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...
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!
I've been playing through Schubert's piano sonatas, starting with the early ones, which I admit I don't know very well. Like most people, I'm much more familiar with the late sonatas, considered some of his finest works. The sonatas I've played so far were written in...
The other day when I was a little early for a meeting I climbed the steps to the Old Calton Burial Ground (see photo) to go and look at the monument to the philosopher David Hume. It's a kind of empty stone cylinder into which the sunlight shines, and is always...
When I was in Oxford the other day to give a masterclass at the university, I visited a friend who lives and teaches in one of the Oxford colleges. To reach his rooms, I had to pass through several interlocking courtyards, or Quads as they're called in Oxford. Each...
In our local park, there's a pond where we've been watching the progress of a spectacular swan family with nine cygnets. Early on in their family life they perfected the art of moving about the lake in procession, their synchronised graceful movements drawing the...
Last week I had to empty my shelves of piano music so that the room could be painted. It took ages and resulted in tottering piles of sheet music on the floor of other rooms. As I carried armfuls of music to and fro, I reflected on how much effort had gone into...
How nice it is to work with young musicians at that interesting crossroads when they're emerging from higher education and developing their own identities as professional musicians. They are no longer dependent on teachers (sometimes they no longer have access to...
One afternoon in Vienna we went out to visit the place where Mozart was buried, in the Sankt Marx cemetery outside the old city walls. Today the burial ground, no longer used since the 1880s, lies forlornly in the midst of motorway flyovers, housing estates,...
I’m off to Vienna to rehearse four programmes of Mozart’s music which violinist Erich Höbarth and I are playing this season in Perth Concert Hall, Scotland's newest concert hall (our first concert is on November 11). We’re tackling twelve of Mozart’s sonatas for piano...
To a talk at the Guildhall School of Music about musicians' injuries. 'Suffering for their Art', presented by Helen Reid, explored the complex topic of how performers deal with injuries which prevent them from playing their instruments. It seems that musicians are...
In the wake of the Trondheim competition, I’ve been thinking about the gap between the jury’s taste and the public’s taste in performers. Several times during the competition I happened to bump into members of the public in the coffee shop, or in the foyers of the...
Yesterday on the flight home from Norway, our flight crew announced that the airline had just installed free WiFi on certain planes, including ours. As I had a laptop with me I was able to send my first e-mail from the sky. Even more amazingly, a reply pinged straight...
This week I'm on the jury of the Trondheim International Chamber Competition, which this year is for piano trios. During the day we've been listening to nine piano trios playing very demanding programmes, and in the evenings we've been rehearsing for and playing in...
Went to the Wigmore Hall to hear American jazz pianist Brad Mehdau in duo with mandolinist Chris Thile. It was a tremendous evening, and also an opportunity to witness quite a different sort of crowd in the Wigmore. They were, I have to admit, younger and cooler than...
Usually I take part in music festivals, so to be invited to a Literary Festival is an exciting change. Yesterday I was at the Rye Festival talking about music and musicians. In between readings and bits of talk, I played little piano pieces. I'd been given one of...