During lunch in a tiny village in the forests of Le Sidobre, in Languedoc, we got into conversation with an elderly lady who told us that she spoke Occitan as a child, before she was required to learn French. At our request, she spoke some Occitan to us, the only time I’ve ever heard it [...]

An exhibition of artistic sculptures based on pink garlic – how could I resist when I saw the poster outside the tourist office in Lautrec? Pink garlic is a local speciality, but despite its undoubted charms it didn’t seem a promising material for sculpture. I imagined tiny netsuke figures whittled from cloves of garlic, but [...]

The Ambialet piano course ended last night with concerts by the participants (see some of them in the photo). It never ceases to amaze me how people manage to raise their game in these circumstances, even though most of them find it a nerve-racking experience and dread it beforehand. Every single person played the best [...]

An interesting conversation at lunch today about choosing music as a career despite the misgivings of one’s parents. Everyone at the summer school had had some form of The Conversation about whether music was an acceptable profession. Many recalled that they were strongly encouraged in their musical endeavours right up to the point where they [...]

Violinist Gidon Kremer has, I hope, set the cat among the pigeons with his decision to pull out of the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. His letter of explanation is long and somewhat rambling, but perhaps he did not have the time to make it shorter. In any case, his exasperation with today’s music world is [...]