Notorious?

I'm amused to see that one of the music sites I visit most often, The Classical Source, is running a banner ad for pet food deliveries. Are we music lovers also such notorious animal lovers? It certainly made Solti's day (though he has been comatose in the heat under a rose bush for most of it). I regret to say that I've come across a cat nicknamed Clawed DePussy and one answering to Milhaud - and the possibilities of Faure and Furry don't really bear thinking about. At this rate it will all unRavel...

Anyway, I am off to Lithuania tomorrow, where the weather's going to be slightly cooler. I've just been sent an advance copy of the CD of the concert I went there to hear last year, Vytautas Barkauskas's Duo Concertante - it will be released by Avie Records on 27 June. Very excited to be going there again to straighten out and consolidate last year's impressions. At least it will stop me sitting at my desk blogging lousy puns after getting tipsy on ginger beer and too much sun.

Also, NB, final tonight of Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. I've managed to miss the run-up to it - I look at my Freeview box so infrequently that I've actually forgotten how it works - but am looking forward to hearing the English contestant Andrew Kennedy, whom I heard on the radio the other day by accident without knowing who he was and found exceptionally impressive. Lovely, open-toned lyric tenor, selected by some of the UK's best young artists schemes and evidently going places. The Lithuanian candidate, incidentally, looks seriously gorgeous, but I haven't heard him and don't know whether he has reached the final.

Heatwave...

Argument this morning on the TV over whether one or two days of blistering sunshine, such as we're now having, constitutes a heat wave. No idea of the correct definition, but it's a scorcher and poor Solti is a very hot cat.

I've done some very nice interviews this week, including composer Jonathan Dove (for Indy) and violinist Nikolaj Znaider (for Strad) - both great guys and terrific musicians in totally different ways. It's a relief to get back to normal and not have to play the piano. Summer is shaping up super-hectic, which hadn't been the idea - I am supposed to sit at my desk and write my new book, not go gadding off to four or five different festivals, but that's life... I shouldn't complain since I will be returning to Vilnius and Verbier and adding some more.

Too hot to carry on thinking now. Will try again soon...

Coming up for air

I hadn't thought further ahead than 10th June for weeks and now suddenly it's the 12th. Reaching the end of last week, it's quite a surprise to discover that the concerts are OVER and the book is FINISHED - all at once.

Final concert was at Woodhouse Copse in the hills near Dorking, Surrey - a fabulous place with a marvellous acoustic, a delicious Steinway and the most beautiful gardens. They are going to stage Dido & Aeneas there in early September and it's well worth a visit.

Meanwhile, RITES OF SPRING has gone back to its publisher with my final edits...next thing will be proofreading in a few weeks' time.

Have been too absorbed in all this to blog about Krystian Zimerman's amazing recital at the Festival Hall last Thursday...but will try to correct this soon. He IS amazing. He's really, really amazing.

Proper blogging to resume once I've got my breath.

Aw, shucks....

I'm very touched by all the moral support I've been receiving, directly and indirectly, from friends visible and invisible, over these concerts. Special thanks to Bart at The Well-Tempered Blog, where our Elgar gig takes second place only to detailed reports of nothing less than the Van Cliburn Piano Competition (which sounds as if it has a worthy winner in Alexander Kobrin).

Lack of blogging here this week is not only down to practising but also to the fact that I have to finalise the text of my novel NOW. It is about to go off to be typeset, which means that anything that I don't change now will probably outlive me on a shelf somewhere. Today I also had my first glimpse of the "blurb", or draft for it, that will go on the back cover. When I started my 'professional' life, thinking it would be nice to combine music and writing, I never thought that I'd find myself preparing my "first" novel for typesetting AND doing my first full-length, ticket-selling recital since student days within the same WEEK at the age of - oh well, never mind...

As if that wasn't enough, my brother got married on Saturday!

By the end of this week, both novel and concerts will be complete and I can get back to blogging in earnest.

The Elgar conundrum

Tom & Jess Elgar house
Originally uploaded by Duchenj.

Here's a picture of me & Tom outside the Elgar Birthplace Museum yesterday. If you've never been, go and see this place - it's wonderful, full of treasures, exquisitely maintained by a team that knows its Elgar inside out and backwards.

Our concert was in the visitor centre and I can say, rather smugly, that it was quite full...We got interviewed live on BBC Radio Hereford too! Most flattering of all was that Elgar's great-niece turned up. And she told us all about the time she met Uncle Edward when she was a little girl.

Well, the evening seems to have been a real success. We got home about midnight feeling exceedingly pleased with ourselves.

Here's the conundrum: beforehand, for weeks, I felt FRIGHTFUL. Lots of those last-thing-at-night conversations with Tom in which I came up with many permutations of "Why the hell are you making me do this? I'm a writer, for God's sake!" During the journey to Worcester, I found myself wishing that the car would break down or I'd collapse or - well, anything rather than have to do the concert. But then afterwards I felt FABULOUS. This was a day we'll both remember fondly for the rest of our lives. As Tom says: "Of course it's always easier to do nothing, but..."

So there we are. It's torture. It's misery. And now we can't wait to do it again. Ridiculous? Totally. True? Oh yes.

Elgar would have been 148 today. Happy birthday, Uncle Edward!