A friend and I have been discussing the career of a mutual friend who died recently. He was a fabulous musician who wasn't as well known as he should have been. Writers and visual artists can stay put in the place where they choose to live, and create their work...
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I have been keeping half an eye on the 2025 Van Cliburn piano competition in Texas, partly because when I was writing Women and the Piano I did a fair amount of research into the gender disparity one can see in the lists of piano competition prizewinners around the...
A new series of Channel 4's 'The Piano' has begun. Judge Mika is still there, but Lang Lang has left the show and in his place is the multi-talented American musician Jon Batiste. For anyone who isn't familiar with the show, this is the concept: an upright piano is...
Yesterday I was at a concert where, just as I was thinking of reading the programme notes, the lights went down and I couldn't read them. Some concert halls don't put the lights down; others dim them slightly, and some put them down to 'theatre levels', just leaving...
I'm preparing for my two appearances at the London Piano Festival in King's Place on Saturday October 5. At 2pm I have a solo lecture-recital on Schubert's A major Sonata D959. At 7pm I'll be joining the other festival pianists in a 'two-piano marathon' concert. Most...
The marvellous National Youth Orchestra Prom concert with Nicola Benedetti last week has set me reminiscing about my time in the NYO (in the photo, I have long fair hair and am just to the left of the middle of the group, playing 2nd violin.) Watching the NYO Prom on...
After a recent concert a member of the audience was telling me how much she'd enjoyed it. 'I always say it's great to hear top professionals playing, because it's only when people have really mastered the notes that they can think about how music communicates', she...
Last week I had the opportunity to sit at the side of a church and watch the faces of the audience as they listened to a wonderful concert. It was interesting to observe the array of expressions, some clearly related to the music, others not. I saw people who were:...
The other day I went to the Bridget Riley exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery. In one room, there was a large Riley painting, painted directly onto a white wall. I stepped forward to read the plaque. It said the painting was owned by a gallery in Germany. How...
There's so much talk about 'fake news' at the moment. Most of us are gradually getting better at spotting it. Fake news often seems to be accompanied by a certain style of presentation, which we often see in public speaking. Smiles that don't arise from the inside. An...
Recently for work reasons I've had to look through the websites of lots of different young musicians and chamber groups. Websites are dazzling! It's clear that everyone now employs sophisticated media skills and professional designers. Gorgeous artwork, glamorous...
I did some guest teaching at the University of St Andrews the other day. During one of my sessions, a member of the audience asked an interesting question. I didn't know the answer and am still thinking about it. He said: 'I have some modern recordings of Baroque...
I'm preparing for next weekend's Winterplay, my mini-festival of collaborative music at the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh. We have a children's music-and-movement workshop led by Monica Wilkinson, a music and words event with Janice Galloway, a pre-concert talk by Robert...
As the Brexit story accelerates, musicians are still in the dark about what will happen to their freedom of movement after we leave the EU. For two and a half years now I have been listening to colleagues and students worrying about whether they will still be able to...
The year got off to a flying start with a mention of Winterplay in The Scotsman's preview of concerts to look forward to in 2019. After talking about the Edinburgh International Festival, it goes on to say: 'On a far smaller scale, though just as rewarding, is pianist...