Saw a quietly beautiful Italian film, Le Quattro Volte, directed by Michelangelo Frammartino. It was inspired by Pythagoras’s belief that each of us contains four interlinked lives: human, animal, vegetable and mineral. ‘Man is made of mineral, because he has a skeleton; he’s a plant, because he has blood flowing through his veins like sap; he’s an animal because he has mobility, and he’s also a rational being’, explains the director.

These four states of being are personified in the film by a shepherd, his goats, a large fir tree under which one of the goats dies, and charcoal made by burning the tree. There’s no dialogue to speak of, and the focus is on the nature and scenery of a village in Calabria. But this is no gorgeous Italian landscape; it’s poor, bare and the grass looks thirsty. The camera lingers on scenes which hold little of conventional beauty, yet there is plenty of poetry.

At the start of the film we see an elderly shepherd coughing painfully as he stirs a powder into his bedtime glass of water. Next we see motes of dust settling slowly on to the floor of the local church in the sunlight. We see the old shepherd arriving to collect a handful of dust swept from the church floor by an old woman. She blesses the dust and folds it into a page torn from a magazine. Later that night we see the shepherd carefully unfold the page and tip the dust into his bedtime drink, coughing painfully as he does so. He clearly believes this holy dust is curing him, but is it in fact making his cough worse? There are several heartrending paradoxes like this in the film.

A lovely evening at Wigmore Hall last night listening to jazz from pianist Gwilym Simcock and ‘reeds’ player Klaus Gesing. What a well-matched duo they are, both superb musicians and excellent instrumentalists as well. Their ensemble playing was a lesson in how to be perfectly together yet make it look completely cool and natural, even in the weirdest of time-signatures.

It always amazes me how different types of music attract different audiences to the Wigmore. Last night I didn’t recognise anyone in the audience; it was clearly a jazz crowd. As they listened they were utterly silent, and the concentration of their listening was almost as enjoyable as the playing itself. Not all jazz venues are tremendous acoustically, so it was a real pleasure to hear two such good jazz musicians in such perfect acoustics. Did I mention that they were handsome too?

On Monday, Mark Lawson wrote in the Guardian about how politicians are averse to being associated with ‘high art’ because they don’t wish to be seen as ‘élitist’. In today’s paper there are several letters in reply, one of them from me.

The July issue of Classic FM magazine, just out, is devoted to ‘discovering the genius of Mendelssohn’. They asked me to write a little ‘artist’s view’ of playing Mendelssohn’s piano music, and my article is on p48. For those who don’t have the chance to buy the magazine, here’s what I wrote:

‘The other day, I was coaching students in Mendelssohn’s D minor piano trio, one of my favourite chamber works. As part of their coursework, the group had written a programme note which said, ‘Mendelssohn came from a wealthy family and never had to worry about money. Because of this, his music lacks depth and emotion.’ I asked if this was their own opinion, and they said they had ‘read it in a book’.

I too have seen Mendelssohn dismissed like that in books, but I don’t feel that’s the right way to account for his delicate style. Because his music flows gracefully and is even-tempered, he’s often accused of being someone to whom it all came too easily. But for me there’s a great strength at the heart of his music which comes from the feeling that forces are in balance. He’s generous, yet restrained; disciplined, but full of fantasy. There’s plenty of emotion, but he uses it sparingly and purposefully, as vibrato should be used. Many of his piano parts are so demanding that the sheer abundance of notes can take up all your attention in the early stages. It takes a while before you can see through the veils of notes to the bones of the music, but when you do, you perceive the beautiful structure and clarity of his musical planning. In that respect playing Mendelssohn sometimes feels like playing Mozart transposed to the nineteenth century. There are few other composers whose piano music – when you finally master it – can give the performer such an exhilarating feeling, like flying.

Recording Mendelssohn has been one of the greatest challenges I’ve had in the studio, because it’s so hard to be both accurate and serene under the pressure of his torrents of notes. But it’s so satisfying when it goes well. I never feel that Mendelssohn was simply showing off, more that his piano writing reflects the lightning reflexes of his thoughts.’

My days of being able to be knocked down by a feather are past, but you could have knocked me down with a full-grown marrow, or possibly a crusty baguette, when I discovered that my birthday was the featured one in The Times’ birthday column on Thursday, at the bottom of the  letters page, with a wee photo of me. (Sadly I can’t give the link, as Times Online is a subscription-only service.) I have no idea why they chose me, but as my erstwhile hero Richard Brautigan once wrote of a similar situation:

“It’s really something to have fame put its feathery crowbar under your rock and then upward to the light to release you, along with seven grubs and a sow bug.”

I was in Cambridge yesterday and was walking through my old college when the door of the Lodge opened, and out came one of the Fellows in his long academic gown. Spotting me, he called out, ‘Happy Birthday! You see I read the right newspapers!’ and strode off across the lawn, gown billowing behind him. I beamed and felt six feet tall for a moment, at least until the wind and rain beat me down to size.