What one learns...

Yesterday was what one could term 'instructive'.

Stephen Kovacevich had very kindly offered to let us do a 'play in' at his place to help us prepare for our recitals in June. It's one thing to play in your front room for the neighbours, quite another to play in an unfamiliar room on an unfamiliar piano in front of a group of frighteningly musical friends: one step further towards the Real Concert Setting. So along we went.

Oh, the things one learns...

Strange how after just two days the programme came out sounding entirely different. The Elgar Sonata went like a dream - it came together as never before and said everything we wanted it to say. The Delius Legende now goes faster than it used to; one friend who particularly loves it thinks we should slow it down again. There was much to be pleased with in the Faure A major sonata (and yesterday was Faure's 160th birthday!). But one notices other matters in this context that were never apparent before.

This is particularly true of energy and pacing - applying not only to the music but to oneself. Mistake number one: practising and rehearsing for three or four hours in the morning, then practising at Stephen's place for an hour and a half before the 'performance'. We were, obviously, knackered before we began... As for the flow of energy in the music, our programme involved two high-emotion sonatas with the Delius as a breather in between; and we thought that finishing with three short Debussy numbers and two Elgar salon pieces would work after the Faure. But the Faure is such a high-energy piece that after it the pace simply sagged and we felt we never got off the ground again. With the help of two clever and experienced friends at the end, we've decided to lose all the Debussy except possibly La plus que lente, to drop Elgar's Sospiri and to finish with the Faure. (Fine with me - as long as I don't have to start the entire programme with the ant-heap of a piano solo that begins that sonata, anything is OK.)

It was afterwards that the weird things started happening. Notably, Tom collapsed. Why? The hot room? The exhaustion? Something he'd eaten? First he started feeling odd and turned a greenish shade of white. Then he cut his finger on somethingorother and there was rather a lot of blood, which made me come over queer too (I'm idiotically squeamish about blood), then he went to the bathroom and fainted briefly, and I sat in the kitchen with my head down trying not to faint in sympathy; then someone bandaged up Tom's finger, after which he lay on the landing with his feet up saying he felt better and then he had to go and be sick and then somehow we got him out of the house, into the car and home. Stephen was marvellous about it...poor guy, I wonder if that will be the last time he offers to let friends perform at his home......

Whatever we learned yesterday, I'm glad that we learned it at a 'dress rehearsal' rather than the 'real' concerts. Hopefully in two weeks' time, we will have sorted out the programme and will be able to keep away from our instruments for the better part of the day. And I hope that finally the end will justify the means.

Turn again, kitty

I share a blogger design template with someone extremely important in this neck of the south west London woods: Whittington, the diary-keeping cat of our new Lib Dem MP, Susan Kramer. Solti (who is, of course, orange by nature) is dead impressed.

In fact, Solti is planning to write to Whittington to ask him to intercede with his eminent keeper to the following effect. Since cats are the best de-stressers in Britain, they make an invaluable contribution to their owners' quality of life and therefore to the country's economy. Spend between 15 and 30 minutes a day playing with and cuddling your kittycat and you will feel like a new individual. Your mood and therefore your work can only improve as a result. Therefore, argues Solti, all cat-keeping costs - including vet bills, reduced-calorie-formula cat food, scratching posts, sheepskin kitty beds and catnip mice - should be made available tax-free. And self-employed cat owners should be able to tax-deduct the lot. Please, Whittington, he meows, ask Susan to present this to Tony at the first possible opportunity?

The runthrough, by the way, ran. Another one tomorrow...

If I were a real pianist....

...I would be one of the ones who doesn't show up. I would cancel any concert for any excuse. I wouldn't want to do them.

So guess why I'm not a (real) pianist? That's why.

Tom and I have our first runthrough of our Entente Cordiale programme tonight. It's an enormous source of stress for me, but of absolutely no significance to anyone else because we're just playing to a bunch of terribly obliging neighbours in our front room! Nevertheless, it's had me practising all morning, then lying in bed with churning stomach all afternoon, eating far too much chocolate, breaking out in those patches of dry skin that I get on my face and hands when I'm stressed, and, worse, having to tell my editor at the Indy that actually no, I can't turn round the piece he wants me to do by the end of tomorrow. (He's nice. He's letting me do it next week instead. Thank heavens.)

Of course every musician undergoes stress over their concerts, but the proportion of reward to anguish has to be such that it's worth it. Even 40% stress and 60% reward would tip the balance in favour. What I undergo is 80% stress and 20% reward - and the latter only if things go well. If I make stupid mistakes, that proportion goes down. All I can say today is that it seemed a good idea at the time, when we planned it all last autumn, but now that the season is upon us, I would rather be doing ANYTHING but this. But until the end of 10 June, I am a prisoner to my piano.

"It is the three-legged monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on..." as Shakespeare might well have said.

Beethoven and the Ghost of Hampton Court

A very happy experience yesterday at the Kingston Readers Festival, which is currently one of the best things about life in south-west London. They'd asked me to do an open interview with the American pianist Robert Taub, who's currently in the middle of playing all the Beethoven sonatas at Hampton Court Palace and has written an extremely good book about them. He's also a fantastic guy and a great communicator. The whole evening went with quite a swing: we were in a superb studio in Kingston University, the audience asked lots of interesting questions, Bob gave expert demonstrations throughout and we managed to encompass matters from the evolution of pianos to the evolution of Beethoven's thinking to the time that Bob got locked inside Hampton Court after one recital and was mistaken for the place's resident ghost!

Thanks to this festival, there's a feast for book-lovers in Kingston this month. My agent is among a number of publishing professionals taking part in a discussion on May 9th called 'Writing: a suitable job for a woman?' [answer as I see it: it's not a suitable job for anybody, but we do it because we just have to do it...'] and novelist Maggie O'Farrell is among the literary luminaries, on May 25th. Full details at the website.

Meanwhile, I've discovered a blog for pianophiles: Pianophilia written by Bart Collins. Bart has a plethora of interesting stuff up there, including the complete list of contestants for the Van Cliburn Competition, links to the forthcoming Chopin Competition in Warsaw and a fab story about how the new Pope's piano couldn't get into the papal apartment on the Vatican top floor! Adding you to blogroll right away, Bart.

The sun is shining and Labour has been re-elected, but with a vastly reduced majority. Our local Lib Dem candidate, Susan Kramer, won comfortably in this constituency. Tom had the appropriate orange sticker on his violin case and I was extremely tempted to scrub out 'Susan' and write 'Gidon' instead (and alter the appropriate A to E, of course). But - aren't I good? - I didn't do it.

Votes count

Here in the UK it is Election Day. In this general election campaign, many of the words that matter to me - the arts, Europe, the environment and transport improvement - have barely been heard from any politicians' lips. Of course we're all upset about Iraq. BUT STILL, I URGE EVERY UK CITIZEN: DO NOT STAY AT HOME TODAY. Get out there and place your X on that page! Don't you remember what Britain was like under the Tories? You wanna let THEM get back in? You want the man who introduced the Poll Tax to be our prime minister? No, of course you don't! So for goodness' sake, go and vote. And if you don't feel any of the parties truly reflect your thinking, then simply vote for whoever, in your area, is most likely to defeat the Tory candidate outright! If it's Labour, bite the bullet and accept them as the lesser of those particular evils - after all, the Tories would have dispatched those troops to Iraq faster than you can say "UN resolution". Allowing them to win simply to protest at Blair's actions would be the ultimate in cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

Remember, my sisters, that Mrs Pankhurst and her comrades used to chain themselves to railings, and worse, for the sake of winning women the right to vote. Now you must use that right, or else democracy is dead.