In our local park, there’s a pond where we’ve been watching the progress of a spectacular swan family with nine cygnets. Early on in their family life they perfected the art of moving about the lake in procession, their synchronised graceful  movements drawing the eyes of everyone out for a walk. Over a period of months we watched the cygnets growing bigger, getting stronger and bolder, turning a pale dappled brown. Every time we went for a walk by the pond we would see photographers capturing wonderful images of eleven swans cutting stately diagonals through the chaotic scrums of ducks, coots and seagulls.

Then suddenly and rather shockingly this week, all the cygnets were gone. There was no corps de ballet any more. The two parent swans were idly pestering passers-by for bits of bread. Where have the young ones gone? Do they take it into their heads to fly away and seek new homes, and if so, do they all depart at the same time?  Will each cygnet try to seek out a separate home, or have they all gone off together? How far do they go? Will they ever return?

Last week I had to empty my shelves of piano music so that the room could be painted. It took ages and resulted in tottering piles of sheet music on the floor of other rooms. As I carried armfuls of music to and fro, I reflected on how much effort had gone into acquiring all those volumes over a period of many years. Each single piece of music had probably been the subject of a special journey into town, to a music shop in one city or another.

In the light of that experience, I cringed inwardly when I read the Guardian obituary of Latin-pop bandleader Edmundo Ros. After a long and successful career, Ros finally fell out with his band members after one particular tour, and on his return ‘he sent his orchestra’s sheet music archive to be shredded at the Bank of England’.

What a gesture! I sat there amid my piles of music trying to imagine how it would feel if they were all gone for good. Would it be a huge relief, or would there be a crippling sense of wrongness and regret? There was something deeply operatic about Ros’s behaviour – not simply deciding to shred his sheet music archive, which is already a striking gesture, but sending it to be shredded at the Bank of England. Why there? I felt there was some important information being withheld. Was there some special point being made, and to whom? Can anyone send stuff to be shredded at the Bank of England? I wondered where I’d send my archive of sheet music to be shredded, should I wish to make a point.

How nice it is to work with young musicians at that interesting crossroads when they’re emerging from higher education and developing their own identities as professional musicians. They are no longer dependent on teachers (sometimes they no longer have access to teachers), and they have ideas of their own, but are still open to hearing other points of view – indeed, they’re often eager to hear other opinions which might help them to discover their own path.

The photo shows the Cosima Piano Quintet at the start of a coaching session yesterday, part of the first Marryat Chamber Music weekend which ended last night with a wonderful concert by four young ensembles made up of post-grad and young professional players from countries as far apart as Kazakhstan, Israel and Tasmania as well as the UK. Such a rich cultural environment is a great help when we’re all exploring different ideas and ways of doing things. Some people were surprised and amused or bemused to discover that their way of doing things seemed ‘typically British’ (or Eastern European or whatever) to others. It’s good to be surrounded by examples of other ways to do things, because they can often be directly inspiring, without any need for words or theories.

Talk on the radio this morning about obesity epidemics in various countries has prompted me to show this photo of a meal I ate a few days ago in an old Bierkeller in Vienna: spinach dumplings with sheep’s cheese. A delicious meal, but rather startling to behold when it was put in front of me. It was a bit like that ‘Never eat anything bigger than your head’ cartoon by B. Kliban. The evening was cold, we’d been walking around a lot in the dark streets, and I have to admit that I had no difficulty in polishing off my three dumplings. Now I probably look like one of them.

One afternoon in Vienna we went out to visit the place where Mozart was buried, in the Sankt Marx cemetery outside the old city walls. Today the burial ground, no longer used since the 1880s, lies forlornly in the midst of motorway flyovers, housing estates, industrial warehouses and a mobile phone headquarters. It’s an ugly urban setting which makes the experience of visiting the quiet little cemetery all the more haunting.

Everyone who knows the film ‘Amadeus’ will remember the scene in which Mozart’s body is carted off in dreadful winter weather, to be thrown into a common grave outside the city, with no family members present. Strange as it may seem, that was not unusual at the time. The emperor had forbidden the use of new coffins because of a shortage of wood, and he had passed a law that bodies were to be buried in linen shrouds to speed decomposition. Mourners often did not follow the cortege beyond the city walls.

Mozart’s wife Konstanze apparently did not try to find out exactly where he had been buried until almost half a century later, by which time there was a great deal of interest in Mozart’s life. As an old lady herself, Konstanze went for the first time to Sankt Marx to consult the archivists, but so long after the event they could only say that such-and-such an area of the graveyard was in use for common graves in 1791. Now there is a small, rather unlovely monument with Mozart’s name on it (see picture) and even ‘a grave’ marked out in flowers, which must mislead many people into thinking that his body lies exactly there. It probably lies somewhere beneath the lawn, but nobody knows where. Today there is nothing to explain that ‘Mozart’s grave’ is just a well-meaning municipal attempt to supply visitors with a focal point.