Benjamin Grosvenor plays a very special piece...

Sinfini has just released this gorgeous video of Benjamin Grosvenor, that golden boy of British pianists, playing Granados's 'The Maiden and the Nightingale'. This piece is a big favourite of mine thanks to its presence in the Alicia's Gift concert; it used to be a staple recital item, but fell oddly out of favour somewhere between the early 1980s and wherever we are now. Lovely to see it coming back. Enjoy.



Over at Sinfini, I've provided an introduction to Benjamin, the piece and the performance, which took place at Leighton House.

Connections...

I've been having some fun with the connections between Gypsy music and classical, with the help of such individuals as Jascha Heifetz, Grigoras Dinicu, Ginette Neveu and Roby Lakatos...and the result is up on the Sinfini site now. Enjoy.

Speaking of connections, a friend asked me how she could subscribe to JDCMB by email, since she doesn't do Facebook or Twitter. I didn't know, so I've been finding out, and now I've put a "Subscribe by email" box in the sidebar. If you sign up to this, you'll automatically receive a message whenever I publish a new post. I hope this is a useful new way to connect.

Premiere of ALICIA'S GIFT is tonight at the Musical Museum, Kew Bridge. Next up, Kensington & Chelsea Music Society at Leighton House, Wednesday evening. I narrate the story from my novel about a child prodigy pianist and her talent's effect on her family. Viv plays Chopin, Debussy, Granados, Gershwin, Ravel...and I need to practise glissandi. Please connect by coming to say hi afterwards if you're there.

If instruments could speak...

I've been having a little fun for Sinfini, "interviewing" two Stradivarius violins, the 'Gibson' (Josh Bell's) and the 'Messiah'; a Strad cello (Steven Isserlis's Marquis de Corberon); and Fritz Kreisler/Nikolaj Znaider's Guarneri del Gesu. If they could speak, is this what they'd tell us? Enjoy...

http://sinfinimusic.com/uk/features/2013/07/if-instruments-could-speak/

Win a weekend at the Lucerne Festival!

The Lucerne Festival may have started life on what used to be Wagner's lawn, but it hasn't let the grass grow under its feet... Read my guide to this idyllic summer escape and enter the competition to win a dream weekend, over at Sinfinimusic.com:
http://sinfinimusic.com/uk/features/2013/06/lucerne-festival-guide/

Solti remembered

I had a long and fascinating interview with Lady Valerie Solti about her husband earlier this year and five sections of it are available to see on Sinfini Music, the new webzine recently launched under the auspices of (though editorially independent from) Universal Classics. Here's my article and the first of the films. Here is another chunk in which Lady Valerie talks about Solti's early life. And one in which she discusses Solti's last project, the work that he never lived to conduct, the score of which still stands on his desk today...