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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.
My book comes out in the US today
I can't pretend to understand why it takes six weeks for a book published in the UK to come out in the US, but of course there are many practical issues to do with book publishing that I've never had much to do with. I imagine boxes of books slowly crossing the...
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Scotsman magazine article about Women and the Piano
Today's Scotsman magazine (20 April 2024) has an article by music critic David Kettle about my book Women and the Piano. As the online version is behind a paywall on the The Scotsman website, I thought I'd quote it here: 'The irony is inescapable. I’m a middle-aged,...
Signing books at Waterstones
Yesterday I signed a few books at the big Waterstones in Princes Street. For anyone outside the UK, Waterstones is a popular bookstore with branches nationwide and (in this case) a popular coffee shop on the top floor, with great views of Edinburgh Castle. Several...
A sore finger
For the last month or so I’ve had a wart on the tip of my left index finger. A wart! I’ve never had one before. I think I had associated them with ghastly mediaeval illustrations, or fairytales in which unpleasant things get inflicted by magic on evil-doers. Anyway,...
Chop(in)sticks
At the weekend, several newspapers carried photos of thieves in China using chopsticks to pick people’s pockets as they browsed market stalls. The chopsticks are used essentially to make the thief’s fingers much longer and thinner – a sort of variant on the Edward...
Instrumental music in Italy
I’ve been in Italy for a few days. One evening I went to a concert in the courtyard of a lovely historic building in Bologna. The Italians are so lucky to have so many of these theatrical spaces and the climate which makes it possible to sit there, in the balmy air,...
Distractions
A friend was telling me about a piano recital he attended last year in the Wigmore Hall. During a Beethoven sonata, members of the audience were distracted by a low buzzing noise emanating from somewhere in the room, and judging by the pianist's increasingly cross...
Not polite to listen
I practise the piano in a room at the front of the house. People walk past in the street all the time, and I’ve always been amazed at how few of them turn their heads in the direction of the sound, or appear to notice it at all. I mentioned this recently to a concert...
Warts-and-all recordings
A thoughtful letter today from a reader about recordings. He’s noticed that musicians often say they dislike the manicured, edited-to-within-an-inch-of-their-lives recordings of today, and prefer the more ‘natural’, warts-and-all approach of the earlier twentieth...
Peyro Clabado
During lunch in a tiny village in the forests of Le Sidobre, in Languedoc, we got into conversation with an elderly lady who told us that she spoke Occitan as a child, before she was required to learn French. At our request, she spoke some Occitan to us, the only time...
Garlic as artistic medium
An exhibition of artistic sculptures based on pink garlic – how could I resist when I saw the poster outside the tourist office in Lautrec? Pink garlic is a local speciality, but despite its undoubted charms it didn't seem a promising material for sculpture. I...
Life imitates Debussy
The Ambialet piano course ended last night with concerts by the participants (see some of them in the photo). It never ceases to amaze me how people manage to raise their game in these circumstances, even though most of them find it a nerve-racking experience and...
Choosing to be a musician
An interesting conversation at lunch today about choosing music as a career despite the misgivings of one’s parents. Everyone at the summer school had had some form of The Conversation about whether music was an acceptable profession. Many recalled that they were...
‘Pianistes’
I'm teaching on a lovely summer course for pianists in the south of France. As I write, people are practising in the rooms all around me - everything from Schumann's Fantasy to Beethoven's opus 110, Debussy Preludes and Liszt's Vallée d'Obermann. Put together, we...
Kremer’s conscience
Violinist Gidon Kremer has, I hope, set the cat among the pigeons with his decision to pull out of the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. His letter of explanation is long and somewhat rambling, but perhaps he did not have the time to make it shorter. In any case, his...