Philip Morahan is a British concert pianist. A once-great pianist, lauded by critics and adored by audiences, at 52 he can no longer play the piano. Marooned by performance anxiety, it seems that the sacrifices he has made in the

This is the fifth book by acclaimed Scottish pianist Susan Tomes, and unlike her previous books whose primary focus is on the exigencies of life as a professional musician – from ensemble playing and touring, coughers in the audience to

Humphrey Burton made his first connection with Leonard Bernstein when Bernstein came over to London for the premiere of Candide. It had opened to disappointing reviews in New York three years earlier and the only part of the work that

Set in 1962, when England was on the cusp of the Swinging Sixties, ‘On Chesil Beach’ by British author Ian McEwan examines the tension between the modern (represented by the male character Edward) and an earlier, more sexually repressed age

What could be better than one harpist? —nine-hundred and fifty-seven harpists! Of all ages and backgrounds, they descended upon Hong Kong in July, to attend this years’ thirteenth World Harp Congress—the first time the congress has been held in Asia.

Performance Anxiety – for many musicians and performers it’s the fear which cannot, must not, speak its name, and together with injury and illness, it’s a major taboo. We don’t discuss anxiety because we’re not supposed to feel it. As

Robert Schumann’s Advice to Young Musicians was originally written in 1848 to accompany his famous, and still very popular, Album for the Young, a suite of piano pieces for children and students. Schumann was a remarkable, forward-looking man, not least

He was a drunkard, a nearly illiterate loudmouth, and a serial womanizer with a natural gift for seemingly endless self-promotion. He strong-armed and bullied his way to personal fame and fortune by building a gaming syndicate, and intuitively and prosperously