In our student days, those of us studying music (and in fact anyone who wanted to continue their piano studies) were allowed to hire upright pianos and put them in our rooms. Not infrequently there were two or more people on the staircase with pianos in their rooms -...
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!
I often tweet about music and related matters. Usually the response is small - I'm thrilled if my tweets reach a couple of hundred people. So my experience yesterday was exceptional. I was watching The Queen's funeral which, as you'll know, had a variety of music in...
There's news today of an important new women's health strategy in England. 'Ministers have vowed to tackle decades of “systemic” and “entrenched” gender health inequality in England with plans to introduce compulsory women’s health training for doctors, more cancer...
In the bread section of the supermarket I was startled to see a tall baguette labelled ‘Pain Flute’. I was reading in English and thought the store’s labelling team had gone all poetical on a dark winter’s afternoon. Isn’t there a poem by Tagore which talks about the...
There's a little interview with me in the 'Meet the Artist' series on BBC Music Magazine's website. It focuses on the masterclass weekend I'm teaching in February. As is usually the way, the interviewer hasn't chosen the bits of the interview I would have chosen...
Out of the Saturday Guardian fell a slim booklet about Keats, the first in a series about Romantic Poets. It fell open at Keats' ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’. My eye fell on the lines, ‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard//Are sweeter’ I read this line aloud to Bob....
The winter weather has brought some unusual birds to our garden. A week or so ago we had a little flock of birds about the size of thrushes, but more colourful, with orangey plumage on their necks and chests. At around the same time the Guardian mentioned that its...
I’m supposed to be on a train to the north of England at the moment to perform with the trio at Cockermouth Music Society this evening. But last night our cellist, Richard, phoned to say that he had come down with the winter vomiting bug. There was no way he could...
The cygnets on the lake in our local park have almost grown up. We’ve been watching them for a whole year now, and have realised that the ‘Ugly Duckling’ legend is deeply inappropriate. These young swans never looked anything other than handsome and confident, even...
Just finished three days of recording in Henry Wood Hall, a converted church in south London. I feel stiff and aching all over, as if a horse has been jumping up and down on me. Recording is such an arduous process! Every time I do it, I wonder why on earth it is...
A most unexpected and heartwarming New Year gift arrived today in the form of a comment made in a Times book review by the distinguished cellist Natalie Clein. Reviewing a new book on Bach’s cello suites, she muses on the difficulty of writing about music, and says,...
I spent most of yesterday correcting the page-proofs of my new book and twitching with frustration. My electronic copy of the page-proofs is ‘read only’. I cannot type on it or make any alterations. Any mistakes have to be listed separately and sent to the publisher....
This new year has found me in thoughtful rather than celebratory mood. So here is a photo of the tide gracefully looping its way along Portobello Beach in the winter sun in Edinburgh, where I spent Christmas. There is much to look forward to in 2010, and I wish you...
While everyone is busy with Christmas festivities, this blog is going to sink into a cosy armchair with a slice of home-made Christmas cake and gaze out of the window for a while. Season's greetings!
Richmond Park yesterday was full of children sliding happily on the icy paths. Not on the ponds, though – the ice is rarely thick enough to take a person’s weight. Everyone seemed to be chatting about the Eurostar trains which got stuck in the Channel Tunnel on Friday...