I was discussing 'Strictly' with a friend who's also a fan of the show. He asked me: 'How do you think it would work if celebrities were partnered with professional pianists, to learn to play the piano in a few weeks and then perform, say, a piano concerto in front of...
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The autumn season of Strictly Come Dancing is under way and this year the judges seem inclined to give us a bit more insight into what they are looking for. I have enjoyed learning more about posture, weight, inside edges, head position, arm extensions, 'spotting' ( a...
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...
Philippa Ibbotson’s article in Wednesday’s Guardian about ‘the myth of the maestro’ has stirred up a lot of interest. Last time I looked, there were about 130 comments on the Guardian blog. The article questioned the enormous fees paid to orchestral conductors,...
After lamenting the lack of music in Venice churches, I had the opposite experience yesterday when attending Evensong in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. It’s always uplifting to hear the Chapel resounding to the pure intonation and chiselled phrases of the...
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...