Talk of how people are going to watch the King's Coronation next week has reminded me of my father's tale about Queen Elizabeth's Coronation in 1953. My father had recently moved to Scotland to marry my Scottish mother. Before coming to Edinburgh, my dad had been...
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This weekend I heard that my old friend Gerald Pointon had died. I felt like writing this little reminiscence. Gerald was a high-powered lawyer in Paris, specialising in arbitration. As a graduate student at Cambridge University he had sung in the famous choir of...
Last week I was in Vienna for a few days of Easter holiday. We managed to pack in lots of music-related things: a concert at the Musikverein, an evening at the State Opera, a visit to one of Mozart's apartments, a visit to Haydn's house in what was the village of...
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...
The azaleas, camellias, magnolias and rhododendrons are nearly all out now in Richmond Park. Although most of the park is just green, there's an enclosed park-within-a-park called the Isabella Plantation. Why is it called Isabella? It seems that 'Isabel' is an word...
I never used to follow contemporary dance, but a chance encounter with the Mark Morris Dance Group seems to have turned me into an Sadler's Wells groupie. I've gone on to enjoy Pina Bausch, modern flamenco, and on Saturday we relished the last night of Anne Teresa de...
I can't help feeling rather proud of this photo, taken yesterday, of the first tadpole I've seen this spring. He/she/it was resting on a lily leaf under the surface of the water. There was an item on the radio this morning about the big increase in the number of...
I've been trying to prepare my mind for tomorrow's BBC recording of a discussion between me and fellow pianist James Rhodes for Radio 4's Between Ourselves programme (to be broadcast on April 26 at 9.00 and again at 21.30). James has found a way to bring classical...
Suddenly the weather is good, and for the first time this year we were able to have lunch outside. Here I am, out for a treat at the Covent Garden branch of Jamie Oliver's restaurant chain, about to enjoy my antipasto plate of delicious Italian cured hams, pumpkin,...