I have been proofreading my book about Nocturnes, which has reached the stage of being typeset. This is the point at which it starts to look like a proper book. As the author, you dare to believe that it will one day really be published and start to live in heads...
Interested in what Susan has to say about all things classical music? Subscribe below and whenever Susan writes a new blog post you will be notified by email. Simple!
I've been reading Volume 2 of the Memoirs of a Highland Lady, the fascinating memoirs of Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus who kept this particular diary between 1814-30. In it there's a good example of the social attitude which made it so hard for young women to...
One of my blog readers recently asked me what stages I had to go through before my latest book was accepted by Yale University Press. He was surprised by how complex the process was, so I thought others might find it interesting too. I don't know how it is with other...
This week marks the official publication date of the paperback edition of my Yale University Press book The Piano - a History in 100 Pieces, but as usually seems to be the way, copies seem to have been circulating for a while already. At least, at my Cambridge recital...
I'm preparing for a solo recital at Kettle's Yard museum in Cambridge on November 24th. Kettle's Yard is a beautiful little museum which began in the 1950s as a personal art collection by Jim Ede, who used his own house as the display venue. It was the first gallery I...
I've been reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Memories and Portraits, published in 1887. RLS, as he's often referred to, is famous for Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and a few others, though in my local library the collected edition...
On Saturday, I appeared at the Wigtown Book Festival in Dumfries and Galloway in the west of Scotland (see photo of me being interviewed by Stuart Kelly). Wigtown is Scotland's 'national book town', boasting an astonishing number of bookshops for a small town which is...
After managing to avoid Covid for two and a half years, I have now come down with it. It hasn't been fun - suffice it to say I'm very glad I didn't get the virus until I was fully vaccinated. While staying out of everyone's way, I have had the chance to read. My...
Hearing of the death of renowned theatre director Peter Brook, I went back to my book Beyond the Notes in which I described going to Paris in 1982 to ask his advice about how to keep our chamber music group Domus alive and in good heart despite the many difficulties...
I have just been reading an astonishing little book which a friend lent me - The Death of Franz Liszt, based on the unpublished diary of his pupil Lina Schmalhausen (Cornell University Press, 2002). The distinguished Liszt biographer Alan Walker came across Lina's...
Readers of my books might like to see a couple of mentions which have popped up recently in the US. The first is in the New York publication The Browser, whose mission is to send its subscribers a daily selection of good writing from around the world. Editor Robert...
At the end of December, I usually reflect on my favourite concerts of the year. This year however, as you will know all too well, we spent the entire year in a pandemic. Concert life is still badly impacted, and freelance musicians have been more impacted than most....
Today I learned that my book The Piano - a History in 100 Pieces has been named as a Book of the Year 2021 in the Presto Music Awards. I feel very fortunate that it has now been chosen as a Book of the Year in The Spectator, the Financial Times and the Presto Music...
An exhilarating moment in an otherwise quiet stretch of autumn: Jenny Colgan has chosen my piano book as one of her Books of the Year in The Spectator (the print edition comes out on 13 November). She calls it 'one of the two most beautiful books I got my hands on...
Renowned piano teacher and educator Murray McLachlan has reviewed my book in International Piano: https://www.rhinegold.co.uk/international_piano/the-piano-a-history-in-100-pieces/ To read more reviews of this book, click here