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...
Passing the time between a rehearsal and a concert, Bob and I walk along Wigmore Street. We spot a shop selling all kinds of accessories to do with wine drinking. We pop in for some vacuum corks. Inside the shop is a display of luxurious wine glasses: hand-blown,...
Bob and I stopped work a bit early and drove to Richmond Park to walk in the Isabella Plantation, a large enclosed garden within the park. The first time I ever saw the Isabella Plantation in springtime, someone had tipped me off that I shouldn't miss the sight of it...
The BBC's poetry season included a sweet programme last night about Wordsworth's poem ‘Lines Composed Upon Westminster Bridge'. Presenter and poet Owen Sheers shared his lovely insight that the poem has become more, not less resonant over the years. The surprise of...
A few days ago I wrote about our cat dragging her water bowl around the kitchen floor. It's a topic I never thought I would mention again. However, last night when we were giving the cat a bit of supper, we suddenly noticed that her pottery drinking bowl had gone. It...
We went to the Tara Arts Centre in Wandsworth to see ‘People's Romeo', a delightful cross-cultural production re-telling Shakespeare's ‘Romeo and Juliet' in a simplified form, as might be used by travelling actors in a Bengali market-place. The performance took place...
We went to the Orange Tree Theatre to see the premiere of a play, ‘The Story of Vasco', translated and adapted by Ted Hughes from an original play by Lebanese writer Georges Schehadé. Hughes' adaptation had never before been performed in its entirety; the director had...
Our record producer Andrew Keener sends his ‘suggested version' of the trio's newest Haydn disc in the post. He has worked through all the material we recorded over three days in the studio, stitching together his preferred versions of the takes. Now it's for the...
In the Mozart exhibition in Salzburg I learned some new things about his sister, Nannerl. I knew that Nannerl played the piano too - partly because there's a famous painting of the two of them side by side at the piano, playing duets - but I hadn't realised that when...
I've just been to Salzburg to play a concert in the Mozarteum with the Gaudier Ensemble. Leaving London in spring weather, it was startling to find ourselves walking through the Mirabell Gardens a few hours later in heavy snow. How strange travel is! One minute you're...
Went to a jazz gig performed by a group called ‘Way Out West', a collective of about twenty jazz musicians who live in this part of London. Seven of them were there on the night, plus two singers out of the three who were advertised. They explained that ‘Way Out West'...
I went to the Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House recently to hear a double bill of contemporary operas. Looking around the audience of several hundred, it struck me that I didn't recognise a single person, even though I've been going to concerts and playing...
Every year I feel I have to update my wardrobe of concert clothes, which is a pain because each season I have less and less of a clear idea of how I should look. But what I wear has always been noticed by people in the audience, who comment on it enough to make me...