Publications

The vast majority of my writing is not available in book form: it’s the many thousands of words of programme notes and album notes that I provide for artists across the UK and Europe each year. I’m keen to write things that can be understood by anyone who’s interested in them, regardless of formal training.

But I do also write book chapters, score prefaces, and some other longer-form pieces from time to time. You can find information about these – along with a list of most of my CD/album notes – in the list below. My particular areas of research interest are nineteenth-century song and chamber music, particularly in Austro-Germany (my PhD focussed on the vocal music of Johannes Brahms and his contemporaries); and late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century musical life in Britain.

Last but not least, do keep an eye on BBC Music Magazine, for which I provide book reviews. 

 

CD notes

Quartetto di Cremona, Art of Fugue (Orchid Classics, 2025)

Daniel Hamin Go, Arirang (Orchid Classics, 2025)

Jae-Hyuck Cho, Mozart Piano Concertos with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Hans Graf (Orchid Classics, 2025)

Stewart Goodyear, Prokofiev (Orchid Classics, 2025)

Rachel Lee Priday, Fluid Dynamics (Orchid Classics, 2025)

Britten’s Complete Canticles and Priaulx Rainier’s Cycle for Declamation, with James Way, Lotte Betts-Dean and Natalie Burch (Delphian, 2025)

Arvid Fagerfjäll and Hikaru Kanki, High Hopes (Ars Produktion, 2025)

Bartók with Juri Zhislin and the State Symphony Capella of Russia (Orchid Classics, 2024)

Schubert Reimagined with Josephine Knight, Simon Crawford-Philips, The Gesualdo Six and Timothy Jones (Orchid Classics, 2024)

 Harriet Burns & Ian Tindale, Schubert Lieder: Love’s Lasting Power (Delphian, 2023)

Rheinberger & Mendelssohn Choral Works with the Netherlands Radio Choir & Benjamin Goodson (Pentatone, 2024)

Sounds and Sweet Airs: A Shakespeare Songbook with Carolyn Sampson, Roderick Williams & Joseph Middleton (BIS, 2023)

Rosalind Ventris, Sola: Music for viola by women composers (Delphian, 2023)

 Benjamin Grosvenor, Schumann and Brahms (Decca, 2022)

Consone Quartet, Mendelssohn String Quartets 1 (Linn, 2022)

Claire Booth & Christopher Glynn, Edvard Grieg: Lyric Pieces (Avie, 2019)

Heath Quartet, Tchaikovsky Quartets nos. 1 and 3 (Harmonia Mundi, 2016)

 

Book contributions for a general readership

Chapter in The Classical Music Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained (Dorling Kindersley, 2018)

Chapters in 30-Second Classical Music, ed. Joanne Cormac (Ivy Press, 2017)

 

Academic books, book chapters and articles

Contributing interviewee in The Routledge Companion to Women and Musical Leadership, ed. Laura Hamer and Helen Junior Minors (Routledge, 2024) 

Chapter, ‘Natalia MacFarren and the English German Lied’ in German Song on Stage: Lieder Performance in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, ed. Natasha Loges and Laura Tunbridge (Indiana University Press, 2020)

Review: ‘Consuming Music: Individuals, Institutions, Communities, 1730–1830’ in Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 2019

Co-editor and contributor to Brahms in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2019)

Review: ‘Brahms-Institut.de’ in Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 2017

Co-author, with Natasha Loges, of ‘Singer-Songwriters of the German Lied’ in J. Williams & K. Williams, eds. The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-Songwriter (Cambridge University Press, 2016)

‘‘A man of many hobbies…’: Alan Adair and the concerts of the Adair Wounded Fund’ in Fontes Artes Musicae (January-March 2016)

Review: ‘Coughing and Clapping: Investigating Audience Experience’ in Fontes Artes Musicae (October-December 2015)

Chapter author (for the time period 1850-1899) in Jon Paxman’s Classical Music 1600-2000. A Chronology (Omnibus Press, 2014)

Co-editor and contributor to Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall. Between Private and Public Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Research assistant to Graham Johnson for his Franz Schubert. The Complete Songs (Yale University Press, 2014)

‘Hans Gál and the Edinburgh Festival’ in Brio Vol. 50 no. 1 (Summer 2013), pp.39-52

Comprehensive work list for the composer William Hurlstone, former professor and alumnus of the Royal College of Music (2009)

 

Score prefaces for Musikproduktion Jürgen Höflich

Julius Otto Grimm, Suite no.1 (2018)

Paul von Klenau, Overture Klein Idas Blumen (2017)

Julius Otto Grimm, Suite no.2 (2015)

Max Bruch, Salamis op. 25 (2015)

Hans Huber, Sextet for piano and wind instruments (2014)

Friedrich Gernsheim, Salamis op. 10 (2014)

Hans Huber, Piano Quintet op. 111 (2013)