We were discussing the fact that there are so few concert reviews in the newspaper these days. Time was when most concerts in prestigious venues were reviewed the next day. But now there are few reviews. What gets covered? - the Proms, perhaps, and some special visits...
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Welcome to my new website! If you’re a seasoned visitor, I hope you like the new look. Last night I went to a fundraising concert in aid of MAP, Medical Aid for Palestinians. It was arranged at short notice and held in St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh. As I bought...
Last week I took part in the Cerne Abbas Music Festival, held by the Gaudier Ensemble in rural Dorset. For the past thirty-two years, the same group of musicians has been gathering in Cerne for a week in the summer, to present a series of chamber music concerts in the...
Last week I followed the Cardiff Singer of the World competition on TV with great enjoyment through all the rounds. I was so impressed with these singers who, despite a year of lockdown and no opportunities to sing to live audiences, were able to come out and perform...
This week I was the guest on a podcast called The Classical Top Five. During lockdown, a group of critics and broadcasters have been making their way through various 'top five' categories ranging from the serious to the light-hearted, and this week they turned their...
A year ago, when lockdown happened and all my work was cancelled, I spent a lot of time walking around the streets of my neighbourhood - partly for exercise, partly to pass the time, and partly because we were not supposed to be taking the bus so there was no other...
This week I came across the video made by cellist Felix Wurman about Domus at the beginning of the group's career. We were trying to publicise our concerts in our portable concert hall, a large geodesic dome which the players assembled out of aluminium tubes, putting...
In the past year there have been almost no live concerts, and therefore no reviews of the traditional kind. But sometimes there are reviews of streamed concerts, and the piano quartets I performed earlier this month with the excellent Scottish Chamber Orchestra...
Yesterday I was in Perth, recording Mozart and Beethoven quintets for piano and wind instruments with principal players of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra - Adrian Wilson, Timothy Orpen, David Hubbard and Chris Gough. The performance will be relayed as a Radio 3...
Thank you to everyone who sent me a nice message after last night's streaming of the latest concert in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's digital series - on this occasion, a programme curated by their principal cellist Philip Higham and presenting two piano quartets by...
It's now a whole year since concerts started being cancelled in anticipation of the pandemic. I remember very well that I had been to a birthday coffee party where the extended family sat around a big circular glass-topped table while our reflections ate scones and...
After a long winter in the deep freeze (in more ways than one) - at last! - a concert to tell you about. It won't be performed in front of a live audience - that long-awaited moment is probably still months away- but it will be broadcast on YouTube and Facebook on...
This week we watched Amy Berg's 2015 documentary about Janis Joplin, 'Little Girl Blue', which tells Janis's story with the help of letters she wrote to her family while on tour. It's an absorbing watch, full of great footage, excellent interviews with her family,...
I keep coming across articles about the importance of revising our approach to international travel. For the sake of the environment as well as public health, we're told, we should be working towards the possibility of doing everything in the places where we live....
The other day I was listening to a ballet dancer reminiscing on radio about the time when, as a girl, she took part in a ballet masterclass given by Dame Margot Fonteyn. Dame Margot, it seems, was more terrifying in person than the students had expected. 'She hardly...