Under the pyramid is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

In the course of these multi-stage journeys, making my way back to one little house in one little street in a big city, I often wish that my house would appear magically in front of me at the moment when I realise I’m tired and need to rest. I could, of course, stay in a hotel, but that’s no substitute for being at home. Nevertheless it sometimes feels strange that ‘going home’ is such an intricate procedure, and that there is no point in knocking on any other pleasant-looking door along the way and calling, ‘I’m back!’

Lucky old snails is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

In a hopeful spirit we went back to the tube station where they told us that the trains were ‘running again’. So, back down to the platform, which was crowded with frustrated travellers. People around us were complaining that they’d already missed part of the event they were going to. No trains appeared. We looked at our watches and realised that by now, even if we made it to our destination (another hour’s journey), we would have missed the entire concert. Then an announcer said there were no trains after all, and that we should all continue our journey ‘at street level’. We gave up, went home on the bus in the rain, and felt agitated for the rest of the evening.

As it happened, the concert we missed was for an invited audience. But what if we had bought expensive tickets? We would have missed the event and wasted the money as well – as must have happened to many of our fellow travellers that evening. What chance is there of London Transport curing its problems by the time London hosts the Olympics in 2012?

City frustration is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

not too cold for some

The winter sun was striking low over the lake as I raised my tiny idiot-proof camera to take a picture of a terrier plunging into the icy water. (I mean that my camera is tiny and idiot-proof, not that it’s proof against tiny idiots, though of course that would be a useful specialist feature.)

A deep voice at my side said smugly, ‘I don’t think you’ll be able to point into the sun like that with the camera you have there.’ I turned to see a man carrying a camera about the size of a microwave oven. He proceeded to show me that with his superior camera he could do this, that and the other which would enable him – unlike me – to take a photograph facing straight into the winter sun. He was wearing a big show-off hat, so I ignored his advice. Always distrust a photographer in a big hat, I say.

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

There never seems to be a blueprint for how to behave in such situations, which fortunately are quite rare. Every concert organiser and every audience seems to react differently. Yesterday the whole evening was spent, with the help of our concert agent,  in contacting everyone concerned and trying to decide what to do. We felt dreadful because the poor people of Cockermouth have had so much to contend with recently, and they had already had to re-locate our concert because of flooding in the original venue. Various alternatives having been discussed and pursued via rounds of phone calls, a solution to the concert problem was found very late last night. By a stroke of good luck, the Gould Trio was able to take our place at incredibly short notice. So now I’m at my desk instead of on a train, with  my suitcase still packed on the bed beside me, and the imagined landscape of Cumbria receding from my inner eye.

No journey to the north is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

the view from the window

Sometimes the old saying, ‘every cloud has a silver lining’, seems true. Today my trio was due to start making a record, at a studio in a rural location near the Welsh border. It’s a good four hours’ drive from my house at the best of times. We only agreed to go so far afield because Henry Wood Hall, our favourite London recording venue, was not available.  But Britain is in the grip of unusually harsh winter weather; travellers’ tales filtered through, and the journey began to look foolhardy.

We agonised about whether to attempt it anyway. Making a record feels like an important occasion, to which we have been building up for some time, and it goes against the grain to postpone.  But would we be risking life and limb? Fortunately, the director of the record company looked at the weather forecast for this weekend and sensibly took the decision out of our hands. The sessions in the West of England were cancelled.

By now we had heard of so many travel problems that we realised there must also be people who had been unable to reach London in the snowy conditions. So we began to wonder if we might have a chance of finding a studio in London at short notice. 

Lo and behold, it transpired that Henry Wood Hall had just received notice of a cancellation for the exact three days that we needed. And even better, it turned out that one of my favourite Steinway pianos was suddenly available for those three days as well. So a week of staring out of the window at the snow and worrying has ended with our whole project being rescheduled in London. We can all go home at the end of each day’s work. No long drives in the snow, and even better, no long drive back at night after the final session.

Silver linings is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

time and tide ...

This new year has found me in thoughtful rather than celebratory mood. So here is a photo of the tide gracefully looping its way along Portobello Beach in the winter sun in Edinburgh, where I spent Christmas.

There is much to look forward to in 2010, and I wish you all a good start to the new year.

New Year’s Day is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

crow damage

Visiting King’s College in Cambridge the other day, Bob and I were horrified to see that several of the lawns had been badly damaged (see photo). It looked as if hooligans had been let loose there, or as if a rugby scrum had taken place there during the night. What on earth had happened? We asked the porters if they knew.

‘It’s the crows’, they said gloomily.

The crows? Surely small birds couldn’t wreak that kind of havoc? We expressed disbelief. ‘It’s definitely the crows’, said the porters. ‘They’ve taken to ripping up the turf with their beaks.’ Why? ‘Nobody knows. They never did it before this year.’

I’ve been enjoying the beauty of these lawns for a long time now, and never have I seen any serious damage caused by wildlife. So we couldn’t quite believe the porters’ explanation. Yet as we walked towards the river, we saw three crows attacking the lawn. Each bird was pecking at a bit of turf until it had got ‘a corner’ loose, then grasping that corner in its beak and pulling mightily until a section of turf ripped away. It was the strangest thing to see them at their work in the dusk, like the Weird Sisters in ‘Macbeth’.

Bob wondered whether, because of all the recent rain, the water table had risen, bringing the earthworms closer to the surface and driving the crows mad with desire. Yet as we watched them we couldn’t see them catching or eating anything. They seemed intent on laying bare the earth beneath the lawn for a reason we couldn’t fathom. ‘It’s like something out of a Hitchcock film’, said Bob as we turned away.

The Birds is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

I played the programme from memory, with the exception of one piece. And though I was really happy with the evening, I found afterwards that I was brooding on what an enormous amount of my preparation was taken up with the effort of memorising. If I had not been aiming to play from memory, I could easily have performed the recital months ago. I’d estimate that at least half of my total preparation time has been taken up with the long task of embedding the music in my memory – which for me (as I suppose for everyone) means activating several different methods of remembering, from visualisation of the score to muscle memory. Understanding the structure of the music is a vital thing for me as well, when photographic memory or muscle memory lets me down.

But it takes so long before you get to the point where you can play a recital programme from memory. And I can’t help wondering how important it really is. Some players feel freer when they play from memory.  I sometimes feel that way too, but just as often I’m a little anxious, as I play, about whether my memory will hold firm. To play from memory is a way of proving to the audience that you have taken your responsibility very seriously. But how important is it to them that the performer plays without the score? Would they have minded if I didn’t?

Playing from memory is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

outside the Gulbenkian Foundation

This photo shows me outside the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, standing beside the poster for the Florestan Trio’s three concerts.

On the day after the concerts, Bob and I caught the old tram up the hill of the Alfama district to visit the castle. While we were standing on the crowded tram, Bob’s wallet was stolen. We knew nothing about it until an Italian tourist, sitting near us with his wife, tapped me on the shoulder and handed me Bob’s wallet. I couldn’t imagine how Bob’s wallet came to be in his hand until he indicated to me what had happened: a pickpocket standing next to Bob had stolen the wallet, the Italian tourist had seen it happen and had reached forward, grabbing the pickpocket’s arm and wrenching the wallet away from him. We knew nothing of it until I turned to see the Italian man handing me the wallet and the pickpocket frantically jostling his way to the back of the bus.

The pickpocket jumped off at the next stop and disappeared. At the following stop, there were a number of police standing about. By this time the whole tram was full of the excited chatter of passengers  exclaiming to one another about the incident. As we drew up next to the police, several passengers leaned out of the tram windows and told the police what had happened. The police asked us to get off the tram and tell them ourselves. So we dismounted, and so did the Italians. As I spoke no Portuguese and the police no English, we spoke French. The Italian man was by no means eager to explain his part in the event, but when I had told the police of his brave action, they all turned and congratulated him. I made a speech of praise in schoolgirl French, and then we all shook hands and wished each other well.

Afterwards, we realised what an extraordinary thing our hero had done, especially when the Lisbon guidebooks advise tourists not to resist if they are robbed. He came to the aid of a complete stranger when it would have been so easy to turn a blind eye. He will probably never see this page, but we will always remember him with admiration.

Our Italian hero is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Today we were rehearsing, amongst other things, an early Beethoven trio and also a late one.

When I went to hear the Takacs Quartet play Beethoven in the Queen Elizabeth Hall last week, I enjoyed reading in a the programme booklet a remark made by the quartet’s first violinist, Edward Dusinberre. He said, if I remember rightly, that he doesn’t consider Beethoven to have ‘got better and better’ throughout his composing career, because even his very first pieces for string quartet, the opus 18 set, are a treasure-house of ideas, as well as formidably challenging in a technical sense. Ed said that he rather thinks of Beethoven posing certain questions to himself throughout his composing career, and answering them in different ways at different times. His later answers are not simply ‘better’, just different. He clearly works on the idea of transforming little cells of musical material from his first works through to the last, though what he wants to transform them into, and how, undergoes subtle change as the years go by.

I found this a very helpful insight. There’s no unbroken line of progression, and no sense in which only the late works are ‘sublime’; you can suddenly find a movement of great depth and poise – such as the slow movement of opus 1 no 2 – in one of his earliest published works.  Equally, you can find silly humour and simple dance music in the most revered of the late works, though in some extraordinary way the inclusion of such ingredients only makes the music feel more profound.

Beethoven’s questions is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

 Recordings have only been around for 100 years, and for a large chunk of that time they were inaccessible to many people. When the National Gramophonic Society was formed in the 1920s, membership cost the equivalent of a thousand pounds in today’s money. It’s only in recent years that recordings have become so affordable and so widely available.

 Before the era of recordings, musicians had no way of getting to know a piece other than by reading it through on their instrument, or by studying the score and trying to ‘hear’ it in their heads. They might occasionally have the opportunity to hear someone else play it, but that wouldn’t be an everyday occurrence. They’d get to know things slowly and gently.

Now it seems that some students already rely on the ‘instant fix’ of someone else’s recording. And as my colleague in Glasgow pointed out, this is creating a new problem: that some random recording will lodge in students’ memories as ‘the way to play it’, replacing the imaginative work that people usually do when they develop their own way of playing something.

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

in Bodley's Court, King's College

After lamenting the lack of music in Venice churches, I had the opposite experience yesterday when attending Evensong in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. It’s always uplifting to hear the Chapel resounding to the pure intonation and chiselled phrases of the choir, a mixture of male undergraduates from the College and boys from the nearby Choir School. I’ve heard it many times but never tire of the way the enormous space is filled – and also stilled – with harmony. The service was crowded, and many people sat with their eyes closed as they listened.

It was the start of the academic year and the day when four new choristers, little boys aged about 9 or 10, were formally admitted as members of the choir (founded in 1441). Sunlight struck through the stained glass windows, casting a glow around them as they stood in front of the Dean in their red cassocks and white surplices. The Dean congratulated them, wished them good luck with the great responsibility which goes with being a member of the choir, and mentioned the enormous audience which follows the choir’s activities, not only through their daily Chapel services, but notably on the occasion of the televised Christmas Carol Service, which 100 million people tune into. He talked of the constant need to renew the living purpose of the building, and said that music has always helped to prevent the famous Chapel from becoming ‘a museum of glass and stone’.

Not a museum of glass and stone is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

morning sun near St Mark's

I’ve just been in Venice for a few days. The city was on the cusp of autumn – warm and sunny but with thunderstorms looming, and mist in the morning on the day we left.

We visited about 547 churches. As ever in Italy, I’m disappointed by how rarely one hears any music being made in them. It comes as a surprise that the Italians, with their love of the human voice, seem to have so little tradition of choral music in their churches. No choir ever seems to be rehearsing, no organ being played, and if you happen upon a service the music is restricted to a little priestly chanting. It’s a great shame when those magnificent buildings seem to cry out for music to resonate across them. We searched for announcements of church concerts, but found only the usual touristy offerings of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played in historical costume by candlelight.

I’ve always wanted to hear music sung in St Mark’s, whose galleries inspired Monteverdi and others to write for choirs singing antiphonally across the basilica, but I’ve never succeeded in hearing any music but the aforementioned liturgical chanting. On my last visit to Venice we got up early one Sunday and went to St Mark’s, convinced that at least the big Sunday morning services must include choral music. An official stood at the door barring the way to anyone who looked as though they might not be a member of the congregation. We explained that we were there in the hope of hearing music in St Mark’s. To which he memorably replied, ‘There is no music, only singing’, a phrase I’ve had reason to remember once or twice since then. But it turned out that  ‘singing’  meant only the usual chanting, and once again we left without hearing music in that magical place.

Silent churches is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

sweet Peruvian alpaca

Far be it from me to add to the deluge of cute animal pictures on the internet, but I couldn’t resist posting this photo of a baby alpaca, taken by my daughter a few weeks ago near Lake Titicaca in Peru. This alpaca lives in a little compound with his best friend, a sheep.

Baby Alpaca is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Dr Purser also gave me a copy of a very interesting CD which is about to hit the shops, and I want to recommend it. It’s called ‘Scotland’s Fiddle Piobaireachd’. This Gaelic word ‘Piobaireachd’ is more usually encountered in the form ‘pibroch’, which doesn’t (as I thought) mean ‘bagpipes’ but refers to the classical music of the Highland bagpipe. Over the centuries, pibroch has also been played by Scots violinists who also use the type of ornamentation played by pipers. It’s a very serious type of music which has little in common with the merry jigs and reels we tend to associate with Scots fiddle music.

On this disc, the American violinist Bonnie Rideout, who has made a special study of pibroch, plays it on her violin and viola. Listening to the music has something in common with listening to a solo Bach violin partita. Usually it begins with a haunting melody – a lament, love song or ‘gathering call’ – and then develops the melody in a series of increasingly complex variations, culminating in a virtuosic display. On some of the tracks, Bonnie is accompanied by bronze age horns supplying the ‘drone’ of the pipes. She’s also joined here and there by a flute player, a clarsach, bagpipes and voice.

Bonnie Rideout tunes her violin and viola in all sorts of different ways. For the opening track, ‘MacDougall’s Gathering’, for example, she tunes her viola to B flat, b flat, e flat and b flat. For the closing track she tunes it to D, A, d, a. It’s a most intriguing record and a glimpse into a musical heritage of which I was hardly aware.

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

live music in the Plockton Inn

Just returned from a ‘summer’ holiday on the Isle of Skye, in the Highlands of Scotland. It rained almost continuously, so we were hardly surprised when we learned that our visit was part of the most prolonged spell of wet weather recorded on the island since 1861. The mountains and lochs had their own beauty in the swirling mists. In a way, bad weather seems to suit them more than sunshine.

One evening we escaped the rain by going to the Plockton Inn on the mainland. First we had a terrific seafood meal in the dining room. Then we moved through to the bar, where a notice on a corner table advised: ‘Reserved for musicians after 9pm’. At that time, some local musicians gathered to sit round the table, playing traditional Scots folk music on mandolin, guitar, violins, banjo and whistle.

To say ‘some local musicians’ gives completely the wrong impression, because these players were extremely fine. Plockton hosts the National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music, and it turned out that some of the musicians were tutors at the school. They sat round with their own pints of beer on the table, chatting and laughing until someone picked up their instrument again and drifted into a new tune, which the others would gradually take up. Music flowed in and out of the conversation, and the cosy bar was crowded with appreciative listeners. It was a delightful scene and I only wish I lived near enough to attend their Tuesday and Thursday night sessions more often.

Over the sea to Skye is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Sometimes when travelling by plane, especially on a dull day, the glorious sunshine above the clouds comes as a shock. It’s often crossed my mind  that my favourite composers could have had no idea of this sight. For us it has become almost routine. But what would Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert have made of it? Vast as their imaginations were, surely they would have been stirred by the experience of seeing the bright space above the clouds, and the glimpses of our patchwork fields and settlements far below.

Sunny above the clouds is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

We’ve played three times this season in the Konzerthaus. These have been highlights of the year. During the time of Germany’s division into East and West, the Konzerthaus was beyond the Berlin Wall and inaccessible to Western musicians like us. Now it has been renovated and looks wonderful. The artists’ dark-panelled canteen backstage still seems ‘ancien régime’ but I rather liked that, and I liked the motherly server who advised me that the ‘dish of the day’ would be better value than the one I’d just asked for. I found it very touching to perform in this historic hall, and even more touching to encounter today’s young and extremely-switched-on Berlin audience who were cheering even before we’d reached the interval. I felt like scooping them up and taking them all in my suitcase back to London.

Beyond the Wall is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog