Hyperion Records, which was recently bought by Universal, has decided to make its catalogue of recordings available on streaming platforms for the first time. The first batch of 200 Hyperion recordings has just gone up on Apple Music, Spotify, iTunes and so on. As the...
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The Coronation of King Charles III came in the same week that we heard the organisation Psappha, which promotes new music, had been forced to close because of funding problems. This in itself followed hard on the heels of threats to close the BBC Singers and reduce...
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...
Went to a marvellous French film, ‘Of Gods and Men’. These days I’m often disappointed when I go to the cinema but this was an exception. The film tells the story of a group of Cistercian monks in a small monastery in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria at a time of...
Interesting article the other day in The Guardian about the fact that many people now chat online about what they’re watching on TV, while they’re watching it. They don’t wait for the end of the programme, but start commenting on Twitter right away about things that...
I had a lovely surprise recently, and have been waiting for an opportunity to mention it. The distinguished Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa read my book ‘Out of Silence’ recently, and told me that she would like to translate it into Japanese. She has now been...
The lake in Richmond Park had frozen over for the first time this winter. People were breaking off pieces of ice from the shore line or picking up stones from the paths, and skimming them over the frozen surface of the water. To my amazement, each stone played the...
To Evensong at King's College, Cambridge. At this time of year it is quite dark when the service begins at 5.30pm. As the sound of the choir floats upwards, it seems to draw the eye up to the beautiful fan vaulting (see photo). I never get tired of hearing how subtly...
To a viol masterclass given by the eiminent Catalan viol player Jordi Savall at the Royal College of Music. As always happens when I listen to 'early music', it took me a little while to tune in to the quiet sound level favoured by the players. It's so different from...
I was teaching at the Guildhall today. All the students were excellent – that didn’t surprise me, because I know what a high standard there is at London’s big music colleges these days. Not one of my students was British – that didn’t surprise me either. What did...
It's been a week for funny signs in shops. A friend texted me from the station to report seeing a sign in a Marks and Spencer's Food store: 'Takeaway bananas'. We have been musing over the idea of a non-take-away banana. Meanwhile, down by the nuts and snacks in our...
We were listening to a jazz station on the radio as we cooked dinner. A saxophone player meandered interminably through a long dull solo without ever finding a way to extricate himself. It was like listening to a fly struggling in a spoonful of honey. Bob went over...
In our local department store today, I was looking at the autumn collection of clothes. A young sales assistant in her twenties stepped forward to help me when she saw me studying a particular pair of wool trousers. I asked her if they were washable. 'I wouldn't...
To Sadler’s Wells to see the Tanztheater Wuppertal, Pina Bausch’s dance company. Sadly I never saw them while Pina Bausch was still alive (she died last year). The audience was packed with dancers, or at least that was how I interpreted the fact that there were so...
The clocks went back last night, and we all had an extra hour in bed. This should have been ideal at the end of a day of recording Shostakovich. Recording is an arduous process and I was looking forward to relaxing when it was all over. But could I take advantage of...