This week I’m on the jury of the Trondheim International Chamber Competition, which this year is for piano trios. During the day we’ve been listening to nine piano trios playing very demanding programmes, and in the evenings we’ve been rehearsing for and playing in concerts of our own, in the festival which runs parallel with the competition. It’s a challenging combination which makes everyone feel that their minds and hearts are fully utilised.

Today we reached the semi-final stage of the competition, and have chosen three trios for Sunday’s final. Two are based in Paris -the Trio Paul Klee, and the Trio Atanassov. The third, the Fournier Trio, is based in London. I say ‘based in’ because the nine musicians involved in these trios cover a wide geographical area from Australia to Korea as well as France and the UK.

It is very interesting how sometimes we all sit earnestly writing comments in our jury notes while people play. Sometimes, I feel compelled by the quality of the playing to put down my pencil and just sit back and enjoy the music-making, and often when I glance to my left and right along the row of tables, I realise that my fellow jurors are doing the same. These are my favourite moments of the competition.

In Trondheim in Norway, where the chamber music festival this week is featuring the music of Australian composer Brett Dean. Stylish posters advertise the concerts around town, playing on the titles of works being performed in the festival, or on events associated with it. For example, this morning there’s a ‘Chamber Music Orienteering’ event where festival musicians will be playing at various outdoor locations around the city. Members of the public are given ‘orienteering instructions’, and there’s a prize for the person who manages to attend the largest number of performances. The poster says, ‘Chamber music is an orienteering course’.

My favourite poster uses the title of a Brett Dean composition, ‘Twelve Angry Men’, inspired by the Hollywood film of that name about a conscientious jury. In an inspired stroke Dean has tranposed the twelve angry men into a phalanx of cellists. The poster says (in Norwegian), ’Chamber Music is Twelve Angry Men’. 

On the side of my hotel is a huge version of this particular poster (see photo). Musicians see it every time they cross the bridge, and their comments are wry. Twelve angry men? ‘That would be three string quartets, then.’

Went to the Wigmore Hall to hear American jazz pianist Brad Mehdau in duo with mandolinist Chris Thile. It was a tremendous evening, and also an opportunity to witness quite a different sort of crowd in the Wigmore. They were, I have to admit, younger and cooler than the usual crowd, more like the stylish kind of audience I associate with Sadler’s Wells. When Chris Thile came on stage by himself at the start of the concert, there was a joyful roar of welcome from the capacity audience – a sound I have never heard in the Wigmore before, certainly not at the start of the concert, before the musician has played a single note.

 At the end of the first number, an intriguing blend of soulful song with mandolin pyrotechnics, the audience nearly raised the roof with their cheering and whooping. Over the tumult I shouted to Bob, ‘It never sounds like this at my concerts!’ He shouted back, ‘It’s just a different style of behaviour. Your audiences like your concerts just as much in their own way. They’re just more restrained!’ I tried to hold that thought in my mind for the rest of the evening, and it was a great evening, satisfying in lots of ways. But at the end, as we all yelled for an encore, I found myself weak with envy of the two performers for having this kind of audience in front of them on a regular basis. How I would love to hear that kind of clamour at the end of every piece! I felt like jumping up on my seat as everyone filed out and begging them, ‘Please, please, nice jazz audience, come along to my concerts too!’ Alas, I was too restrained.

Usually I take part in music festivals, so to be invited to a Literary Festival is an exciting change. Yesterday I was at the Rye Festival talking about music and musicians. In between readings and bits of talk, I played little piano pieces.

I’d been given one of those microphones which consists of a little box to be clipped to the belt (alas, I didn’t have one) with a wire leading to a lapel mike. Because I was going to be sitting down and playing the piano as well as talking, I decided that the box had to be clipped to the back of my waistband. Once it was in place, I was told not to switch on the power until my talk began, otherwise the audience would hear everything I said in the ‘green room’. So I switched it on, with some difficulty, just before I went on stage.

But then, when I sat down at the piano to play, I realised that the mike was picking up extraneous noises and disturbing the audience (possibly the lapel mike was knocking against a button as I played, though I didn’t realise that at the time). A couple of pieces later, someone stood up and asked if I could please switch the microphone off before I played the piano, then back on again when I continued talking. Easier said than done, because the off-on switch was a tiny little device on the box clipped at my back, and I was wearing a long tunic (see photo). I struggled un-elegantly with the switch for a while before deciding to unclip the whole box and just balance it on my lap as I played the piano. Then I held the box in my hand when I went back to the lectern to talk. If I continue with this talking + playing format, I’ll have to find a better solution to this problem.

Delayed for three hours today on a train journey from Edinburgh to London because of the high winds, apparently the tail-end of the hurricane which has now reached the UK from across the Atlantic. Just before leaving Edinburgh, we managed to climb Blackford Hill (see photo) in the highest winds I’ve experienced there – it felt almost as if we could lean forward and let the wind take our weight. At the top of the hill, we speculated on whether the wind might play havoc with the overhead power lines on our train journey, as indeed turned out to be the case. First our train lost power from the overhead lines, then we lost power to the rear locomotive, and suddenly we were at a standstill in the fields north of York for a couple of hours, listening to the wind sighing round about our train. As usual in these situations, the British travelling public was unbelievably stoical, almost jolly despite the heat and the lack of air-conditioning. As we sat there helplessly becalmed, waiting for a ‘rescue locomotive’ to reach us from Doncaster, people cheerily swapped stories about all the things they were going to miss because of the delay.