Steven Isserlis

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…

It’s been a long time since I wrote about music for this page; so I thought I’d try to do so now – so much more enjoyable than writing yet another ‘in memoriam’… Read more…

After I’d last written a post for this page – a long time ago now – I told myself that the next article would be about music, not another ‘in memoriam’. And yet here I am, with another tragic loss of a very, very special person to whom I feel I must say farewell, on behalf of myself and of everyone associated with IMS Prussia Cove. Read more…