Monday, 29 March 2021

#WorldPianoDay and Music Education

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I know this blog is about the cello but I did say I'll stray into talking about other instruments, especially ones I learnt to play. I w...
Sunday, 29 July 2018

Is chamber music dead or a staple diet for all musicians?

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When you are thinking about a musical career I don’t think you cross off any aspect of it. Your repertoire will include concertos, sonatas...

What’s the difference between listening and really listening?

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One of my earlier cello teachers would constantly say ‘You have to REALLY listen!’ (I use uppercase because she emphasized that word) 1 ...
Friday, 8 December 2017

Minor composers?

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I am keen to bring to light lesser-known philosophers or even those hardly known at all. So similarly, I am interested in lesser-known a...
Thursday, 7 December 2017

The importance of slurs in a piece of music and the difficulty of deciphering original scores and manuscripts

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I have learnt some of the Bach Suites and have performed Suite 1 Prelude in public. The issue of 1 how to create dance-like sound is a ...

The importance of cello fingering decisions

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Steven Isserlis raised a very important point about choice of fingering which is central to learning/practising/performing a piece of mu...

Dvorak's quasi portamento in his B minor Concerto

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I found a fascinating question about Dvorak’s B minor Concerto on Steven Isserlis’s facebook (13/01/2017) 1 which gave me food for thou...