Last December my blog post about my favourite books of 2021 was quite popular, so here's another round-up of the best books I read in 2022. Once again it turns out that I read over fifty books, but some were re-readings, which either does or doesn't count, depending...
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We generally try to make our own decorations for our home-made Christmas cake. We used to attempt traditional scenes of snowmen, sledging, fir trees, snowballs etc. In recent years, after icing the cake, we've switched to making animals out of the leftover icing. Each...
I'm preparing for a solo recital at Kettle's Yard museum in Cambridge on November 24th. Kettle's Yard is a beautiful little museum which began in the 1950s as a personal art collection by Jim Ede, who used his own house as the display venue. It was the first gallery I...
A young musician friend has been telling me about a fully-funded chamber music group based in Denmark. Each member of the group, which is supported by the Danish Government to expand the reach of chamber music across the country, is paid a full salary and has...
Many thanks to everyone who took part in my London masterclasses for playing such a wonderful concert last night! Left to right: me; Perceval Gilles, Pierre-Kaloyann Atanassov, Sarah Sultan...
We're getting closer now to my London masterclasses in 'the art of piano chamber music', this year on 6 and 7 March at the beautiful home of Bob and Elisabeth Boas. Details of the classes are on the 'Concerts and Events' tab of my homepage. It's free to come and...
I've been taking sneaky breaks from other tasks to watch the Winter Olympics from Sochi. This is partly in homage to my Dad, a keen skater, who imparted to the wider family a love of figure skating and ice dancing which still gets us gathering round televisions...
On Saturday I'm giving this year's Malcolm Bowie Memorial Lecture for the British Comparative Literature Association. My subject is 'Music and memory - a musician's perspective'. The lecture is free and open to the public. It takes place at 3pm in Deptford Town Hall...
Friends in America have alerted me to an interesting article in the New York Times of 31 December 2013: 'Maestro at Work: Hold That Cough'. Written by NY Times music critic Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, it's about the tickly - sorry, tricky - issue of coughing in...
The BBC2 series 'Masterchef' has come to an end with Steven Edwards winning the title. One of the competitors' final tasks was to cook for a roomful of distinguished chefs, well known from Michelin-starred restaurants around the UK. This is always a fascinating event,...
I've been practising Schumann's 'Papillons', a cycle of piano pieces containing various motifs and references which reappear in his later piano music. It seems that for Schumann, butterflies were associated with the novels of Jean Paul, one of his favourite authors,...
A doctor friend has sent me an excerpt from the current edition of the British Medical Journal in which their writer 'Minerva' reports: 'Great composers have tended to die young, but great performing musicians often carry on getting better as they get older. An...
At the weekend I went to watch a tango club at which an old friend of mine teaches. I know nothing about tango, though I've been to a few Argentine tango shows in London, and recently I had a lot of fun playing in a late-night performance of some Piazzolla tangos....
I'm really looking forward to Sunday's concert at Wigmore Hall with Erich Höbarth. It's the second in our pair of concerts this season featuring duo sonatas by Mozart for piano and violin. What a treat it has been to be so closely involved with this music - and this...
Yes, yes, I know that today is the 100th anniversary of the celebrated premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. But this is my husband Bob's recollection of the 50th anniversary in 1963. Bob was in the Upper Circle of the Royal Albert Hall with a group of students...