"Modern Music"

Yesterday I attended a lecture-recital on the piano music of Haydn given by Andras Schiff at the Wigmore Hall. He played quite a lot of the music (an early Capriccio in C major, F minor Fantasie, the last Sonata (E flat major)) and talked us through the harmonic movement, pointing out what harmonies were a surprise and in what way. It was very gentle and quite amusing for a typical Wigmore audience which is of course very music-loving and intelligent as well as, it has to be admitted, rather conservative.

I was disappointed by one of his comments, which was directed against "modern music". He was expounding the virtues of the wonderful way Haydn returns to the home key after all his excursions and surprise moves in the wrong direction, and said that's the thing that bothers him about contemporary music - that it never arrives home after it has begun. It wasn't a terrible comment, but I wasn't too impressed by it, and certainly not by the way he knew he could say that to this audience and be sure they would go along with him, and even find it amusing.

Do you think one day we will be able to have music in concert halls?

Yes, just music - sounds that mean things. Not "our music not yours" or "of course this music is some of the greatest ever composed (because it has existed for hundreds of years and hasn't hurt anybody since then)".

It's an interesting point that the very conservative repertoire often is some of the greatest music ever composed (it seems to me) but there are certainly plenty of gaps where other great music has been omitted, and where living composers do not have any comfortable place. Or at least the ones with the comfortable place are just lying around in comfort, not writing anything of any note.

England is unusual because it has a very conservative part which, while it inhibits change, succeeds in preserving (conserving) some things that, if we didn't have them, we would be much the poorer for that. So even though I don't like these remarks about "Listen to all the wrong notes! How silly it sounds" and so on, I don't actually mind too much. But one day they will appreciate that you can see in all directions out of the windows of your house, not only the directions you already know about.

There is great music now, and has been since the last officially great music was written (when was that, 1910 or 20? And even a lot of that is sometimes considered a bit modern, such as Ravel). I don't mind at all that we are taking it slow with the new repertoire choices. We could have a fast-moving all-changing society and it might not be long before we lose the good parts.

Yes, at the Wigmore hall you, like Volvic mineral water, must be filtered through volcanic sand for 15 years until you reach the required level of purity. Except it's more than 15 years.

But if we can stand the test of time, then we can wait a few years for the music-lovers.

Don't be scared, audience! It's just that we have some more things you can love.

Today at the ROH

This morning, thanks to a friend of Gabriel, I attended the final dress rehearsal of Verdi's Il trovatore ("The Troubadour") at the Royal Opera House. It was first performed there on 10 May 1855, eight days after its world première in New York - that's 154 years ago! It's still going strong.

Conducted by Carlo Rizzi, directed by Elijah Moshinsky, the cast included Roberto Alagna! (Manrico) and Dmitri Hvorostovsky! (Count di Luna) as well as excellent performances from people I did not know previously, particularly Sondra Radvanovsky as Leonora with some super pianissimo high notes and Małgorzata Walewska's well-characterised Azucena, who eerily and ambiguously inhabited the vocal range between female and male.

I had photographers in front of me but other than that it was the strongest cast I have seen in an opera, and my seat was in the sixth row!

I was lucky to see it.

Verdi is extremely good at his job. (He still is).

Just as the lighting designer (Mike Gunning) illuminates certain important areas, Verdi points out certain areas of the voices, supporting them and reinforcing their lines as if the orchestra is the canvas supporting the colour. The orchestra is always contributing to the feeling, but it's in such a subtle way because often the propelling phrases are so archetypically musical that you don't notice they are there. Not like a melody that you will remember and sing yourself, but like little cells of notes that are almost pre-musical.

Verdi supports the voices in this way, but most of all he supports the drama.

That is his achievement.

(And some good ensemble pieces with three or four things being sung at the same time!)

Thank you Mr. Verdi.

Thank you all!

Performances

Performances of my music are quite rare. Though not yet extinct!

So it surprises me that people are playing my music and not telling me about it.

There is a long piano piece by me, called "Good Night!" (named after a Janáček piece from "On an Overgrown Path"). I think it has been played in Japan by a pianist called Kentaro Noda. But I didn't hear for sure.

And now the PRS are telling me it was played in the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, on 17th June 2007.

Who did it? Any ideas?

By the way, classical music royalties are now very low indeed. I calculate that in order to get a reasonable amount of money from performances, at the current rate of pay each piano piece would have to last for 20 hours! And that's not even making a living out of it!

I am afraid it is true! You do a lot better in film and TV. But it's probably right, because lots of people "consume" TV music, and not a lot go to concerts. So what can I say?

Back to Normal

Well I've finished the other kind of work (being an accompanist) for the moment - it's back to normal now. That's good! I don't like playing things I haven't completely learned (and completely learning something takes a long time; much longer than is available under those circumstances) so I will get on with completely learning things!

You get some funny responses sometimes from performances. These run from almost complete silence (I'm talking about meeting people afterwards; in the performance the audience always claps at least!) to the weeping and adulation of the Russians (I've never experienced that but I understand it is a real phenomenon). So you can't make any judgements based on that. Unfortunately it's hard to know exactly how one is playing. But some sense of success or failure must exist so that's what we have to go on. I guess!

Now what shall I do next?

The Language of Music

It's hard to explain impossible things to you.

But the reason one person writes to another is that there is something he needs to tell that person, something which he thinks the other person doesn't know. The only problem is that when a fact is an unknown fact, it is hard to understand. In fact it may be impossible to understand - it will take a lot of problems and hard work to finally see what it was. Sometimes, indeed, you can't just tell someone the answer they need, because they won't understand without actually discovering the answer for themselves. That's why we have symbols like mazes and spirals. Labyrinths were popular in ancient art. Popularity comes when something resonates with many people, no matter what the intention behind it. In this case, the Labyrinth is a journey you must follow until it is solved - there is not normally a short way through.

The Labyrinth is a part of the ear, too.

When we hear music we can identify patterns. Without them, it would probably be noise. But as long as we can fit the sound to a pattern we feel there is some sense behind it. We keep creating possible patterns to fit to the stimulus, trying to find a match for one or more templates that we have stored, or creating a new one based on the incoming material. So although I said we try to find a fit, really we are creating the pattern that we hear. The sound is what it is, but the pattern is our own. Listen to noise and see how soon you start to hear words. They may not be there as such, but we are looking (listening) for them.

So we may find there is sense at the first hearing of a piece of music. That depends on what experience we have. Whatever the case, we will try and we will find something. But you might end up saying, no, I just couldn't make anything of it. Like the ladies in the Wigmore Hall who laughed at the 'wrong notes' in a Webern piece - which was written in 1899! I was there, you can believe me.

There are "dissonant" cases where the music is too different from the listener's internal templates and antagonism results. Of course, the dissonance is not necessarily a question of some dissonance in the music's harmonic idiom - I was referring to the dissonance between what they are hearing and what they might expect to make sense, or what they have heard before and got used to. But on the whole the music one hears is mostly more or less familiar - you tend to recognise it as music, and more particularly as "our music". Statistically we are more likely to hear music we already recognise, of course - because statistically we will stay in more or less the same place.

Recognition comes then, somewhat or a lot. You can tell there is a loud bit coming up because it starts getting louder. It started quiet so you know it will be quiet for a bit. Or after learning a bit more, you know that if it is quiet, it might stay quiet or might SUDDENLY get loud. You start to learn what the options might be. And if you know a bit about music you might here where the harmony is going. You might recognise the sort of "subject" the composer is thinking of. Of course there is not a subject, it is music not words, but there are associations and special patterns we notice. It might be something clear like the sound of a bird (the cuckoo in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony) or something ambiguous like the sound of water or wind in a Schubert song. It might be a topic like "military" (Chopin Polonaise) or "exotic" (Debussy Pagodas) or "academic" (Handelian fugue in Mozart or Beethoven). Whatever it is, you learn, and then finally you understand. It can take repeated hearings to get there though - although most do not try after the first attempt. And sometimes there is no attempt! (What are the chances of success there I wonder?)

All of these insights come with practise and understanding. Some come with learning and knowledge.

They say that a child's mind is a clear mind. They say a child will see the obvious when everyone else convinces themselves otherwise or trips themselves up in tangles of thought and blind guesses. That's why there is the famous story of The Emperor's New Clothes. Maybe it's funny, I don't know. I'm sure no-one believes it could ever really happen. But that's the shock you get when you realise it's happening all the time. Look at what people are doing around you now. A little or a lot, helping or un-helping, but they are certainly taking a lot of different approaches to the maze of their life. Certainly the mazes are different, but can all the people be right? The child says: I thought you had to get to the centre. (Does that mean it is easier than it seemed?)

Yes, you try to hear some sense in the sound coming in. But we are in luck, because the person who created it all - the composer - put sense in at the beginning. So we are in with a fighting chance!

I am convinced that we can understand music purely by paying attention to what the composer has put in it. That's the approach I took when I wrote about Evryali, and it's how I try to understand music on a daily basis. The significance of this is that it doesn't matter how much you know before you get started. Knowledge came down to us because other people noticed things; that means we can notice them too. But it will take a long time if we try to understand the knowledge AS WELL as the music. That's two jobs, you see. Fortunately I have tried to understand the music, afflicted with only a slight knowledge of the technical processes involved. (That's not a joke, I really don't know much!). That's why I'm here today to tell you where to look.

The first time I noticed something important about music was in a Mozart symphony last year. It wasn't a good performance (maybe that's why I noticed it). The symphony was called "The Jupiter", but I don't think that matters because I don't like the "I know it all" approach to music: Ah, The Jupiter, yes, of course. Beethoven's second Razumovsky Quartet, yes. Opus 106, a masterpiece. It does annoy me rather, you see this is talking about music without mentioning the music. Perhaps it is not talking about the music? I know it's helpful to use labels so we can know what is being discussed, but these are the names on the filing cabinet. They are the names on the files. They are not the contents of the files. Inside are lovely golden sounds without names. Songs without words that sing in my heart.

I forget exactly what it was in that Mozart symphony. I think it was a movement in the harmony. I realised he was doing something really funny, moving somewhere no-one could have predicted. I wondered why no-one was laughing. I think it was because they were hearing "A Mozart symphony" - the one in their heads, perhaps. You don't need Sherlock Holmes to tell you that the best Mozart symphony comes from Mozart, not from us. By some twist of fate, that was actually what I was hearing. Yes, no incompetence on the part of the conductor or players prevented me from hearing what the composer had put into the music. It was all there, and it always is in any piece or performance.

Music is highly cultural, you know. There is a lot to learn about. But as it happens you don't particularly need to learn any of it. If you are responsible and care about the music and why it exists then I think it won't hurt to try learning a bit. But you have to listen first.

I listened, and I am now telling you this:

A master composer knows his job and tries to get better at it.

The best composers didn't stop when they had had enough, or when they thought they were good enough. They continued changing.

In these cases, the golden secret inside centre of the music was what led the creator - it was what they were trying to communicate! In the other cases, the composer got tired and his forms started writing themselves, though there could still be flashes of inspiration. It could never dry up completely (some music leads me to doubt this but it is true)

The secret was called ecstasy. Did the composer want to be a composer, or could he not stop being a composer? "Ecstasy" is a word that means being outside yourself. What is outside? Whatever we don't already know. Other people. Other places. Other ideas. Mistakes. Answers. Genius.

Whatever you think about music, I think we all have to agree there is some kind of vision involved in it. Someone wants to communicate something, and that is their vision. It can be predictable, clichéed, or previously impossible - a surprising thing of brilliance and power. With skill, the vision becomes clearer.

That vision is present in every part of the work, and through the opposition between the parts we can appreciate what it is. (The word for an arrangement of parts is composition)

You won't at first know what a piece of music is saying. It's important to remember that it isn't saying anything. As long as you can say it in words, you are not there. You can talk about it but you have to live it to see it.

With repeated slow careful exposure to music you can learn to feel what it really is. Your mind is not understanding it, your heart is not feeling it, but these senses may be involved.

Remember what I am telling you: it is real. Music is real. There is a real reason for it. It is not something in a book or on a CD, it is something outside you, coming in. Also remember that if you were lost in a labyrinth, you might forget your journey. The outside might seem dark and unfriendly. Think then of what it's like to find the way through the maze. Find the end, and you see you were the one who had gone outside. Really the music is inside. People who don't listen are stuck outside. When we hear it truly, we are all joined up again. Or starting to be.

Primo Levi was in a prison camp. Then he sent us a message through his books so that the world would change. James Clavell was in a prison camp. He did the same. He did a good thing too, because he loved the people who imprisoned him. That is how he was set free. Any others who still hated them were still prisoners, weren't they? And Ronald Searle was in the same camp. He had to carefully hide his drawings while he was there. He sent us messages too.

There is a well-known analogy that life is like a bird flying through a lighted hall. It is light for a moment, then it is dark again. That's silly, because although I can see what it means, I think they are looking at it from the wrong side. Think what the other birds are thinking. Wot is that bird doing stuck inside that dark hall when we are all out here?

I spoke of prisoners because when we are stuck or lost, what we need most is a way out. Sometimes it is all we can do just to survive. There isn't much sign of life outside the prison. But one day a message comes.

To understand the message is all we need to do.

It is not obvious. But it is there. If you can love it, then you are hearing it.

This is the language of music.

Protect This

I went to a concert last night - it was pretty good, you know.

The last time I was in that hall it was to hear Maxim Vengerov playing Paganini's violin.

I was thinking about the sound of different violins, expensive ones and normal ones (which are still expensive). A quick footnote about the miserable scratchy sound of contemporary music violins (often, not always) which may be due to the playing or may be due to the financial potency of said violinists. I remembered the sound of the Paganini violin. What would Paganini have sounded like? This violin is part of what we have left of his playing...This violin! Then I imagined Vengerov pretending to break the violin for a joke and then bringin on the real one. I know, it's unlikely, but my brain thinks about a lot of things many of which may be even more unlikely. Genius answers come from considering the unlikely and the impossible - that's why we have to entertain unlikely thoughts. Because the ideal solution to a problem may be impossible and unthinkeble at this moment. Probably that is why it is a problem.

The next thing I thought was what if he really smashed the violin? But, you see, that is not possible because music is creative, not destructive. When there is a war we can go to a concert and be healed a little bit. Even if the music is not too good, or the playing indifferent, it is still music. There is still a special feeling of learning about something bigger than each one of us, something that involves all of us, and stops us from hurting people. A little bit.

I prefer concerts that don't take place during wars, though.

OK? Remember that - no wars please!

No Rest!

I didn't feel like resting! Well, I felt like it, but I just couldn't devote myself to doing nothing. So I did lots of practice instead.

I can rest after I've learnt all the existing piano repertoire and solved all its technical problems, can't I!

I Return

Well, I'm back from my emergency concert. I've had other things to do too.

It's all go here!

Tomorrow I will try to devote myself seriously to resting. We will see if I can actually achieve this.

Then I might be able to tell you some more things!

OK here is one thing for you:


Hotels produce some odd experiences. Here is one from Sunday night. "How To Replace the Handset". I didn't see the one saying "How To Sit On The Chair". What about "How To Sleep In The Bed"? Or even better, "How To Read This Notice"?

Lightning Concert!

Oh dear, somebody has pneumonia! Not me, it's another pianist. (Yes, there are other pianists but I know you would never read their blogs or think about them!)

It's probably not very nice for him. Also it means I have to do a concert suddenly.

It's in Cheltenham, a spa town over in the direction of Wales (from here).

I will be playing Feldman's Palais de Mari! It's quite hard to do in public but I've done it before.

I don't really like stealing concerts from ill people but, as I have said before, I am quite happy to do concerts if asked! And anyway, this concert is now quite different from the other one so it's not a substitute, it's just a different one.

I'd better go over to a different type of keyboard and press a few buttons on that one, eh?

Rrrrradio

You can hear my performance in the recent Finnissy Weekend (with "Ixion") on the radio. Yes, if you were listening last night you could! Don't worry, nobody told me either. Here are your instructions.

Go to this page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/hearandnow/pip/dwyvm/
You can see the playlist for this programme and see that it is the right page.
Next, click "Listen to this episode for up to 7 days after broadcast".
This will play the radio programme (it should!).

There is a bit of Estonian singing first but then the programme starts. I am on in the second item ("Cantet nunc aula caelestium") as well as the "Giant Abstract Samba" and "Vertue", which was taken from EXAUDI's Finnissy CD - this one is me playing a duet with Michael Finnissy.

Sorry it only works for 7 days. We'll have to see about getting a recording of this. If you like!

It's Done

I've done it!

I played most of my 21 new pieces (a few more to do tomorrow then that's it).

The most alarming thing was what happened after I played the set of 12 birthday pieces written for Michael Finnissy. I gestured to the audience (as one does) since I knew all the composers were there except two. Suddenly they all stood up at the same time and advanced on me! I'd never seen such a thing before. Normally there is only one composer to shake my hand but here was a multitudinous horde approaching at great speed!

Actually only one or two had time to shake my hand but they all stood in a (long) line and took a bow.

I hurt my thumb a bit even though I was wearing gloves at the time (it's good to wear gloves to play cluster-glissandos!) and I had the usual Post-Concert Fatigue Syndrome, which is awful crippling pain in my body the next day or just after the performance. I would like it to stop happening, and maybe it will. But luckily you can't have the PCFS without the concert, and it's the concert that's the important part so that's fine.

It's quite good to have concerts with living composers present to hear their own works. It might make one reflect on the situation in concerts where there are no living composers in attendance. E.g. most classical concerts. I certainly feel that in many cases there could be something - or someone - missing. Eh?

Still Here!

Hello, remember me?

I am still here. There is a lot to do and I didn't even switch the computer on for two days!

I am still learning 21 pieces. It will all be over in about a week. I must say, this would be a lot easier if it were one long piece rather than what seems like about half a million small and entirely different works.

What would also help would be for every composer to produce COMPLETELY legible and pianist-friendly copies of their music. It really saves time. I am expecting to copy parts of some of the pieces by hand to improve matters in this respect, though I don't seem to have found time so far.

Keep going!

Soloist

At last I have found it! (click this)

English Country-Tunes

I was there!

I attended Michael Finnissy's performance of his famous piano work "English Country-Tunes" yesterday. The floor shook (and it was a big room) and everyone cheered.

It was the friendliest event I have been to at The Warehouse (home of contemporary music concerts that cost £900 to put on).

This was the last performance of the Finnissy Weekend, organised by the British Music Information Centre and directed by Matthew Shlomowitz and Laurence Crane.

I again noticed that live music is more striking than recorded sound. So let's have more concerts, please.

I also noted that English Country-Tunes, which, being music, cannot be described adequately in words, is what you get when a country has had no creativity for 300 years and then has to make up the balance!

Overlearning

Welcome back!

I have a lot of music to learn for three concerts. It ranges from solo pieces (11, though thankfully ten of those only last one minute) to duos, small chamber works and some others, the maximum line-up being ten players.

This is about three years of repertoire to learn. The first concert is in one week. The next two are three weeks later!

I think the most important thing to do in emergency learning like this (ha ha, as if this situation happens to everybody) is to maximise the number of times you "visit" each piece. This means the number of times you practise it and also the number of times you look through it, learning it without playing.

In one week, or three weeks, it's impossible to develop the level of familiarity you will need to perform music fully comfortably. For example Josef Hofmann recommended to learn a piece and then forget about it, and to do this three times, before performing it in public. Doing this embeds the notes and movements in your very long-term memory. What imprints something on the memory is how often you prompt the brain to remember what it once learned. If the thing is no use, it will be forgotten. If it is important it will be needed again, and when it is the pathways will be traced over again and checked to see if they correspond with what you did last time, as well as modified (learning, remembering, improving). However, three weeks isn't long enough to affect this kind of memory properly. Unless your memory is very good and experienced.

Still, in the short term we can get familiar with music over a few weeks. It should be enough for now (it will certainly be the maximum possible in the time available). Come back in three months and maybe everything will be forgotten. Again, it depends on experience.

So to remember something well you have to go there and go away again many times. That means that practising is important but also not practising! It needs time to settle and needs to be reinforced later. All the time you are away from your instrument your brain is sorting through what you learned. That's why when I accompanied for 35 recitals at the RAM one year I was still hearing the music six months later - even pieces I had only played twice! There hadn't been enough time to process it all so I was doing the equivalent of "waking dreaming" such as can happen with lack of sleep (lack of processing time, just as in my case). Hallucinating, maybe!!

I doubt I will be in that type of situation this month. I will try to relax and let my brain do the work. The mind at rest is more useful!

However, I will have to practise!

PS It is possible to do "emergency learning" as Sviatoslav Richter did, for example learning a work in one week before the performance. This is very concentrated work, and is something of a specialism. In such a case it is very helpful to have only one piece to learn!

Did you know, if something is learned very well then it is hard to forget it. With real practise a lot of time is saved. The main principle is never to let something go by if you a) made a mistake, b) nearly made a mistake or c) felt tense in a particular passage (sign of an uncertainty). I learnt this from Ferruccio Busoni, who wrote something similar in his ten "Study Rules for the Pianist" which I might tell you about sometime.

Trips

I found this tool:



I think these are the places I have been.
I haven't been to Alaska though! (Is that the bit at the top right corner?) Neither have I been inside the Arctic Circle! (These just depend on which countries "own" certain places - I ticked the box for USA and Norway so that's why I'm now a great Polar explorer)
It would be nice to see more detail - but it's quite interesting all the same. I wonder which bit will go red next?


create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Reminiscence

Tasten: the Ballhaus, Berlin – it was May
What really happened? It’s not easy to say…
The programme read “Ian Pace: Verdi Transcriptions”
A charming idea full of tuneful inscriptions.

For thirty-two years they had grown more and more
Until they encompassed Books One through to Four.
But the composer Mike Finnissy, Verdi’s arranger
Unknowingly put Ian Pace in great danger.

The first and the second books went by quite calmly.
But out in the night was a whispering army…
By the light of the moon they rose up to embrace
Their campaign to silence the pianist Pace.

“You were OK at first, but the next book’s the worst!
We wish that you’d never sat down and rehearsed!
You should never have thought about starting to learn it!
But you did, and that’s why we say Ballhaus: Let’s burn it!”

Then a bottle was thrown
And it fell like a stone
And unFinnissy flames billowed out.
Men ran round in a panic
Increasingly manic
And Jeremy started to shout.

Folks looked up from their paella
At the blossoming fire
Their faces all lit up with red.
In the ensuing fracas
They all dropped their tapas
And ran out to see who was dead.

Would they find Ian Pace
Lying flat on his face,
The piano a pile of ashes?
Would the Tasten be stopped
Since the bottle had popped
And consumed it with murderous flashes?

“NO! I triumph over anti-imperialist subversives!”
Shouted Ian majestically over the sound of the flames.
Or something similar.

But the army receded
Defeated, conceded
The flames never gathered the power they needed.
The Ballhaus was saved
So the audience waved:
“We’d prefer if this concert proceeded!”

And it did.

Ian knew if he stopped and he failed to finish he
Might risk the rage of the powerful Finnissy.
After Books One and Two, he returned with the Third. He
Continued and finally finished his Verdi!

The rest of the festival? It was much calmer
With more of the music and less of the drama.
The black and white keys sounded notes by the million
And people came in (some police, most civilian).

Magda attacked the piano, her performance thus leading
To displays full of energy…also some bleeding.

For a good cup of tea, how far will a man go?
The answer, in music, came from our friend Django.

With a burning of rubber and soundtracks galore
This bass player goes with his foot to the floor
He finishes the course while the others are starting
A long-distance driver, we thank him – he’s Martin!

Tasten, Tasten…

Masked men came there to fight but floated into the night
They all ran away and are free.
The fire never stopped it, so Tilbury topped it
With Feldman’s Palais de Mari.

THE END

Thanks Magda, Michael and Jeremy!

Antworten

The answers are:

1. He is twitching because...he owns a coffee shop! He really was shaking quite a lot, rather like Tweek in South Park (whose parents give him a lot of coffee because they own a coffee shop).

2. The venue was firebombed! But the fire went out and Ian Pace could continue his performance of Finnissy's Verdi Transcriptions. That explains why several large policemen came out of the door as I went in for my rehearsal on Sunday morning!

3. Django Bates rhymed lemon with demon-strate. Only once, he did not base his entire performance on this feat!

Berlin was more relaxed than London. And hotter! Agh! Or Ach, in German.

Berlin Facts

I am back!

Here are some handy facts about Berlin:

1. Somewhere in the Prenzlauer Berg area of Berlin, a man is twitching. He is twitching quite a lot.

2. When a performance of Michael Finnissy's piano music gets out of control, burly berlin policemen get called in.

3. It is easy to rhyme only with lonely, maybe with baby, but only one person could rhyme lemon with demonstrate.

Answers tomorrow.

The Berliner Klaviertage 2006 were impossible: it was impossible that such interesting pianists could ever play in the same city, in the same festival, over three days - most of them on the same night! Amazing. It was very very good and I hope they get the opportunity to have a lot more piano festivals.

Ellipsis...

I'm just popping out to Germany for a bit, do you need anything? A pint of Milch, a loaf of Brot?

Back soon!

My Legs

The concert was very acclaimed - I suppose I should believe everyone and say: it was good. Of course, naturally there were things I would like to do better. Lots of things! I was happy with it, though.

You can see the programme now, available in two parts: page one, and page two. (requires Adobe Acrobat PDF reader)

I will be playing the same three Finissy Gershwin Arrangements in Berlin in two weeks. (As well as other works, of course!)

So now all we have is the famous Leg Issue. My legs hurt a lot after I play! Why is this?

Not immediately after, but when I have got back to wherever I am staying (my house, in this case). Then I am like a cripple. It's a bit of a mystery, but it will be gone quite soon - until next time!

Michael Finnissy was pleased with his concert. It was a good audience, and they were all listening very well. Howard Skempton was the nearest person - he, like all of them, so welcoming the music that I could only play better!

Lots of good composers under one roof! Quite memorable - for those who were participating - different for those who were slaving away at the piano - memorable in both ways though!

Any questions?

Reliefs

Several things happened today. First of all, I turned my mobile phone from German language back to English again! I had put it into German so I could have some practise for when I play in Berlin soon . Since I had no time to actually learn German, I thought it would help a bit in place of that. However, there was always a very slight feeling of panic as I wondered what on earth button should I be pressing next, so consequently there is now relief. Back to English. For now!

Also I have finished and copied out my piano piece for Michael Finnissy's 60th birthday concert and celebration on Saturday 29th. This is also positive news, and of a more creative nature than the phone news!

I could show you the music now, but I have to save it for its world première. I'm sure if I published it here you would all be off to perform it in concerts all over the world! You naughties.

Well, I think I could be persuaded to put it up here somewhere. Soon!

Everything OK with you?

See you tomorrow.

Tailoring Article

Here is an excellent article I read today. Written by Thomas Mahon of Savile Row, it describes what to look for in a bespoke tailor.

Read what he says at the end - what to look for and what to watch out for:

Don’t be convinced by the narcotic effect of labels, they mean nothing. Have your eyes and senses tuned. Don't trust the glossy magazines for your info, they are writers, not cutters. Their world is about PR, not about the actual stitching.

No journalist ever had to spend seven years as a proper tailor's apprentice. Their agendae are different from yours.

I think it would be unfortunate to describe a tailor's mind as 'cutting'. I mean, it would be unfortunately unintentionally unfunny. But I think these words are certainly very sharp.

I always admire anybody who knows their job. There are so few of them. But each is a genius in his field. Or approaching it.

The best will admit that they are very far indeed from this. But they might admit to being capable of something, occasionally.

What is the reason for writing about tailoring today?

1. I have been thinking about what musicians wear for performing. Including me, obviously.
2. Good information is always good and always helps us, no matter what it is about.

Learning is always possible, and I hope you will be able to learn something from the article.

Last of all, have a look at Mr. Sheppard's Shears.