Tomorrow I'm playing a solo recital at the Lammermuir Festival, a lovely festival which takes place in various locations, sacred and secular, across the beautiful county of East Lothian in Scotland. I have practised my programme to the point of feeling a keen desire...
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The other day I came across an article called 'The Pianoforte Recital'. It was published in The Musical Times in 1911 - over a century ago. The author, Frederick Kitchener (himself a pianist), complained that piano recitals had become far too numerous, and that...
Last night I appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, discussing my latest book with broadcaster Kate Molleson (see picture of me turning away from the piano after playing one of the pieces we were talking about). Conversation turned to the idea of...
Our cat’s preferred brand of catfood has a disarming slogan: ‘As good as it looks’. The layers of meaning quiver in front of your eyes almost as much as the meaty jelly does when you spoon it out. Obviously, 'as good as it looks' is meant to put positive thoughts in...
After rejoicing that the BBC had improved its ‘Young Musician of the Year’ coverage so markedly in 2010, I had to grind my teeth with annoyance as I watched the ‘Eurovision Young Musicians 2010’ competition on BBC4 this evening. The young musicians were tremendous,...
I was in Provence in the south of France last week and visited the Abbey of Silvacane, founded by the Cistercians in the late 12th century but long since abandoned. I thought it one of the loveliest churches I’ve seen. The church, cloister, garden, chapter house,...
I didn’t manage to catch many of the programmes charting the progress of BBC Young Musician of the Year 2010, but I’m proud to say that I did pick out the eventual winner, 16-year-old pianist Lara Omeroglu, when she first appeared in a keyboard category final. Not...
My remarks about the red daisies which bent, but did not break as the lawn mower passed by, have caused some interesting correspondence. People have pointed out that several old civilisations realised the wisdom of bending in order to avoid breaking. A friend tells...
Listening to a jazz radio station as we made dinner, I was surprised to hear the announcer describe every track as ‘a song’, even though the programme was a sequence of purely instrumental tracks. ‘What’s your next song?’ he kept saying to his guest, who’d reply...
Unusual flowers have appeared in our little lawn this year. Violets, which we’ve never seen in the garden before, and daisies which are bright pink or deep red (see photo). When it was time to mow the lawn, we sorrowfully bade them farewell. The lawn was also full of...
I’ve just finished reading ‘Julie and Julia’, an entertaining account of Julie Powell’s year spent cooking her way through Julia Child’s 1961 ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’, the book which famously opened the American public’s eyes to the art and style of...
Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday, dear website, Happy birthday to you! This blog 'went live' one year ago today. To mark the occasion, what better than a photo of the cherry blossom which has just come out in the garden? The first...
We attended a funeral in a small church this week. As we sat waiting for the service to begin, an organist was stumbling through some well-known hymns, their outlines blurred by a haze of wrong notes. Though I tell myself to lighten up, I find I’m very impatient...
Like most other people in Britain I've been relishing the sudden quietness resulting from the closure of our airspace because of a drifting cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland. On Saturday I sat in the garden for ages, because it felt so special to be sitting under...
My piano tuner asks whether I'm happy to keep my piano at the usual pitch, A=440. Yes. Why wouldn’t I be? Well, he says, some British orchestras are now asking for pianos to be tuned at A=442 Hz. Now that there’s so much musical traffic between countries, we’re under...