I've returned from London, where I recorded an album for Hyperion of piano music by some of the women featured in my book. I had a wonderful recording team. Incredibly, it's now 40 years since I first recorded an album with producer Andrew Keener, now a doyen of the...
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Today's blog post is on quite a niche subject. When I was writing a short biography of pianist Sophie Menter (1846-1912) for Women and the Piano, I mentioned some of the extravagant things her fans used to do to show their adoration. When she played in Copenhagen in...
When I was playing in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago, I had an interesting conversation with a student there. (Birmingham University is rightly protective of its students' identities, so I won't name her.) She was studying aspects of the history of women playing...
It's been on my mind recently that I never properly learned Beethoven's final piano sonata. I've been performing and lecturing about the two penultimate sonatas, opus 109 and 110, but when someone asked if I'd like to do opus 111 as well, I had to admit that it isn't...
A lovely surprise awaited me when I played at the Brunton Theatre on Tuesday. Sitting in the front row was my first piano teacher, Gordon Lindsay ('Mr Lindsay', as I knew him). He taught me from when I began piano lessons at the age of seven until I was nine or ten....
I still have mixed feelings about playing from memory. I find that the memorising is the part of my concert preparation which takes the longest. Even after I've worked out exactly how I want to play something, there's a long extra stage which is mostly concerned with...
Finally I have managed to track down a copy of this month's 'Classical Music' magazine, which for some reason has become harder and harder to find in the shops. Knowing there was to be an article about me in the February issue, I tried to find the magazine in a number...
I haven't written anything here for a while because I have been busy preparing for a big solo recital programme last Thursday in the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh (and for several 'run-up' concerts in different parts of the country). All went well, and after a very happy...
Sad news on New Year's Day. The very fine German cellist Christoph Marks has died unexpectedly of heart failure. Christoph (on the right of the photo) was the principal cello of the NDR Radiophilharmonie in Hannover, but we in Britain knew him best as principal cello...
Last night I went with friends to a performance of Bach's Christmas Oratorio. Originally the six cantatas which comprise the 'Christmas Oratorio' were designed to be performed one at a time, in one or other of the two Leipzig churches with which Bach was associated,...
It is very sad news that the American violinist Ida Levin has lost her battle with leukaemia. Ida was devoted to the International Musicians' Seminars in Prussia Cove, Cornwall. I met her there when she came to study with Sandor Vegh. He immediately liked her and her...
Yesterday I spoke about my book 'Sleeping in Temples' at the Wigtown Book Festival (see photo), a merry gathering in 'Scotland's Book Town' in the rolling hills of Dumfries and Galloway. Arriving there for the first time in driving rain and wind wasn't the perfect...
I'm back from the 26th annual festival of the Gaudier Ensemble in Dorset. Over the years this gathering of chamber music specialists from around Europe has come to feel quite special. As our lives have become increasingly complicated, it feels remarkable that each...
On Tuesday the Guardian had an article about the growing number of stand-up comedians who bring a 'work in progress' to the Edinburgh Fringe instead of a fully-developed show. During their run, which could be anything up to three weeks, they 'develop' the show, which...
On a night when the brilliant Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov was playing at the Usher Hall as part of the Edinburgh Festival, it was not to be expected that any piano fans would still be available to come to the Edinburgh Book Festival to hear my talk, which clashed...