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.
A podcast for the ‘Brainland’ series
I have done an interview for the 'Brainland' podcast, a series 'where neuroscience, the arts and humanities mingle'. An old college friend, doctor and cellist Steve Brown, interviewed me about how I got started in music, how I got into chamber music, what motivates...
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Edinburgh Book Festival programme announced
The Edinburgh Book Festival has just announced its programme for this summer. I will be taking part on Sunday 11 August at 6.45pm, talking to Kate Molleson about my book Women and the Piano. I'm delighted to be included in this very popular festival. This year the...
La Puerta del Vino
Debussy's Prelude 'La Puerta del Vino', from his second book of Preludes for piano (written 1912-13), has been one of my favourites for a long time. I've always loved its evocation of harsh guitar music, flamenco singing and the rhythms of the habañera. Long ago I...
Anton Stadler’s clarinet
The final concert of the Gaudier Ensemble's Cerne Abbas Music Festival, in which I took part, featured one of my favourite pieces of chamber music, the Clarinet Quintet of Mozart. There was a surprise this time. Clarinettist Richard Hosford has an instrument which he...
Viva Piazzolla
I’ve been rehearsing tangos by Astor Piazzolla for a late-night concert tonight. As I don’t play this kind of music very often (more’s the pity), I got in the mood by listening to a number of recordings by Piazzolla himself. Without the sound of a genuine Argentinian...
The fall of the phrases
I've always been fascinated by Ravel's remark, when a friend asked how he was getting on with composing his Piano Trio, that he had finished it, and all he needed to do was to invent the themes. This seems to indicate that the structure and the inner shapes must have...
Knowing the roads
Chatting with a friend about how long a certain car journey would take, I guessed that it would take x hours, and my friend replied, ‘Well, it only takes me y hours, but then I know the roads, so I whiz along.’ People often say that kind of thing, and I never really...
Not telling a story
This morning I was coaching a very nice piano trio. We were talking about those ‘abstract’ works of Beethoven where the composer builds his material out of little musical ‘cells’ rather than obvious melodies and counter-melodies. Such works are sometimes more...
Russian Crescendo
We enjoyed listening on television to Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto played at the Proms by the excellent pianist Simon Trpceski. It’s strange how those famous themes, which once sounded slightly hackneyed to me, no longer seem that way and instead sound full of...
The Proms: live v. televised
We went to the First Night of the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall on Friday. Thanks to kind friends who invited us, we had wonderful seats and good company. The Albert Hall was packed full of enthusiastic listeners plus the 500 performers needed for Mahler's Eighth...
Independent review of new music books
Today's Independent newspaper has a review of new books on music, with several paragraphs devoted to mine. Click here if you'd like to read the article by the Independent's literary editor Boyd Tonkin.
Win a free copy of Out of Silence
BBC Music Magazine is giving away eight copies of my book 'Out of Silence'. To enter the draw, all you have to do is answer the question: of which trio is Susan Tomes the pianist? The answer's easy to find on this website. The draw closes on the 9th August, so if...
The Oldie magazine review
Richard Osborne devotes a large part of his Music column in 'The Oldie' magazine (Summer 2010) to my new book. As I don't have a picture of the magazine I've chosen instead an illustration of an real oldie, one of the 700-year-old oaks in Richmond Park. Richard...
So few notes
A lovely moment during the BBC radio programme 'Desert Island Discs' with 90-year-old Dame Fanny Waterman, founder of the Leeds International Piano Competition. Dame Fanny recalled an evening some decades ago when the composer and pianist Benjamin Britten was in her...
Aging rockers
An uncomfortable experience watching a TV programme about ‘aging rockers’. Rock musicians were interviewed about the experience of growing older, especially in the light of the fact that their teenage lyrics were dismissive of this possibility. I cringed through a...