To go alongside my new book, The Guardian has commissioned an article from me about the history of the nocturne. You can read the article here and it should be in the print edition tomorrow, Wednesday 1 April. One nice thing about online articles is that they can...
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Last night I gave a talk, with Bob interviewing me, at Toppings Bookshop in Edinburgh (see photo of me with piles of Nocturne books waiting to be signed). It was a pleasure to speak at a sold-out event in this lovely bookstore. The book has had another good review,...
Two nice things happened yesterday. I popped into Waterstones in Princes Street to ask if they were going to stock my Nocturne book. Lo and behold it was already on the 'New NonFiction' shelf, with its own little recommendation card (see photo). An hour later my...
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I have just been reading an astonishing little book which a friend lent me - The Death of Franz Liszt, based on the unpublished diary of his pupil Lina Schmalhausen (Cornell University Press, 2002).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
The quarterly magazine Musical Opinion has a review of my book in its October-December 2021 issue. Some excerpts from Julian Jacobson's review: 'Susan Tomes' new book is aimed at the informed amateur or mélomane, in the untranslatable French word: the Radio 3 (perhaps...