The Red Hedgehog, tomorrow evening

Tomorrow, Saturday 8 December, I'll be at The Red Hedgehog in Highgate to give a reading from 'Alicia's Gift' before a piano recital by Peter Donohoe. North London's new, vibrant and intimate venue for salon-style listening, The Red Hedgehog - named after Brahms's favourite Viennese inn - has a superb concert series and is almost opposite Highgate tube station. Tomorrow Peter will be playing music by Bach arr. Busoni, Liszt, Chopin and Brahms. Reading & book signing at 7pm, concert starts at 8pm. The Red Hedgehog seats just 100, so it's a good idea to book in advance: 020 8348 5050.

Ida Haendel again

UPDATED Thursday 9am: Mad props to my editor at the Independent who agreed to get something about Ida Haendel's London visit into the paper at incredibly short notice. Short and sweet, it's out today.

If anyone wants to read my 1986 article about her from The Strad prior to her Wigmore Hall masterclasses & the Razumovsky Academy concert this Sunday (or even after it) the piece is now in my permasite archive, here.

Happy birthday, Krystian

It's Krystian Zimerman's birthday today. Here he is playing Schubert's G flat major impromptu.

Tres bonne noel to everyone too

So guess where we're spending Xmas this year? And guess which Wagner opera we've booked to go to on Xmas Eve?

C'est comme ca que le biscuit s'emiette (as they probably don't say in France).

In the pink

Occasionally it's good to spend time talking to the kind of person whose words and aura can reconnect us with What It's Really About. Life, music, energy, communication - and all of it embodied in the incandescent tone of his violin (or in this case, below, viola). You come away feeling glad to be alive.



My interview with Pinchas Zukerman will appear in due course in The Strad.