Last week I was in Vienna for a few days of Easter holiday. We managed to pack in lots of music-related things: a concert at the Musikverein, an evening at the State Opera, a visit to one of Mozart's apartments, a visit to Haydn's house in what was the village of...
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!
This week I've been trying to find out what happened to the album of Mozart piano and violin sonatas that the wonderful Viennese violinist Erich Höbarth and I made in 2012. (That's us in the photo.) It was compiled from live recordings of a concert series we performed...
It was great to be part of the RSNO chamber series in Glasgow yesterday afternoon in its first 'live' concert for an in-person audience since the pandemic. That's a gap of almost three years! Photo shows (L to R) cellist Pei Jee Ng, me, violist Tom Dunn, violinist...
Interesting article the other day in The Guardian about the fact that many people now chat online about what they’re watching on TV, while they’re watching it. They don’t wait for the end of the programme, but start commenting on Twitter right away about things that...
To a viol masterclass given by the eiminent Catalan viol player Jordi Savall at the Royal College of Music. As always happens when I listen to 'early music', it took me a little while to tune in to the quiet sound level favoured by the players. It's so different from...
Went to a marvellous cello masterclass given by Johannes Goritzki at the Royal College of Music. He spent hours persuading the students that playing the cello was easier than they thought, just a matter of applying weight in the right place, not working against the...
Here's something I hadn't seen before: an asymmetrical viola. Its owner, Rivka Golani, showed it to us when Bob interviewed her for Putney Music society this week. Rivka explained that the maker of the viola, Otto Erdesz, believed that the unusual cut-out on the...
At ChamberStudio yesterday we were working on a piece by Prokofiev. We were discussing the kind of piano writing that's often found in works by Russian composers of the Soviet era. As the writing is typically rather spare and empty-looking on the page, with a...
I was teaching at the Guildhall today. All the students were excellent – that didn’t surprise me, because I know what a high standard there is at London’s big music colleges these days. Not one of my students was British – that didn’t surprise me either. What did...
This Thursday morning, 11 November, from 10am-1pm in the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, I'm giving a masterclass in 'the art of piano chamber music', working with chamber groups from the Guildhall. The class will be in the Music Hall. The event is free and open...
Today, 27 October, at 1pm on Radio 3 you can hear the broadcast of a bassoon and piano recital given by Rachel Gough, the excellent principal bassoon of the London Symphony Orchestra, and me. The concert was part of a series at LSO St Luke's in the City of London,...
Yesterday, when I was coaching at King's Place, we had a tea break between sessions. Some of the younger participants were airing their current dilemmas about fees and conditions. In particular, they were wondering aloud about their situation as young professionals:...
On Tuesday morning, 19 October, I'm giving a masterclass in 'the art of piano chamber music' in the Recital Hall of the Royal College of Music in South Kensington from 10am-1pm. Tickets are free, but you have to book them via this link or by calling the RCM box office...
To East Bergholt in Suffolk for a concert with the Florestan Trio. The artist John Constable was born in East Bergholt, and used to walk through the fields to school in Dedham. He later said it was that landscape which inspired him to become a painter. Before the...
In BBC Music magazine, Rebecca Franks muses on why the musicians who write books about their experience of music tend to be pianists. Read her article. It's a fascinating topic and one I'm often asked about. There are various possibilities: pianists are loners, and so...