I was looking through the list of candidates for a concerto competition recently and was struck by the list of pieces they were playing. Mozart (lots), Haydn (several), Beethoven (several), Mendelssohn (several), Schumann (several), Chopin, Brahms (several), Grieg,...
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During the Christmas holidays we watched The Sound of Music on television. Some parts of it will forever be charming, while other parts have not worn so well. No matter - it's still a feast of nostalgia for those of us who remember the film when it first came out. Bob...
We were discussing the fact that there are so few concert reviews in the newspaper these days. Time was when most concerts in prestigious venues were reviewed the next day. But now there are few reviews. What gets covered? - the Proms, perhaps, and some special visits...
Yesterday I was at a conference about creativity in performance. There were many interesting speakers, several of whom told anecdotes to make their points clear. At one point we were talking about the curious blend of involvement and detachment that seems to be...
I'm in rainy Glasgow, half way through my fortnight on the jury of the triennial Scottish International Piano Competition. Obviously I can't say much as the competition is still in progress, but I can say how absorbing it's been to hear so many accomplished young...
Much discussion yesterday about Ben Goldacre’s ‘Bad Science’ column in the Guardian. This time he was reporting a piece of good science, a paper by Noola Griffiths which shows that young women violinists are judged more musical and more technically proficient if they...
Today's Glasgow Herald has an article about the Scottish International Piano Competition, which starts next week in Glasgow. I'm on the competition jury. The board of the competition have made some wise and welcome changes to the requirements, which we all hope will...
What a pleasure to hear the John Wilson Orchestra in their Rodgers and Hammerstein Prom, which I heard on television. John Wilson’s arrangements are simply spellbinding. His hand-picked orchestra, with many individually distinguished musicians playing in it, reminded...
I was in Italy last week and was lucky enough to be in Siena on the day the fragile mosaics of the cathedral floor were uncovered, as they are each summer for a short period. My photo shows one of the central mosaics, King David who was also a musician. The cathedral...
Went to the BP Portrait Award exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, which was packed with visitors. The technical standard of painting in many of the portraits was astonishing. Skin, hair, eyelashes, veins were depicted with stunning realism and skill. In quite...
Walking over Waterloo Bridge the other evening I decided to pop into the Festival Hall. A very good Afro-Brazilian band was playing in the foyer and a large multi-cultural crowd, people of all ages, had gathered to listen. Many of the audience seemed to be South...
A gift arrives from America: a pianist colleague has kindly sent me Barbara Alex’s handsome new book about Hungarian piano professor Gyorgy Sebok, who died in 1999. Like all Sebok’s former students, I love to be reminded of how he spoke. He had a gift for aphorism...
I’ve been rehearsing tangos by Astor Piazzolla for a late-night concert tonight. As I don’t play this kind of music very often (more’s the pity), I got in the mood by listening to a number of recordings by Piazzolla himself. Without the sound of a genuine Argentinian...
I've always been fascinated by Ravel's remark, when a friend asked how he was getting on with composing his Piano Trio, that he had finished it, and all he needed to do was to invent the themes. This seems to indicate that the structure and the inner shapes must have...
Chatting with a friend about how long a certain car journey would take, I guessed that it would take x hours, and my friend replied, ‘Well, it only takes me y hours, but then I know the roads, so I whiz along.’ People often say that kind of thing, and I never really...