Today, January 27, is Mozart's birthday. 269 years since he was born! His is the only 'composer birthday' I regularly remember, I suppose because he is still my favourite composer despite stiff competition from about 25 others. I remember his birthday for its own sake...
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On the last day of the year I have been looking through the list of books I read during the year. This year I seem to have read 36 books. I used to read books from the library, but the pandemic (when libraries were closed for ages) trained me out of that habit, and...
At last night's Presto Music Awards, my book Women and the Piano was a Book of the Year. I'm very happy to have this recognition of a book that means a lot to me. Thanks again to Yale University Press for commissioning it.
On Saturday I'm giving this year's Malcolm Bowie Memorial Lecture for the British Comparative Literature Association. My subject is 'Music and memory - a musician's perspective'. The lecture is free and open to the public. It takes place at 3pm in Deptford Town Hall...
Happy New Year to readers of this blog - and thank you for sticking with me. It is lovely to know that somewhere out there is a circle of readers. Quite a wide circle, geographically. Visualising that circle definitely helps to combat the feeling of isolation to which...
I'm having a little summer break from writing this blog. This is a good moment for me to crack on with the book I've been writing at every peaceful opportunity this year. It's over 80,000 words now, and the end is in sight (unless it turns out to be one of those...
Noriko Ogawa, who translated my book 'Out of Silence' into Japanese, has been giving concerts in Japan, from where she sent me this photo of our lovely Japanese editor from the publishing firm Shunjusha. Fumiko-san, our editor, had brought some copies of the Japanese...
American author Paul Elie thinks that Bach is particularly well placed to flourish in the age of recording because of the nature of his music. And he feels that Bach, a practical and inventive person, would have approved of all this technological innovation. Read my...
On Saturday 11 May I'm presenting an edition of BBC Radio 3's Saturday Classics programme from 2-4pm, with my choice of recordings. There's some Fauré, Schumann, Chopin, Saint-Saens, Josef Strauss, Billy Mayerl, a couple of pieces of Mozart, and the Bill Evans Trio...
The Boydell Press writes to say that my book 'Out of Silence' is now available on Kindle. It seems to have leaped straight from hardback to Kindle without going through the paperback stage. Everything is changing! Details of the Kindle edition are here. I feel...
I'm thrilled to hear that the Japanese version of my book 'Out of Silence', translated by Noriko Ogawa, is to be reprinted only nine months after its first publication. My editor in Tokyo, whose messages are always to be treasured, writes that 'Your book had put up a...
Between Monday and Thursday mornings this week, Austrian Radio (ORF1) is broadcasting a series of interviews with classical pianists who are also writers. Stephen Hough, Yorck Kronenbourg and Valery Afanassiev all feature in the series along with me. My own interview...
My book 'Out of Silence', in the Japanese translation by Noriko Ogawa, has just been chosen by 'Chopin' magazine in Japan as one of the best books of 2012. It's been such a pleasure to correspond with my various Japanese editors and readers, some of whom have sent me...
More reviews of my book 'Out of Silence', translated into Japanese by Noriko Ogawa, have arrived from Tokyo. I must say these Japanese reviews are absolutely my favourites so far. Their flavour suggests Noriko was right when she said that Japanese people would be on...
The Japanese music magazine 'Ongaku no tomo' (Friends of Music) has published this review of my book 'Out of Silence', translated by Noriko Ogawa. The delightful translation of the review is by a friend in Japan: 'Susan Tomes sets a high values on encounters with...