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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.
Jeremy Denk mentions my book in this week’s New Yorker
A kind reader in the US (thank you Diana) has alerted me to the fact that my book Women and the Piano is one of Jeremy Denk's choices in this week's New Yorker magazine. New York pianist and writer Jeremy Denk was asked to recommend a few books that deal with the...
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‘Search for a way to make it natural’
The other day I was listening to a pianist playing the fearsome second movement of the César Franch Sonata for violin and piano. The piano part is highly virtuosic and, apart from anything else, a very good proof of the fact that these big piano parts are not...
Music and longevity
I go to quite a lot of concerts given by amateur musicians - partly because there's a big amateur music scene in the city where I live, and partly because I often have friends and neighbours playing in the concerts. Of course my particular interest is piano. It dawned...
Lucky old snails
Coming back from a concert in Holland I thought, not for the first time, how strange it is that there’s only one little spot on the earth that is ‘my house’, and to which I have to make my way back from wherever I’ve been. In this case, first with a taxi ride, then a...
Not effortless after all
I was recently sent the score of Mendelssohn’s D minor piano trio, in a forthcoming edition of his first draft of the piece. I’d read about this first draft, but had never had the chance to see it until the editor of the new Leipzig edition, Dr Salome Reiser, kindly...
Lights Out
My second frustrating expedition this week. We decided to give ourselves the morning off and see the Van Gogh Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Even on a weekday morning it was packed. Standing on tiptoe, we had managed to see about a dozen early sketches over...
An equal music?
A brochure for the South Bank Centre’s ‘International Chamber Music Season 2010/11’ lands on the doormat. My trio has appeared in this series, and the plans are always of interest to me. But when I look at next season’s programmes, I notice disturbing signs of a...
City frustration
A disappointing evening. We had been invited to a lovely 'housewarming concert' on the other side of the city (I took this photo of the full moon as we set off in cheerful mood). After waiting for ages at our local tube station, we were told that because of a signal...
Reducing numbers
At this time of year in Richmond Park, I shudder when I see official notices warning visitors about the deer cull. The park is closed at certain times while its resident population of deer is ‘reduced’. It’s always a treat to see the park's different herds of deer,...
Visiting from the Elysian Fields
Someone asked me today whether my new book, Out of Silence, is a collection of my blog posts. It isn’t; the book was written a year before I had the idea of starting a website or a blog. I suppose the experience of writing ‘a pianist’s yearbook’ may have given me an...
Listening to Cortot
I’m practising Schumann’s wonderful set of piano pieces, Davidsbündlertänze, for a concert later this year. As usual, progress is unpredictable. Sometimes things move on, sometimes not. Feeling short of inspiration one day this week, I sat down to listen to a historic...
Olympian calm
I’ve been watching the Winter Olympics on TV and enjoying the interviews with leading athletes. Two American gold medallists, skier Lindsey Vonn and snowboarder Shaun White, have really stuck in my mind. They looked supremely relaxed and confident, and you could see...
‘The Cello Suites’
Today's Independent has my review of Eric Siblin's book, 'The Cello Suites'. Siblin, a former pop critic, describes how he fell in love unexpectedly with Bach's cello music and set himself to find out all he could about the composer, and about cellist Pablo Casals,...
Diapason magazine
A nice surprise today: Bob came back from a meeting with a magazine page brought along by a colleague. It was from the February issue of the leading French record magazine Diapason, one of whose editors had taken the new Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music as the...
Looking into the sun
The winter sun was striking low over the lake as I raised my tiny idiot-proof camera to take a picture of a terrier plunging into the icy water. (I mean that my camera is tiny and idiot-proof, not that it’s proof against tiny idiots, though of course that would be a...