I have had a lovely day playing chamber music with two fine musicians I met last year at Prussia Cove during the IMS ‘open chamber music seminar’  – Bogdan Bozovic and Anita Leuzinger. They flew in specially from Switzerland. Together with Erich Höbarth we’re doing a couple of fundraising concerts for Prussia Cove this week (sold out, I’m glad to say).

Our rehearsal breaks today were more luxurious than usual because of Anita’s delicious home-made cookies and Bogdan’s box of Swiss chocolates. We took them out into the garden, where it was just warm enough to sit out for a few minutes. It’s hard to believe that Midsummer Day falls later this week. Anita says that in Basel the weather has gone suddenly from winter to summer with scarcely a hint of spring in between. I am not sure what season we are in here – not summer, anyway.

It’s always interesting playing pieces you know well with people who know them well too, but from playing them with other people. You immediately realise you’ve formed habits you were hardly aware of – you find yourself looking round, waiting for someone to do this or that, which they don’t do because they were never part of a previous discussion where this or that was agreed upon. It is rather pleasant to catch oneself in the act of repeating an old ‘stage instruction’ and then realising that it doesn’t apply here and that one could do something different. It’s also quite fun to see someone else expecting you to do something which you don’t do. Sometimes I can guess from their body language what they were expecting, sometimes not. ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’, etc.