British pianist Stephen Hough thinks it is, and he makes a persuasive case for it in an article for The Guardian, reminding us that coronavirus has forced us to rethink how we organise and attend concerts. Those who decry the

We missed our audiences in the year of pandemic and when they returned, they were sparser than usual due to social distancing. But they are coming back to the concert halls and opera houses, their appetite for live music apparently

This quote by English conductor Mark Wigglesworth, from a recent British newspaper article, has resonances with the philosophical statement “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?“ Francis

A piano is a significant investment and in order to retain its value and quality, the instrument needs to be well looked after. Many people believe that tuning is all that is required to maintain a piano, but while regular

The following article came about after the comment on social media of a contemporary composer regretting the focus of many current musicians on the release of small scale recorded projects — in this case, singles — against bigger and what

They say that goodbye is one of the hardest things to say, and saying goodbye to your piano teacher can be a difficult decision, especially if you have been taking lessons with that teacher for some time. There are many

A while ago, I read an interesting story about the evolution of the performance dress code for musicians. It stated that the tradition of black-tie formal wear in classical music harks back to the Victorian era, where manservants and butlers

How often a listener returning from a recital by an important performer remains unsatisfied. Not because of the imperfection of the artist’s playing but because of lack of penetration into the composer’s ideas – ideas that the amateur has cultivated