Steven Isserlis

Now, I know I’ve written about this before, but Facebook posts have a bad habit of sliding quickly into obscurity. And this rant is inspired, as I suspect the previous one on the same subject was, by my annual task of listening to audition tapes for my course at Prussia Cove, Cornwall. Read more…

(I know I’ve written about this before; but every so often – especially listening to unstructured performances – I get the urge to rant about it. If it’s too boring, you’re welcome not to read on!) Read more…

Yet another farewell – this time to someone who was not himself a practising musician, but who was passionate about music, and would, I think, have appreciated being included in what has, alas, become something of a verbal cemetery for musicians. Read more…

Time for a rant – and perhaps one that won’t be to everybody’s taste; but it’s a great relief to be writing again about (a musician’s) life, rather than another farewell – there have been far too many of those recently… Read more…

A personal memoir on his centenary: I first became aware of the genius of Daniil Shafran when I was about 12 years old. My teacher, Jane Cowan, gave a talk about great cellists; towards the end of the evening, she played an excerpt from (I believe) Shafran’s recording of Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata with Lydia Pecherskaya. […] Read more…

All my (fairly) recent posts seem to have been obituaries; so I’m delighted to be able to write something celebratory for a change. Paavo Järvi is 60! And – though I don’t want him to read this, because I don’t want it to go to his head – this is a birthday worth celebrating. Read more…

So – another angel from the music world has left us, this time at a ridiculously, tragically young age. Lars Vogt was larger than life in so many ways. He was tall and strongly built – although somehow more cuddly than imposing; his voice was loud, his laugh even louder – often startlingly so, in […] Read more…

I really hoped that I wouldn’t have to write any ‘in memoriam’ articles for a bit; but alas – beloved, wonderful, adorable Radu Lupu has died. One of my all-time favourite people, as well as one of the very greatest musicians I have ever heard. Read more…

…when to take a composer literally?

Even the question itself is problematic. Say that a composer marks a pianissimo, or an accent – what exactly IS a pianissimo, or an accent? So what is ‘taking literally’? Read more…

And now for something sillier… Sorry, perhaps it’s insensitive at this terrible time to complain about such trivial things; but I wrote this account of my experience at the airport yesterday for friends – and one of them suggested that I share the account on this page. So that’s what I’m doing, in the hope that some of you may find it amusing (not that I did at the time!): Read more…