I’ve been on holiday in Italy and can feel that it has done me good. What can be more cheering than to start each day by opening the shutters to find a golden haze lying over the landscape (again), the hills receding in layers of paler and paler blue? It was very hot. Amazing how […]

After a recent concert a member of the audience was telling me how much she’d enjoyed it. ‘I always say it’s great to hear top professionals playing, because it’s only when people have really mastered the notes that they can think about how music communicates’, she said. Actually, I feel sad when I hear people […]

Last week I had the opportunity to sit at the side of a church and watch the faces of the audience as they listened to a wonderful concert. It was interesting to observe the array of expressions, some clearly related to the music, others not. I saw people who were: Transfixed, taken out of themselves […]

The other day I went to the Bridget Riley exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery. In one room, there was a large Riley painting, painted directly onto a white wall. I stepped forward to read the plaque. It said the painting was owned by a gallery in Germany. How could it get to Edinburgh, then? […]

It was my father’s birthday yesterday. He’s no longer with us, but of course we think about him each year on his birthday, and we always say, ‘He would have been [x years old] today.’ My dad reached the age of 91, as far as I know the greatest age that any member of my […]