On Saturday there was a lovely article in The Guardian about Paul Barton, a man who plays the piano to elephants at an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. The elephants have often been overworked or mistreated before they come to the sanctuary, but it seems that they...
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!
At a book sale at the weekend I picked up a copy of Heinrich Neuhaus's book The Art of Piano Playing. Neuhaus, who devoted the main part of his career to teaching at the Moscow Conservatory, was the teacher of Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels and Radu Lupu among...
Last week I took part in the Cerne Abbas Music Festival, held by the Gaudier Ensemble in rural Dorset. For the past thirty-two years, the same group of musicians has been gathering in Cerne for a week in the summer, to present a series of chamber music concerts in the...
'If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?' It's funny how the first flowers of the year - crocuses, daffodils, aconites -seem especially vivid in colour. Are they really brighter than other flowers, or do they just strike us that way because our eyes have gradually...
The Guardian is publishing excerpts from Out of Silence in the Review section on Saturday 20 March. I’ll post the link on Saturday when I know it. In the meantime, many thanks to everyone who silently toasted my book from several different countries and three...
Thursday's the day when Out of Silence is officially published. As I haven't managed to organise a book launch party, how about a virtual book launch that day? At 18:00 hours (UK time) on Thursday 18 March, I’m going to raise a glass to toast my readers, wherever they...
I’m practising Schumann’s wonderful set of piano pieces, Davidsbündlertänze, for a concert later this year. As usual, progress is unpredictable. Sometimes things move on, sometimes not. Feeling short of inspiration one day this week, I sat down to listen to a historic...
A very busy week ended with a concert and party for the Friends of the Florestan Trio. What a nice thing a Friends’ Organisation is! So much of a musician’s time, especially a pianist’s time, is spent working alone or with just a few other people. It’s easy to lose...
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,...
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...
Yesterday brought the very sad news that American cellist Felix Wurman has died, age 51, of cancer. Felix was an inspiring person with a passion for adventure and an extraordinary gift for making friends. He was the founder of the music group Domus, which had its own...
Yesterday I was in King’s College, Cambridge to hear the ‘Carols from King’s’ service, which will be broadcast on Christmas Eve on BBC2. When I was a student at the college, the choir sang Evensong every day and I missed most of the services, telling myself that I...
What a joy it is to see something being performed with superb commitment as well as style, talent and humour. That’s how we felt about Jane Horrocks and Julian Ovenden, the two stars of ‘Annie Get Your Gun’ at the Young Vic. I was slightly apprehensive about it...
I’ve just realised that this is my hundredth blog post on this website. I am a centenarian! To celebrate, here’s a sweet story I heard from Mark Morris when I attended his question-and-answer session the other night at Sadler’s Wells. He was complaining about someone...
Even in the dark and without his lipstick-pink pashmina, I recognised choreographer Mark Morris standing chatting with two friends outside Sadler’s Wells Theatre an hour before his show last night. It wasn’t like bumping into Diaghilev: Morris was dressed in old...