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....
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!
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...
There was an article in The Guardian this week about the dwindling number of highly-trained piano tuners in Australia. Not only is the pool of piano tuners getting smaller, it is in danger of not being replenished because there aren't enough training courses in this...
Saw a quietly beautiful Italian film, Le Quattro Volte, directed by Michelangelo Frammartino. It was inspired by Pythagoras's belief that each of us contains four interlinked lives: human, animal, vegetable and mineral. 'Man is made of mineral, because he has a...
On Monday, Mark Lawson wrote in the Guardian about how politicians are averse to being associated with 'high art' because they don't wish to be seen as 'élitist'. In today's paper there are several letters in reply, one of them from me.
My days of being able to be knocked down by a feather are past, but you could have knocked me down with a full-grown marrow, or possibly a crusty baguette, when I discovered that my birthday was the featured one in The Times’ birthday column on Thursday, at the bottom...
Isn't it funny how our tastes can change over time? I used not to like the 'old English roses' as much as the simpler kind. I found the structure of 'old roses', with their mass of tiny petals, too fussy and complicated. I preferred the classic rose of the kind that...
... Couldn't resist the pun! After watching the swan on her nest on a little island in the middle of the lake in the local park for weeks, we were delighted to see her on the water with these handsome cygnets at the weekend.
A while ago, Bob was given a special bottle of wine by way of thanks for something. We kept waiting for the perfect opportunity to drink it, but as nothing perfect ever presented itself, he finally decided that we should stop being so fussy and just drink it to...
Children collecting tadpoles in our local park this week. The things frogs have to put up with! I looked up 'tadpole' in the dictionary. 'Tade' is the Old English word for toad. 'Poll' means head. Toadhead: a rather graceless image, I find. Somehow the tadpoles' tails...
A hospital appointment date arrives in the post. Along with the letter is a leaflet pleading, 'Don't be a DNA!' It turns out that 'a DNA is someone who Did Not Attend hospital for an appointment and did not advise us beforehand. The clinic was ready, the staff were...
A few weeks ago I attended an astonishing concert given by the pianist Jacob Barnes and three of his friends from the Royal Academy of Music. Jacob had been suffering from a rare kind of leukaemia for two years. His presence on the platform was a source of wonder and...
On the day the world is glued to the Royal Wedding in London, it seems slightly beside the point to mention that this is the second anniversary of my blog 'going live', but then, why not? I’m quite pleased about it. I wasn’t sure I’d manage to keep the blog going for...
It was exciting being on Radio 4 yesterday, especially when I looked at my website afterwards and saw there was an enormous surge in the number of visitors – more than a ten-fold increase on the usual number. I had never seen such a number before on my ‘site stats’....
On the last episode of 'Between Ourselves', the Radio 4 discussion programme, James Rhodes and I are talking to presenter Olivia O'Leary about what it's like to be a concert pianist. I haven't heard the edited broadcast, but we talked for almost two hours in the...