I have been keeping half an eye on the 2025 Van Cliburn piano competition in Texas, partly because when I was writing Women and the Piano I did a fair amount of research into the gender disparity one can see in the lists of piano competition prizewinners around the...
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!
When you play a lot of Romantic piano music, you get used to the final notes being extended by a written pause. Composers like Chopin and Schumann often wanted the last chord to ring on gently (or triumphantly) while the mood of the piece hung in the air. We pianists...
I've now finished working my way through the volume of Mozart piano sonatas (a sonata a day keeps the doctor away) and have started playing through Beethoven's again. The early Beethoven sonatas have made me think about what makes the difference between a theme and a...
I've just finished reading James Rhodes's book Instrumental. Nobody can put down the book without feeling intense sympathy for him and admiration for the way he's turned his traumatic experiences into positive motivation for life as a concert pianist. No-one can doubt...
I've been looking forward to performing Beethoven's song cycle 'An die ferne Geliebte' with tenor Jamie MacDougall next week at Glasgow University's lunchtime concert series. Admission to this popular series is free by the way! Unfortunately Jamie has had to pull out...
Yesterday's Guardian Review carried a fascinating article by Michael Church, editor of 'The other classical musics - fifteen great traditions', a new assortment of essays by Church and other world music experts published by Boydell Press (who also publish my books)....
One of the highlights of Saturday's 'Last Night of the Proms' was Jonas Kaufmann singing 'Dein ist mein ganzes Herz' from Franz Léhar's operetta 'The Land of Smiles' (Das Land des Laechelns). Oh my goodness, what a song! So beautifully constructed, such clever and...
In the admin section of my website, I can see what search terms people are most commonly using. For months now, the most popular search terms have been 'noisy piano practise in apartment', 'neighbour nuisance from piano playing', 'how to stop pianist practising...
17-year-old Jessy McCabe's petition for more women composers to be on the A-level music syllabus has been in the news today. It has generated quite a lot of interest and discussion, too. Good for her. The Independent asked if I had any comments to add, and some of my...
The news that Alex Ross is now the only full-time classical music critic on an American magazine has got me thinking about the changing status of reviews. Gone are the days when an 'important' concert would routinely be reviewed by all the major papers. When I was a...
I went to a concert recently (I won't say where or when). In the group was an older musician playing quite a prominent role on a string instrument. Unfortunately his control of pitch had become unreliable. He was smiling and concentrating, trying to play the right...
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...