I go to quite a lot of concerts given by amateur musicians - partly because there's a big amateur music scene in the city where I live, and partly because I often have friends and neighbours playing in the concerts. Of course my particular interest is piano. It dawned...
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By chance, two different people have spoken to me recently about their late mothers, who experienced difficulties in following their chosen career when they were young. One of those women was born in the 1920s, the other in the 1930s. One was a doctor, the other a...
In today's Guardian I was reading about the Japanese tradition of 'listening bars', where customers have 'a deep, beautiful, reverential attitude to listening to music'. High-end sound systems, sometimes dominating a whole wall, convey every layer of a recorded album...
Just back from the 25th anniversary festival run by the Gaudier Ensemble in the lovely old Dorset village of Cerne Abbas (in the photo I'm rehearsing a Mozart piano concerto with (from L to R) Marieke Blankestijn, Lesley Hatfield, Iris Juda, Steve Williams and...
Sad news that Edward Greenfield has died. He was senior music critic of The Guardian for many years, and a longstanding contributor to Gramophone magazine. Although 'Ted' was a professional critic, it always seemed to me that he was determined to accentuate the...
I recently did an interview with Andrew Ford of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 'The Music Show'. We talked mainly about my book 'Sleeping in Temples', but strayed onto other topics such as why it is that, in the last movement of Beethoven's E major piano...
There's been quite a lot written lately about the need for musicians to 'be their own promoters' and organise their own concerts. In the face of declining opportunities for classical music, many musicians have embraced the idea of putting on their own concerts and...
Letter from a reader who mentions that he rarely goes to concerts these days because many performers are there as a result of winning competitions, and he finds that competition winners are usually, like Monty Python's celebrated accountant, 'too boring to be of...
I've been rehearsing Judith Weir's 'Airs from Another Planet', a superb sextet for piano and wind instruments (in this case, the wind players of the chamber group Daniel's Beard). It's for the opening concert of the Cottier Chamber Project in Glasgow on 5 June....
I wrote a while ago about the memoirs of Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, 'the Highland Lady', whose memoirs of life in Scotland in the early 19th century were so popular. Now I'm reading her later volume of memoirs, written when she was married and helping to run an...
We have a new cat, Daisy, adopted from a cat rescue shelter. After a wobbly start, she's settling down beautifully. Daisy is a very quiet cat who seems not to find it necessary to say anything. One of her few utterances was a moment after her arrival when she shot out...
The Joseph Haydn Competition in Vienna came to an end on Wednesday with a prizewinners' concert and presentation of prizes by the sponsors and jury. Afterwards, there was a reception hosted by the university. Immediately I was approached by someone with a role in...
I'm pleased to say that my audience for the Beethoven lecture-recital yesterday was much bigger than I or the organisers had anticipated. Extra chairs needed to be put out, and there was a lovely buzz in the room when I came in. It seemed that people were pleased by...
I'm preparing for a lunchtime lecture-recital on Tuesday in which I've been asked to speak about, and then play, a late Beethoven sonata, the A flat major opus 110. It's an experiment for all concerned; I've performed the sonata before, but have never tried to speak...
I've been reading the wonderful 'Memoirs of a Highland Lady', written by Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus. What a series of unforgettable pictures she paints of her life in the Highlands of Scotland in the early years of the 19th century! As a teenager, I used to get...