On Monday, 14 September at 7.30pm, cellist Philip Higham and I will be stepping in at short notice to play a duo recital at Wigmore Hall in London. We’re replacing two artists caught up in quarantine rules. With countries hopping on and off the quarantine list, the jigsaw of concerts planned for the autumn has […]

At this time in Edinburgh we’re usually starting to experience the surge of visitors arriving for the city’s festivals – the Edinburgh International Festival, the Fringe and the Book Festival (plus a host of minor festivalettes). But all have been cancelled, or at least reduced to an online offering, because of the pandemic. For the […]

We’re hearing a lot about the days of heedless international travel being over for classical musicians. In today’s Guardian, Charlotte Higgins does an admirable job of summing up some aspects of the situation. It’s worth remembering that darting about to play in San Francisco one night and Frankfurt the next is quite a recent thing. […]

Everyone sees Brexit through their own lens. This is mine. When I was small, playing the piano was my favourite thing. I had heard that Mozart and Schubert came from Austria. Bach and Beethoven and Schumann came from Germany. Debussy and Ravel came from France. And so on. Those countries were just pretty pictures in […]

I’m preparing for my two appearances at the London Piano Festival in King’s Place on Saturday October 5.  At 2pm I have a solo lecture-recital on Schubert’s A major Sonata D959. At 7pm I’ll be joining the other festival pianists in a ‘two-piano marathon‘ concert. Most people think of piano duets as two players sitting […]