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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.
Listening bars
In today's Guardian I was reading about the Japanese tradition of 'listening bars', where customers have 'a deep, beautiful, reverential attitude to listening to music'. High-end sound systems, sometimes dominating a whole wall, convey every layer of a recorded album...
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Looking over the list of books I read this year
On the last day of the year I have been looking through the list of books I read during the year. This year I seem to have read 36 books. I used to read books from the library, but the pandemic (when libraries were closed for ages) trained me out of that habit, and...
‘Women and the Piano’ wins a Presto Music award
At last night's Presto Music Awards, my book Women and the Piano was a Book of the Year. I'm very happy to have this recognition of a book that means a lot to me. Thanks again to Yale University Press for commissioning it.
Graz prizewinners
Here are all the winners of the Graz Competition on stage at their Gala Concert on Thursday evening. Two piano trios, three Lieder partnerships of singer and pianist, and three string quartets (not all of whom are visible in the photo). For details of who won what,...
Jury arithmetic
The final of the Graz competition ended last night with no first prize being awarded. We had been following jury rules which obliged us to give our scores anonymously, and to refrain from discussing the competitors with one another. Consequently the result of every...
Graz trio final tomorrow
We have now arrived at six finalists for the piano trio competition in Graz. Each group has to play a contemporary work, plus one of Schubert's late, great trios in the Final on Tuesday. This will be the first time I have ever had to sit and listen to six consecutive...
‘Franz Schubert and modern music’
I'm in Graz, Austria, on the jury of a piano trio competition, 'Franz Schubert and modern music'. Graz is a beautiful city and even more so in the snow. The competition has several parallel categories: piano trio, string quartet and Lieder. The idea behind it is that...
More on Mayerl
Thanks, everyone, for your feedback about Billy Mayerl. Thank you also to those who opened my eyes to 'wave forms' and YouTube channels and iTunes issues, and to options for self-publishing one's recordings that I hadn't known about. Food for thought! I'll definitely...
Attenborough’s ‘surprising luxury’
This morning we listened to a delightful edition of 'Desert Island Discs' featuring Sir David Attenborough, irresistible as always. What a lovely voice he has! 'Desert Island Discs' is a long-running radio series in which each 'castaway' chooses the eight records...
Billy Mayerl piano music recording project
Some years ago I recorded 'Loose Elbows', a CD of Billy Mayerl's piano music. It features some of the sparkling, good-humoured pieces Billy wrote when he was the celebrated pianist at the Savoy Hotel in London in the 1920s and 30s. My disc has been in and out of print...
Listening on computer speakers
An intriguing article in the Guardian this week about The Chemical Brothers. They’re thoughtful and interesting, but some of their comments about music and audiences were startling for me, because they showed such a different facet of the music world. "I don't really...
Not showing off
Went to a lovely concert given by a group of distinguished European string players in memory of the Hungarian violinist Sandor Vegh, whose centenary falls this year. Sandor Vegh founded the International Musicians' Seminars in Prussia Cove, an inspiration to many of...
‘The Artist’
As an antidote to all the stress of last week, we went to see The Artist, the French film which is now starting to win all kinds of awards. I had read of its producer's difficulties in persuading people to back his eccentric idea of making a silent, black-and-white...
Florestan Trio reviews
Here are a couple of reviews of the Florestan Trio's Beethoven trio concerts in the Wigmore Hall this week. The series came to a memorable close on 13 January with a standing ovation from the Wigmore audience. The Independent five-star review of the first concert The...
Exit, pursued by a waiter
On the day after the first of the Florestan Trio's Beethoven Cycle concerts in the Wigmore Hall on Friday, a kind member of the audience invited me to lunch in Le Caprice, a lovely restaurant to which I had never been before. The bread basket on our table contained a...