One of the most depressing sights of lockdown in Edinburgh - for me, anyway - was the sight of the Usher Hall being turned into a Covid test centre. I know that test centres are important. But it seemed a sad change of fortune for the first big concert hall I got to...
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This morning I heard a report about scientists who have made a list of recommendations for touring musicians to cut back on carbon emissions. Amongst other things it recommended that musicians should use instruments or equipment 'held by the venue'. Good luck with...
I’ve just been in Venice for a few days. The city was on the cusp of autumn – warm and sunny but with thunderstorms looming, and mist in the morning on the day we left. We visited about 547 churches. As ever in Italy, I’m disappointed by how rarely one hears any music...
Far be it from me to add to the deluge of cute animal pictures on the internet, but I couldn't resist posting this photo of a baby alpaca, taken by my daughter a few weeks ago near Lake Titicaca in Peru. This alpaca lives in a little compound with his best friend, a...
Several good letters in today’s Guardian on the subject of university fees. Various people point out that the older generation in Britain benefited from non-repayable grants. Today’s students have loans, and the average debt when a student graduates is now £15,000....
In Monday’s Guardian, Umberto Eco laments the decline in children’s handwriting ability. He gives various reasons why he thinks it’s a shame that we don’t handwrite letters any more, but surprisingly doesn’t talk about the impact that someone’s handwriting can have on...
There's been a lot in the press this summer about middle-aged women and the way they're unceremoniously dropped from positions such as BBC newsreader or presenter. Newsreader Selina Scott brought the topic to everyone's attention with her age discrimination claim...
When I was in the Highlands recently I had the pleasure of meeting the eminent Scots musicologist Dr John Purser, who has been presenting a long-running series of radio programmes on the history of Scots music - much of which has come as a surprise to today's radio...
Just returned from a ‘summer' holiday on the Isle of Skye, in the Highlands of Scotland. It rained almost continuously, so we were hardly surprised when we learned that our visit was part of the most prolonged spell of wet weather recorded on the island since 1861....
A friend has been telling me about a DVD of cellist Bernard Greenhouse giving masterclasses. Greenhouse spoke about the great Catalan cellist Pablo Casals, with whom he had studied. Casals was well-known for his love of smoking a pipe. Asked how much he smoked, he...
This is our cat at her 14th birthday party. She has been having chemotherapy for 15 months now. She's responded to it extremely well, but all the same we felt that her 14th birthday was something to celebrate. Now that the cat is on steroids, she has changed the...
I recently made up a couple of cadenzas for a Haydn piano concerto. I kind of improvised them at the piano, and played them in the concert without ever writing them out. Afterwards, I thought I'd try and note them down before I forgot them entirely. Cadenzas are...
Whenever I delete spam mails from this blog I'm intrigued by their prose style. Sent by shadowy advertisers, this special type of spam is targeted at blogs. I'm still fooled sometimes because they quote the title of one of my own blog posts, and appear to be a...
Last night we went to hear Mendelssohn's 2nd Symphony at the Proms, played by the excellent Hallé Orchestra under their conductor Sir Mark Elder. A few weeks ago, Bob reviewed all the available recordings of Mendelssohn's 2nd Symphony for Radio 3's CD Review 'Building...
