a particularly good-looking person. The jury was not immune to those factors, naturally, but they came lower down our list of priorities. Maybe I just happened upon an un-representative selection of audience members, but I became conscious of their disappointment when certain groups didn’t do as well as they had expected. There was no forum in which the jury could explain what they were listening for and why – the audience just had to accept our decisions, as the competitors did. But I was a little sad that we and the audience didn’t always see eye to eye on those decisions. For one thing, I’d like to think that the jury is identifying a new generation of musicians whom the public will love and appreciate.

Differing tastes is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

The Trondheim International Chamber Competition finished on Sunday with the Trio Paul Klee, from Paris, as the winners of the first prize. The London-based Fournier Trio (see photo) won the second prize and the Audience Prize, which will bring them back to Trondheim next year for a series of concerts. Third prize went to the Atanassov Trio, also from Paris. All three groups had tremendous qualities, and look set for fine careers.

Curiously enough the Final Round, at least in my view, was less impressive than the earlier rounds. All the participants had to play either Schubert’s B flat Trio or Beethoven’s Archduke, and it suddenly seemed as if they all felt they were little people walking around in giant’s shoes. This is, I think, a tribute to the sheer grandeur of those pieces of music. However, despite the Final not being quite as satisfying as I had hoped, the standard of playing overall was very high. I will treasure in particular the memory of the second round, in which the Atanassov Trio and the Fournier Trio played Schumann no 2 so beautifully, and the Trio Paul Klee were so wonderfully attuned to Brahms.

Klee, Fournier, Atanassov Trios is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Today we reached the semi-final stage of the competition, and have chosen three trios for Sunday’s final. Two are based in Paris -the Trio Paul Klee, and the Trio Atanassov. The third, the Fournier Trio, is based in London. I say ‘based in’ because the nine musicians involved in these trios cover a wide geographical area from Australia to Korea as well as France and the UK.

It is very interesting how sometimes we all sit earnestly writing comments in our jury notes while people play. Sometimes, I feel compelled by the quality of the playing to put down my pencil and just sit back and enjoy the music-making, and often when I glance to my left and right along the row of tables, I realise that my fellow jurors are doing the same. These are my favourite moments of the competition.

Trondheim trio competition is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

 At the end of the first number, an intriguing blend of soulful song with mandolin pyrotechnics, the audience nearly raised the roof with their cheering and whooping. Over the tumult I shouted to Bob, ‘It never sounds like this at my concerts!’ He shouted back, ‘It’s just a different style of behaviour. Your audiences like your concerts just as much in their own way. They’re just more restrained!’ I tried to hold that thought in my mind for the rest of the evening, and it was a great evening, satisfying in lots of ways. But at the end, as we all yelled for an encore, I found myself weak with envy of the two performers for having this kind of audience in front of them on a regular basis. How I would love to hear that kind of clamour at the end of every piece! I felt like jumping up on my seat as everyone filed out and begging them, ‘Please, please, nice jazz audience, come along to my concerts too!’ Alas, I was too restrained.

Styles of audience is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

I’d been given one of those microphones which consists of a little box to be clipped to the belt (alas, I didn’t have one) with a wire leading to a lapel mike. Because I was going to be sitting down and playing the piano as well as talking, I decided that the box had to be clipped to the back of my waistband. Once it was in place, I was told not to switch on the power until my talk began, otherwise the audience would hear everything I said in the ‘green room’. So I switched it on, with some difficulty, just before I went on stage.

But then, when I sat down at the piano to play, I realised that the mike was picking up extraneous noises and disturbing the audience (possibly the lapel mike was knocking against a button as I played, though I didn’t realise that at the time). A couple of pieces later, someone stood up and asked if I could please switch the microphone off before I played the piano, then back on again when I continued talking. Easier said than done, because the off-on switch was a tiny little device on the box clipped at my back, and I was wearing a long tunic (see photo). I struggled un-elegantly with the switch for a while before deciding to unclip the whole box and just balance it on my lap as I played the piano. Then I held the box in my hand when I went back to the lectern to talk. If I continue with this talking + playing format, I’ll have to find a better solution to this problem.

At the Rye Festival is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog