During the Christmas holidays we watched The Sound of Music on television. Some parts of it will forever be charming, while other parts have not worn so well. No matter - it's still a feast of nostalgia for those of us who remember the film when it first came out. Bob...
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A reader has asked me to specify my favourite books of the year. I keep a note in my diary of the books I read, and this year I read 42 books in their entirety, plus a few more I didn't finish. Here are my top five favourites: 1. The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth....
On Saturday there was a lovely article in The Guardian about Paul Barton, a man who plays the piano to elephants at an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. The elephants have often been overworked or mistreated before they come to the sanctuary, but it seems that they...
I'm off to Scotland for the second concert in my Mozart Series with Erich Hobarth. While I'm there, I'm hoping to visit the newly refurbished Scottish National Portrait Gallery which has been closed for the past two years. It opened again in Edinburgh on December 1....
To Cambridge for a dinner at my old college. In order to check what I wore last year at this event, I looked up some photos I'd taken at the time (just as well, as I was about to wear the same thing) and was surprised to see how much colder it was last year in...
I'm on my way to Scotland for the start of my Mozart Series with violinist Erich Höbarth. On Friday evening we're playing our opening concert in the Horsecross Concert Hall in Perth, one of Scotland's newest arts centres. For this series, I've been preparing nearly...
Although the clocks have gone back, the afternoons are growing dark between 4 and 5pm, and winter is clearly approaching, there are still roses blooming in the garden. I'm particularly pleased about one rose, an Ena Harkness, which has taken ages to get established in...
When I was in Oxford the other day to give a masterclass at the university, I visited a friend who lives and teaches in one of the Oxford colleges. To reach his rooms, I had to pass through several interlocking courtyards, or Quads as they're called in Oxford. Each...
In our local park, there's a pond where we've been watching the progress of a spectacular swan family with nine cygnets. Early on in their family life they perfected the art of moving about the lake in procession, their synchronised graceful movements drawing the...
Last week I had to empty my shelves of piano music so that the room could be painted. It took ages and resulted in tottering piles of sheet music on the floor of other rooms. As I carried armfuls of music to and fro, I reflected on how much effort had gone into...
Talk on the radio this morning about obesity epidemics in various countries has prompted me to show this photo of a meal I ate a few days ago in an old Bierkeller in Vienna: spinach dumplings with sheep's cheese. A delicious meal, but rather startling to behold when...
One afternoon in Vienna we went out to visit the place where Mozart was buried, in the Sankt Marx cemetery outside the old city walls. Today the burial ground, no longer used since the 1880s, lies forlornly in the midst of motorway flyovers, housing estates,...
To a talk at the Guildhall School of Music about musicians' injuries. 'Suffering for their Art', presented by Helen Reid, explored the complex topic of how performers deal with injuries which prevent them from playing their instruments. It seems that musicians are...
Yesterday on the flight home from Norway, our flight crew announced that the airline had just installed free WiFi on certain planes, including ours. As I had a laptop with me I was able to send my first e-mail from the sky. Even more amazingly, a reply pinged straight...
It's hard to imagine getting blasé about smoked salmon, but I have nearly managed it here in Trondheim. At the hotel's generous breakfast buffet there's a special stand, known to us musicians as 'the salmon station', where you can get smoked and cured salmon of...