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.
Tasting notes
Bob went to the wine shop and returned with a few bottles and a page of 'tasting notes' supplied by the shop. As usual I was charmed by the poetic way that wine producers describe their products. 'Notes of ripe, dark fruit, tobacco, chocolate and spice'. 'Delicate...
Search the Blog
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!
Wordsworth windows
On Wednesday I played a solo recital in Ambleside Church as part of the Lake District Summer Music festival. My programme contained six pieces by the female pianist-composers whose work I have been performing in the past couple of years. In the context, I was touched...
Playing music in a cherry tree
An old friend of mine, a fellow musician, wrote to tell me about a lovely dream he had had. He, I and another musician friend were sitting in the branches of a cherry tree playing music together. 'The cherries were the notes!' he said. He didn't say what instrument I...
Bavarian Radio
An old friend writes from Switzerland to tell me that he was glancing through the newspaper this morning when his eye fell on the radio schedules, and he saw that there was to be a broadcast about me this evening on Bavarian Radio. I'm today's focus in their...
City blues
Yesterday I was at the Guildhall School of Music. The Guildhall School must have the most thoroughly urban location of any of the London music colleges, secreted as it is within a forest of City skyscrapers so closely packed and so overwhelmingly monochrome that the...
The red pencil
Winter weather has suddenly arrived in London. There is ice on the smaller ponds frost on the bushes, and low winter sunshine striking dramatically through the trees. This week Erich Hoebarth and I - me in London and him in Vienna - are trying to go through all the...
‘One of the best books of 2012’
My book 'Out of Silence', in the Japanese translation by Noriko Ogawa, has just been chosen by 'Chopin' magazine in Japan as one of the best books of 2012. It's been such a pleasure to correspond with my various Japanese editors and readers, some of whom have sent me...
Mozartfest/Sunday Times review
'At the Guildhall [during the Bath Mozartfest], pianist Susan Tomes joined forces with the Viennese fiddler Erich Hoebarth for an all-Mozart programme of four sonatas for 'fortepiano with violin accompaniment' and one of his most significant fragments, Fantasia in C...
Cormorants
A group of cormorants arrived on our local pond this week. They stood drying their wings in the sun, monopolising a floating platform which had been abandoned in a hurry by the smaller, meeker birds who usually potter about on it. Close up, cormorants look like...
Changing loyalties
We took our Viennese visitor to Richmond Park for a walk in the winter sunshine. He was enchanted to see the deer roaming freely in the park, quite close at hand (see photo). While we were watching this group of deer, we witnessed a 'raid' by another stag. He ran up...
Bath Mozartfest tomorrow
Erich Höbarth and I are travelling down to Bath today to prepare for our concert in the Mozartfest on Saturday morning. Our programme is all of Mozart, interspersing duo sonatas with piano solos, but it's a different programme to the all-Mozart one we played in the...
Sum of the parts
In a second-hand bookstore last week I came across the cello part of Beethoven's late string quartets. Just the cello part - the other parts were missing. It was cheap, and I bought it out of curiosity. Looking through it when I got home, I was struck by how...
Marryat Chamber Music
I have been coaching on the Marryat Chamber Music autumn course, which ended last night with a wonderful concert (see photo). I find it immensely cheering that such talented, accomplished young musicians obviously love chamber music so much and are determined to make...
Season of mists and …
In our tiny vegetable patch we (when I say 'we', I mean Bob) have managed for the first time to grow a little crop of butternut squash. There are five or six of them, plus a mysterious green marrow-like interloper growing alongside, perhaps a rogue seed from the pack....
More Japanese reviews
More reviews of my book 'Out of Silence', translated into Japanese by Noriko Ogawa, have arrived from Tokyo. I must say these Japanese reviews are absolutely my favourites so far. Their flavour suggests Noriko was right when she said that Japanese people would be on...