Please come to our HUNGARIAN DANCES concert

Tuesday 17 June 2008, 7 for 7.30pm

HUNGARIAN DANCES
THE CONCERT OF THE NOVEL

Philippe Graffin (violin)
Claire Désert (piano), Jessica Duchen (author)

Queen’s Gate Terrace Concerts, 49 Queen’s Gate Terrace
South Kensington, London SW7 5PN


We're delighted to announce that Philippe Graffin is planning to record a fascinating programme of Hungarian and Hungarian-influenced music to complement my novel Hungarian Dances. This very special fundraising concert to back the project will be held in the beautiful music salon of 49 Queen's Gate Terrace. It's a one-off opportunity to hear him and Claire Désert perform music that will feature in the recording, and I will be reading extracts from the book.

The programme includes works by Bartók, Brahms, Dohnányi and Ravel.

Tickets are £40, to include wine and Hungarian canapés, payable in advance by cheque or PayPal. Early booking recommended, as places are strictly limited.

To book, please email me.

Download a PDF flyer here.

(Philippe Graffin photo: Benjamin Ealovega)

Mind the Bach

It's been a week of things not working terribly well - from my internet connection to the Victoria Line and beyond - and I managed to miss the fact that my article about music in the London Underground ran in yesterday's Independent. Here it is. It is basically a fun way to suggest Schumann's Blumenstuck as suitable listening when, due to signal failure, you are bloomin' stuck.

Happy birthday, JSB

It's Bach's birthday. Have a listen to how Brahms and Schumann's close friend Jozsef Joachim played his music. This rendering of the G minor's first movement was recorded 104 years ago. (Fascinating line-up of comments on Youtube here.)

A talk in Hampstead

The Hampstead Authors' Society has very kindly invited me to give a talk on the afternoon of 12 April. I've written an article about the creative processes (or whatever they are) behind Hungarian Dances et al which is now up on their website. The afternoon includes tea, cake and a walk on Hampstead Heath - also the possibility of a visit, later, to the Hampstead Observatory if the sky is clear.

Anyone in the Westminster area this month should take a look at photographer and writer Zsuzsanna Ardo's exhibition How long is the journey? Zsuzsanna, the founder of the Hampstead Authors' Society, was born in Hungary and has been back there to capture images of Roma communities with her sympathetic, humane and inspiring eye and camera. The exhibition is at the European Commission, 8 Storey's Gate, Westminster, until 28 March.

More about Hungary & Hungarianness here.

Up the Amazon without a paddle

The trouble with the mighty Amazon.co.uk is that you can't phone 'em up and tell them that they've put your book in the wrong category. [update: unless you are clever enough to find the corner of the haystack in which that particular needle, the phone number, is concealed; seems like I'm not.]

If you check the Hungarian Dances page, you see the following:

Popular in this category:
#38 in Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Performing Arts > Dance > Folk

Yes, they have put it not under FICTION but under FOLK DANCE. So if nobody knows it exists then it's no wonder. I've plastered it all over everything I can plaster it all over, it had a lovely plug in the Indy with my piece on I Capture the Castle, it has its own website (under construction but coming soon) and Andras Schiff has given me the loveliest quote to quote (and I have successfully added it to the Amazon page). But if some twerp puts it on the wrong virtual shelf, none of this is going to be the slightest bit of use. And now it's Easter. People who have proper jobs get Easter holidays, which means that however hard I yell, there'll be nobody to yell to until the schools go back.

You, dear readers, would find it easily because you'd know what you were looking for. But we have to reach fiction readers who would enjoy it if they knew about it. They won't know if they're online shoppers because it won't appear in their Amazonian suggestions and promotions because one person, somewhere, assumed that it's about which foot to put where in the Csardas.

I could give them some ideas for that.

Happy Easter.