Amongst many interesting English places I would never have visited but for music is Brixworth. Somewhere-or-other to the right of the M1, it nestles in gentle countryside, and is home to numerous listed buildings including its parish church, which a historian has described as ‘ possibly the most imposing architectural memorial of the 7th century yet surviving north of the Alps’. Most of Brixworth Festival’s concerts take place...

In the old times BC, I rarely gave our local Foodbank much thought,  just occasionally tossed a couple of things into their supermarket collection box. But some weeks ago our friend Laura, who has worked there since it started, reported ‘we urgently need everything’, and since then, gathering whatever we can find in bulk and delivering it to the warehouse has become a bit of an obsession.

At first, I will admit, it seemed like...

Having read much well-meaning advice recently about how we should use the lockdown to acquire new skills, I seem by accident  to have taken up the viola. While cleaning the faraway realm under my desk I came across two viola cases inherited from my mother. They’d hardly been opened for five years, but the instruments were in surprisingly good shape.

Not so my shoulder, after about ten minutes in action. My mum’s Yehudi Menuhin...

One personal lesson I’ve learned in the last six concert-less weeks is that a big element of my pleasure in music is anthropological. I realise I just love travelling to performances, experiencing the venue (even/especially the foyers) observing the audience, and on top of that, there’s music to be heard ! So, though grateful and admiring of all the musicians’ WFH videos coming my way, I also confess to sometimes finding the l...

I felt sadness as well as shock at the news of Dmitri Smirnov’s death, aged 71. By coincidence I had recently finished reading his book about his teacher Philip Herschkowitz (brought to my attention by one of Dimitri’s former Goldsmiths College students, Robin Haigh.) It’s a marvellous read, about an eccentric but recognisable person, expressing so well the burden of inheritance from the Second Viennese School – Herschkowitz h...

Nearing the end of lockdown Week 3, we have reached Good Friday. (By our reckoning the two weeks preceding the lockdown were the edgiest, so that makes it five strange and anxious weeks so far.) Undoubtedly our greatest boon has been working daily on the allotment, pictured before we dug up the leeks. No less an authority than Michael Gove in Week 1, declared this to be an acceptable outdoor activity, and we have been taking f...

Getting on for six years ago, when my appointment as Master of The Queen’s Music was announced, this blog was set up in a great hurry. Kate Johnson of Chester Music brilliantly designed and built the site in a matter of days, and I have posted regularly on the blog, with pleasure, ever since. There are now approaching 350 posts covering my musical experiences since July 2014.

It became clear to me early on that I was mostly goi...

I will remember 17th March 2020, St Patrick’s Day, for a long while. I should have been working in Vienna, but had been warned hours before not to travel, because, said my colleague over there, ‘public life is about to close down’. It seemed, at the time, a bit extreme. At home the previous evening I’d managed to catch our Prime Minister’s rather more vague suggestion that we should all try to ‘avoid the theatre’; instantly fo...

About a year ago, news reports circulated about a change of arrangements at Westminster Cathedral Choir School. The choristers, who are boarders, were in future going to be sent home on Friday afternoon, returning on Sunday morning to sing Mass. This caused something of a furore, as this measure would seem to limit membership of the Choir to boys from families within striking distance of London. Many people felt that this woul...

This is the current A-level Music class at Coombe Girls’ School (which has a mixed-gender sixth form.) Five people sitting the exam in any school is good going, but such numbers seem to be the norm at CGS, which I’ve visited for several years around this time, to discuss A-level work. Rather than ‘free composition’, the school teaches the ‘set brief’ option. Sometimes I hear this referred to as ‘pastiche’, which I believe is t...