It is a truth universally acknowledged – well, by this writer anyway – that a pretty major part of any researcher’s job is to keep reminding people what we already know. I’m not just talking about a straightforward educational model of making sure that the people being born at the
Last week saw my annual visit to the beautiful Howardian Hills in Yorkshire, for the glorious Ryedale Festival. This is the third year in a row that I’ve had the privilege of speaking at Ryedale, and for the first time this year I was not there primarily to work with
If you were watching this website a fortnight ago, you will have come across a post I wrote called ‘Tale Spin’, and the challenges (so-called) of writing a biography for someone like Brahms who, in comparison with some of his wilder contemporaries, did not really live the kind of life
This weekend, I’ve been soaking up the beautiful sights and sounds of the Ludlow English Song Weekend. This is a real celebration of music setting English-language texts, with a strong emphasis on Anglo-American connections this year, including a fantastic concert last night of Whitman settings by a huge range of
Today, I’m off to the Wigmore Hall to hear a new English-language translation, by Jeremy Sams, of Schubert’s Winterreise, performed by Roderick Williams and Christopher Glynn. I was fortunate enough to hear this at the Ryedale Festival in July, and can’t wait to listen again – it’s an astonishing piece
When I was still an undergraduate, I remember sitting with several of my fellow students discussing their recent holidays. One of them had been on a trip with their family to a country rich in ancient buildings, early signs of Christianity, and traces of times past. The guide leading them
One of the things I enjoy most about my freelancing lifestyle is the sheer variety of repertoire that I’m able to engage with on a week-to-week basis. I might be teaching Schubert Lieder in one place; late nineteenth-century chamber music somewhere else; write programme notes on the music of James
As anyone who has the vaguest interest in cinema, DVD collecting, watching the TV or even bus posters will know, superheroes are in. They have been for a while: men of steel, fortuitous victims of nuclear/chemical accidents, test subjects of government projects – heck, even sparkly vampires. They battle the
On Saturday evening, I had the pleasure of returning to the city where I spent five happy years as a university student – Nottingham – to give a pre-concert talk about Brahms’s First Symphony. As the train rumbled north out of London, I spent a bit of time staring out
The last few weeks have been a time of many people saying even more loudly than usual that the humanities are important to our society. Following Nicky Morgan’s insistence that STEM subjects were the best choice for students who wanted to keep their job options as broad as possible, critics,
