Last week I was in Vienna for a few days of Easter holiday. We managed to pack in lots of music-related things: a concert at the Musikverein, an evening at the State Opera, a visit to one of Mozart's apartments, a visit to Haydn's house in what was the village of...
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I'm preparing for a solo recital at Kettle's Yard museum in Cambridge on November 24th. Kettle's Yard is a beautiful little museum which began in the 1950s as a personal art collection by Jim Ede, who used his own house as the display venue. It was the first gallery I...
I've been reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Memories and Portraits, published in 1887. RLS, as he's often referred to, is famous for Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and a few others, though in my local library the collected edition...
I've been in Scotland, giving a talk and masterclass at the Edinburgh Society of Musicians, founded in 1887. Their meetings take place in an fascinating house now shared by several of the city's musical societies. The house was built in the late 19th century, and...
To Evensong at King's College, Cambridge. At this time of year it is quite dark when the service begins at 5.30pm. As the sound of the choir floats upwards, it seems to draw the eye up to the beautiful fan vaulting (see photo). I never get tired of hearing how subtly...
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...
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...
The final concert of the Gaudier Ensemble's Cerne Abbas Music Festival, in which I took part, featured one of my favourite pieces of chamber music, the Clarinet Quintet of Mozart. There was a surprise this time. Clarinettist Richard Hosford has an instrument which he...
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...
Here I am in Paris, sitting on top of the concert hall where the trio made its Paris debut this week in a concert broadcast live by Radio France Musique. I'm sitting by IM Pei's celebrated glass pyramid in the courtyard of the Musée du Louvre. Underneath the pyramid...
Coming back from a concert in Holland I thought, not for the first time, how strange it is that there’s only one little spot on the earth that is ‘my house’, and to which I have to make my way back from wherever I’ve been. In this case, first with a taxi ride, then a...
A disappointing evening. We had been invited to a lovely 'housewarming concert' on the other side of the city (I took this photo of the full moon as we set off in cheerful mood). After waiting for ages at our local tube station, we were told that because of a signal...
The winter sun was striking low over the lake as I raised my tiny idiot-proof camera to take a picture of a terrier plunging into the icy water. (I mean that my camera is tiny and idiot-proof, not that it’s proof against tiny idiots, though of course that would be a...
I’m supposed to be on a train to the north of England at the moment to perform with the trio at Cockermouth Music Society this evening. But last night our cellist, Richard, phoned to say that he had come down with the winter vomiting bug. There was no way he could...
Sometimes the old saying, 'every cloud has a silver lining', seems true. Today my trio was due to start making a record, at a studio in a rural location near the Welsh border. It’s a good four hours’ drive from my house at the best of times. We only agreed to go so...