Blog
I’ve been writing this blog since 2009, but there still seem to be plenty of interesting topics to mull over. You can subscribe (it’s free) to follow the blog by email – each new post will pop into your inbox.
The imaginary concert hall at the end of the street
A friend and I have been discussing the career of a mutual friend who died recently. He was a fabulous musician who wasn't as well known as he should have been. Writers and visual artists can stay put in the place where they choose to live, and create their work...
Get The Latest Posts
Interested in what Susan has to say about all things classical music? Subscribe below and whenever Susan writes a new blog post you will be notified by email. Simple!
Watching the Van Cliburn piano competition
I have been keeping half an eye on the 2025 Van Cliburn piano competition in Texas, partly because when I was writing Women and the Piano I did a fair amount of research into the gender disparity one can see in the lists of piano competition prizewinners around the...
The difficulty of ending in tempo and without a pause
When you play a lot of Romantic piano music, you get used to the final notes being extended by a written pause. Composers like Chopin and Schumann often wanted the last chord to ring on gently (or triumphantly) while the mood of the piece hung in the air. We pianists...
Evgeny Kissin’s memoirs reviewed by me in the TLS
This week I tweeted a link to my TLS review of pianist Evgeny Kissin's book, 'Memoirs and Reflections'. Some readers told me that the Times paywall had barred them from reading the whole review, so for anyone didn't have a chance to buy the TLS, here is the review: 'A...
‘Animato’
For various reasons I've been to quite a few amateur performances recently. All were enjoyable, but I noticed something that was common to them all. It puzzled me, but I am not sure if I have simply forgotten what it is like to be a beginner or a non-professional....
Adjusting the piano stool for a concert
Adjusting the piano stool to the right height for a concert may seem the simplest thing. When I finish rehearsing in a concert hall, I always leave the piano stool adjusted to the right height. The more old-fashioned piano stools have wooden handles that are quite...
Cerne Abbas Music Festival is over for another year
I've just returned from the Gaudier Ensemble's annual festival at Cerne Abbas in Dorset (photo: the last piece of the final concert - the Dvorak piano quintet with (L to R) Marieke Blankestejn, Ulrike Janssen, me, Iris Juda and Henrik Brendstrup). One of the pleasures...
Major-key music for sad lyrics
Last night I watched a very interesting episode of a BBC Arena series about 'American Epic' music, beginning with music from the Appalachian region, featuring the Carter Family from West Virginia who in the late 1920s brought the folk music of the remote hills to the...
An afternoon of piano duets
Bob and I went to a big book sale today and came home with lots of 'four hand' duets to be played by two people sitting at one piano. We spent a chunk of the afternoon going through volumes of Dvorak Slavonic Dances, Brahms Hungarian Dances, and eventually a mad set...
EU music students still waiting for clarity on Brexit
In the course of my teaching and coaching activities I meet lots of young musicians who have come from other European countries to study in the UK. Britain's excellent music colleges and universities are extremely popular with Europeans, who often fund their studies...
Restless audiences vs acoustic instruments
This morning I was making soup and listening to Stephen Jardine's phone-in programme on BBC Radio Scotland, as I often do on a Friday morning. They were discussing whether parents should restrain their children from behaving badly in public places such as cinemas,...
Embarking on Beethoven’s opus 111 Sonata
It's been on my mind recently that I never properly learned Beethoven's final piano sonata. I've been performing and lecturing about the two penultimate sonatas, opus 109 and 110, but when someone asked if I'd like to do opus 111 as well, I had to admit that it isn't...
Seeking a female word for ‘virtuoso’
Yesterday we had a meeting of my piano club, a group of adult amateur pianists interested in developing their playing. The subject of 'virtuosos' and 'virtuoso technique' came up in relation to a piano piece with some fast, technically difficult 'show-off' passages....
Meeting up again with my first piano teacher
A lovely surprise awaited me when I played at the Brunton Theatre on Tuesday. Sitting in the front row was my first piano teacher, Gordon Lindsay ('Mr Lindsay', as I knew him). He taught me from when I began piano lessons at the age of seven until I was nine or ten....
How important is it to perform from memory?
I still have mixed feelings about playing from memory. I find that the memorising is the part of my concert preparation which takes the longest. Even after I've worked out exactly how I want to play something, there's a long extra stage which is mostly concerned with...