During my brief stay near the Lower Rhine, I was keen to see Kleve, the home town of Ann of Cleves, and also a place where Dutch people go shopping in Germany. Indeed, a couple of bargains were soon snapped up by us. Kleve was the subject of extreme bombardment during WW2, and the centre is full of the usual unremarkable postwar buildings. So it was a particular surprise to climb a flight or two of stairs off the main street a...

At last carrying out an errand I optimistically arranged months ago, we stayed near the Rhine-side German town of Kalkar, which I had never heard of before. As so often described in these posts, I arrived ignorant of my surroundings but ended up staggered by what I’d just seen. In this case, the town’s St Nicolai Kirche, fairly normal from the outside, but inside simply packed with early wood carvings on screens, pulpit, organ...

Visiting family members in the Netherlands, we’ve been back and forth into Germany a couple of times. Although the borders are completely back to normal, having been closed during the pandemic’s emergency period, it still takes some personal negotiating. In Germany, it’s masks on much of the time. It becomes a boring duty, but everyone does it, and you soon get used to it. In the Netherlands I never see masks (except on public...

This year’s Benslow Music composition competition invited submissions of klezmer music, to be played by the London Klezmer Quartet. In normal times, we would all spend a long workshop day together, exploring the medium and allowing the shortlisted composers to revise their music in the light of what was learned. When, for obvious reasons, this day of action was cancelled, no-one was more disappointed than me. Having never got...

This photo expresses one of my most cherished impressions of Cheltenham Music Festival; arriving earlyish in the morning at the deserted Pump Room for a pre-concert rehearsal (the grand daily chamber concert series always begins at 11am) calmly taking in the view over nearby lawns and hills before the musical bustle starts. Many people in the town and far beyond will be missing the Festival this year, as I am. It’s some consol...

I marvel at our youngest generation of composers, who simultaneously write, perform, produce and problem-solve with confidence and poise. Whatever the future holds, I’m looking forward to they day they take over everything. So, it didn’t surprise me that Alex Woolf has designed and set up a podcast, New Notes, on which I was honoured to be his first guest. Listen here (apologies for my own online performance  – I must remember...

In early March I attended my last live performance, which was a BBC Monday Lunchtime from the Wigmore Hall, and remarked on this blog that it would be wrong to take such an unassuming but excellent series for granted. Since then (thank you, international pandemic) these still-continuing concerts, at present also video-streamed, have become one of the most notable media events on the planet. So, I wonder if I can now put in a w...

What with everything that’s going on, you can be forgiven if you missed World Environment Day last Friday. While helicopters were circling our local airspace (as we now realise, we’re rather close to the new US Embassy) I was trying to keep up with Beethoven Pastoral Project, a livestream from Germany celebrating both the composer and the environment, via his 6th Symphony. Since we’ve been deprived of the expected year of Beet...

With the churches still locked down, I’ve noticed many clerics reporting that the opportunity to stream religious material in place of live services has brought in more viewers than they expected, and more than would have visited them physically under normal circumstances. In my sample viewing, quite a lot of these online offerings have a somewhat stream-of-consciousness feel. As with football and concerts, it appears that ser...

After the sudden 100% cancellation of live musical events, many organisations vowed to reschedule ‘as soon as possible’. I wondered who, if anyone, would be the first to reorganise any of my own happenings. I should have guessed that it would be the super-resourceful Martin Read Foundation, based in Hampshire, who support teaching, workshops and performances for school and college age students. We had long ago planned to do a...