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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.
Schubert’s early piano sonatas
I've been playing through Schubert's piano sonatas, starting with the early ones, which I admit I don't know very well. Like most people, I'm much more familiar with the late sonatas, considered some of his finest works. The sonatas I've played so far were written in...
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50 Kingswomen photos now installed in their new home in the College
When I was in Cambridge recently I went to see the photos taken last year by photographer Jooney Woodward to mark fifty years of women undergraduates at King's College Cambridge. Last time I saw these photos, in June 2023, they were in the Chapel (I wrote about the...
Mr Woods, a friend of Burns
The other day when I was a little early for a meeting I climbed the steps to the Old Calton Burial Ground (see photo) to go and look at the monument to the philosopher David Hume. It's a kind of empty stone cylinder into which the sunlight shines, and is always...
Brain patterns
I was fascinated to read recently about an experiment to find out what goes on in the brain of actors when they pretend to be other people. Actress Fiona Shaw volunteered to recapitulate her celebrated performance of TS Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ while lying motionless...
The changing popularity of accents
Here are Eva Hoffman, Janice Galloway and me at the Royal Festival Hall discussing what it’s like to write about music and musicians. Janice got us all laughing, and it turned into a fun evening. We three speakers all said something about why we wanted to write about...
Playing from memory
On Saturday night I gave a solo recital in Cambridge. It was unexpectedly enjoyable because of the audience’s warm response. Even in this season of coughs and colds, they kept utterly silent while I was playing (which has not always been the case elsewhere this...
Three women writers on music
I’m looking forward to taking part in a literature event at the South Bank on Monday evening at 7.45pm. The novelist Eva Hoffman has invited fellow novelist Janice Galloway and me to join her in a discussion of what it’s like to write about music. I don’t really know...
Our Italian hero
This photo shows me outside the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, standing beside the poster for the Florestan Trio’s three concerts. On the day after the concerts, Bob and I caught the old tram up the hill of the Alfama district to visit the castle. While we were...
Trumpet, my own, blowing
When I got back from Lisbon this afternoon, I looked at my website statistics and saw that an awful lot of people had looked at the website on Saturday while I was away. I realised later that it must have been because of the Guardian’s heart-warming review that day of...
Catering van fantasies
Bob and I went for a walk on Wimbledon Common. A film crew must have been working nearby, because several of their vans were parked there. Outside the catering van, a large table had been set up in the open air, beautifully laid with plates of cakes and muffins, pots...
Watkins Sandwich
A memorable evening last night at Wigmore Hall. We’ve played in a few less-than-ideal acoustics recently (some too resonant, some too dry) so it was a real pleasure to hear the sound ringing through the air of the Wigmore Hall. Such an acoustic actually makes the...
In the lamplight
We went to Cambridge to play a concert in Peterhouse, the oldest and smallest of Cambridge University’s colleges. Our travel plans had gone awry, and we arrived an hour late and a bit agitated. Dusk was falling, and by the time we finished our rehearsal it was dark....
Bushes and briars
The critics of Gramophone magazine have been choosing their favourite discs of the year for the December issue, and Peter Quantrill has chosen the Florestan Trio's latest disc, of Haydn Trios (volume 2), as his personal favourite of 2009. He writes: 'I can't remember...
Territorial display
We were rehearsing this week in the home of a friend who keeps a pet canary in a cage in the kitchen. The canary was silent as we arrived and sat round the table, chatting and drinking coffee. But as soon as we went next door, picked up our instruments and started to...
Beethoven’s questions
For the past few days the trio has been rehearsing intensively. Over the next ten days we have two concerts at the Bath Mozartfest, a fundraising concert and dinner for the Florestan Trust, a concert at the University of Cambridge, a concert in the Wigmore Hall (with...