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...
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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...
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...
The first concert of the new season for the Florestan Trio is on Tuesday 5 October at 7.30pm at Wigmore Hall, part of the Schumann bicentenary celebrations. What is it about Schumann which makes him such a favourite of musicians? He isn’t always a favourite at the box...
The Wimbledon BookFest has asked me to mention them, and I'm happy to spread the word as my own event is one of the first in this year's BookFest. The festival runs from 2-10 October and you can find out more here. On the evening of Saturday 2 October I'm giving a...
Yesterday I was at a conference about creativity in performance. There were many interesting speakers, several of whom told anecdotes to make their points clear. At one point we were talking about the curious blend of involvement and detachment that seems to be...
Following on from yesterday's post about the Scottish International Piano Competition, anyone who's interested in the new chamber music round may like to read Kenneth Walton's article on the subject in today's Scotsman newspaper. The chamber final is tonight at 7pm in...
I'm in rainy Glasgow, half way through my fortnight on the jury of the triennial Scottish International Piano Competition. Obviously I can't say much as the competition is still in progress, but I can say how absorbing it's been to hear so many accomplished young...
Much discussion yesterday about Ben Goldacre’s ‘Bad Science’ column in the Guardian. This time he was reporting a piece of good science, a paper by Noola Griffiths which shows that young women violinists are judged more musical and more technically proficient if they...
Today's Glasgow Herald has an article about the Scottish International Piano Competition, which starts next week in Glasgow. I'm on the competition jury. The board of the competition have made some wise and welcome changes to the requirements, which we all hope will...
What a pleasure to hear the John Wilson Orchestra in their Rodgers and Hammerstein Prom, which I heard on television. John Wilson’s arrangements are simply spellbinding. His hand-picked orchestra, with many individually distinguished musicians playing in it, reminded...
Walking over Waterloo Bridge the other evening I decided to pop into the Festival Hall. A very good Afro-Brazilian band was playing in the foyer and a large multi-cultural crowd, people of all ages, had gathered to listen. Many of the audience seemed to be South...
The final concert of the Gaudier Ensemble's Cerne Abbas Music Festival, in which I took part, featured one of my favourite pieces of chamber music, the Clarinet Quintet of Mozart. There was a surprise this time. Clarinettist Richard Hosford has an instrument which he...
I’ve been rehearsing tangos by Astor Piazzolla for a late-night concert tonight. As I don’t play this kind of music very often (more’s the pity), I got in the mood by listening to a number of recordings by Piazzolla himself. Without the sound of a genuine Argentinian...
We enjoyed listening on television to Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto played at the Proms by the excellent pianist Simon Trpceski. It’s strange how those famous themes, which once sounded slightly hackneyed to me, no longer seem that way and instead sound full of...