The Independent five-star review of the first concert

The Guardian review of the first concert

The Guardian five-star review of the second concert

I was hoping to post reviews of the third and final concert on 13 January, but to my surprise there don’t seem to have been any. If you know of any reviews, please drop me a line to susan@susantomes.com

Florestan Trio reviews is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

‘In this second of the series, the supreme level of partnership was maintained, and the plus was that the works were even better…. Hearing this partnership, you could believe that no-one could play these works better, ‘ wrote Ian Stuart-Hunter in the Perthshire Advertiser.

The photo shows Erich and me at the end of our rehearsal.

Perth Advertiser review is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

You can listen again to Erica Jeal’s recommendations here.

‘Best modern recording of Schumann’s D minor Trio’ is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Erich and I are hoping that this will help to swell the audience for the next concert in our Mozart Series, on December 14 in the Horsecross Concert Hall in Perth.

 The hall seats 1000, so anything but a really substantial audience looks a bit lost in the space, and is scary to contemplate from the stage. We hope lots of Perthshire music lovers will notice the review and rally round in December.

Perthshire Advertiser review is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

‘Some of the most intuitive, candid and affectionate ensemble playing I’ve heard.’

(Guardian, 15 Nov 11)

Five-star review in today’s Guardian is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Having a bit of jury experience myself, I know that voting systems can often produce strange results. Funnily enough, I can usually live with ‘strange’ results better than with compromise results. Last time I was on a jury, we used to compare notes after each voting round, and we generally found that only about half of us were happy with the outcome. I don’t know what system they used in Cardiff, but I found myself thinking that they must have thrown away their score cards and gone on their gut instinct. For the winner, Valentina Nafornita, wasn’t the most accomplished on the night. It was, however, easy to hear (and see) that she had star quality and the potential to be very special. How to mark ‘the potential to be very special’? I’ve never met the voting system that supplies the answer. Yet in music you so often find yourself needing to vote that way – a vote which requires imagination, a vote for the future.

Voting systems is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

I vividly remember the impact that the new format had on us musicians. I and my colleagues had started by recording on LP – two sides of about 25 minutes each, enough to record two substantial works of several movements each.

When the CD format came along, however, record buyers started to expect 75 minutes of music. Soon it was considered ‘not value for money’ if a CD offered much less than this. For us, this meant that two works were no longer enough – we were now expected to record three. This, of course, meant more preparation, more pressure in the recording studio, more challenges to our stamina, concentration and temper. Personally I’d always found it more than enough to tackle two complete works for a disc. Now we had to do three, or whatever amounted to 70-75 minutes of music. The recollection is relevant to the Florestan Trio’s new disc, just out on Hyperion. We planned to record just Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio, and the Seven Songs of Alexander Blok for soprano and trio (with Susan Gritton), two works we felt were musically intense enough to stand on their own. But when it was found that the our performances totalled 55 minutes, we were asked to go back into the studio and record the First Trio as well, so that the disc would jump over the magic 60-minute mark and become ‘value for money’. We did, and the result is just arriving in the shops. Early reviews have been lovely.

Shostakovich CD just out is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

The Independent’s literary editor, Boyd Tonkin, said:
‘..In another part of the musical forest, but with just as sure a literary touch, that outstanding pianist and educator Susan Tomes took us inside the world of the over-worked, under-valued classical player in ‘Out of Silence’. I wish idiots who bleat about the ‘elitism’ of the classical tradition could at least pick up this generous, friendly, revealing diary of a year’s hard slog.’

Read the article in The Independent

‘Pick of 2010′ is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

This time last year I was in ecstasies about John Wilson’s MGM Musicals Prom, and if I wasn’t quite so bowled over this year it was only because the repertoire was restricted to the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein, which doesn’t strike me as quite so inventive. How can I say that, when their partnership was the most successful in the history of American musical theatre? Their songs are loved and have been effortlessly memorised by half the world. And yet to me the songs which Rodgers wrote with lyricist Lorenz Hart are more delicious and piquant than his work with Oscar Hammerstein. Rodgers and Hammerstein play with a straight bat, I feel. I like them for it, but occasionally I miss a bit of musical topspin.

Something Good is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Independent review of new music books is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

another oldie

Richard Osborne devotes a large part of his Music column in ‘The Oldie’ magazine (Summer 2010) to my new book. As I don’t have a picture of the magazine I’ve chosen instead an illustration of an real oldie, one of the 700-year-old oaks in Richmond Park.

Richard Osborne writes in The Oldie: ‘Pianist and five-star essayist Susan Tomes … The twelve months [of Out of Silence] deliver twelve chapters each containing nine or ten short essays. Some are prompted by a concert or an event; others are simply serendipity, such as the delightful ‘In Praise of Idleness’, inspired by a Bertrand Russell volume discovered in a charity shop. For a parent with a musically gifted child the collection is essential reading.’

The Oldie magazine review is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

‘In my experience, highly gifted musicians often find it extremely difficult to articulate their ideas about music and reveal the secrets of their craft through writing. Not so Susan Tomes. Her latest book, ‘Out of Silence’, is packed full of fascinating material reflecting upon the difficult and sometimes intangible issues that face a busy professional pianist…Yet the approach here is anything but self-centred, as can so often be the case with autobiographical material. Rather, what emerges from these pages is Tomes’s strong sense of humility, her quirky humour, and above all her tremendous love and driving enthusiasm for her work. … a compelling read.’

BBC Music magazine, July 2010

‘A glorious collection of essays. ..After ‘Beyond the Notes’ and ‘A Musician’s Alphabet’, with this third volume Susan Tomes joins that small band of musicians whose literary skill runs parallel to their musical talent. All of them are male, most are pianists: Glenn Gould, Alfred Brendel, Daniel Barenboim and Stephen Hough, for example…

Tomes’s work reminds me of JB Priestly’s life-affirming collection of essays, ‘Delight’. I can offer no higher praise.… Tomes extracts on almost every page a life lesson for the rest of us, whether or not we are musicians.’

Editor’s Choice for July 2010, Classic FM magazine

More book reviews is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

‘Tomes has a particular understanding of humanity rare in writing about music. She has indeed looked ‘beyond the notes’ and seen how the world perceives musicians.’

Click here if you’d like to read the whole review on the  ‘Out of Silence’ section of the Book Reviews page.

TLS review of ‘Out of Silence’ is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Finishing his survey with a summary of his favourite five recordings, the reviewer recommends ‘the Florestan Trio ‘for the marriage of intelligence and athleticism in its performance…  and they take authenticity to the extent of having a young lady pianist.’ Poetic licence in that adjective, I’m afraid, Mr Threasher, but thank you!

Haydn’s Gypsy Rondo trio is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Dance critics were in raptures about this show, but I still think that Mark Morris’s choreography is a special treat for musicians. It’s not just that his dance steps are wedded to the music – it’s more about his being unusually aware of the structure, emotion, texture and implications of the music, and unusually alive to the visual associations which can arise in a listener’s mind. It was Morris’s inspired take on the Schumann piano quintet which gave that rather hackneyed piece a whole new lease of life for me. Of course, choreography remains theoretical without dancers, and the present MMDG is absolutely superb. They make everything look natural and effortless, though it clearly can’t be. The live music was excellent too.

These days I seem to spend a lot of time getting worked up about people who are incompetent, poorly-trained, or don’t care about the outcome of their work. So it was not only a pleasure, but also a huge relief and a deep satisfaction to see something being done with such beauty and mastery.

Mark Morris at the Coliseum is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Diapason magazine is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

She could not have known that my new book was inspired by Robert Schumann’s habit of keeping diaries, so this pairing of Schumann’s name with mine, though utterly surprising, also felt like a wonderful omen.

An unexpected pairing is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Of course opera and symphony orchestras are large-scale, colourful and well-supported forms of music, and there was plenty to write about, most notably – as Tom said – the heartwarming appearances here of Dudamel with his Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra.

But what about chamber music, music of equal quality and interest? Solo instrumentalists were not mentioned in the summary either, by the way, though in general such individuals are not lacking in praise or attention. But chamber music, a more intimate kind of music, is often ignored despite the fact that it often elicits performances of memorable artistry from its exponents, many of whom keep going against the odds, and with no public funding.

In the past week The Guardian has published similar reviews of the decade in theatre, film, dance, TV, comedy and art. Experts in those other fields often mentioned performances by small groups. Dance and theatre have both had small-scale shows which have been critical and popular successes. In TV, the ‘small ensemble cast’ continues to be beloved. And in comedy, the one-man stand-up show is currently the highest-profile route a comic can take. Not so in classical music, alas, where the achievements of  small groups – and the remarkable increase in the number of good young string quartets in this country – were passed over entirely.  Yet this is supposed to be the age of Small is Beautiful – and I believe that applies to classical music just as much as to other art-forms.

Small is beautiful is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

‘The Florestan Trio display their customary virtuosity, elegance and caprice, once again capturing the full emotional range of what may, on the surface, appear to be merely domestic entertainment music… Peter Quantrill has already chosen this disc as a highlight of the past year (in the issue of December 09) and I can do little better than echo his description of it as ‘a disc of good, serious fun’.’

Gramophone, Jan 2010

Gramophone magazine is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Trumpet, my own, blowing is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog