I didn't know that

Who would have imagined that Arnold Schoenberg attended a dinner hosted by Harpo Marx in Hollywood? (or even that Harpo Marx hosted dinners, come to that?). This snippet from a review in this week's Economist, on the strength of which I've just ordered a copy of Alex Ross's new book The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. Ross's aim is to provide a history of the 20th century through its music, not just a history of the music itself. An interesting distinction. And, according to the review, he succeeds magnificently. I look forward to finding out for myself once the slow boat from the US arrives (the book's not published in the UK until March 2008). Amazon US is probably cheaper anyway, even with shipping costs, because of the weak dollar.

Maybe Schoenberg composed Harpo's shipboard piano solo in A Night at the Opera (starting at 7:30 in this YouTube clip) ...

Stop Press

There's a nice long article, with pictures, about me and Lowri in the latest issue of Classical Music magazine. I used to work with journalist Andrew Stewart at Askonas Holt, and he decided that our French adventure would make an interesting piece. See what you think.
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Not just witches and pumpkins

Half of the road outside the main city cemetery in Castres has been temporarily redesignated as a parking area. The reason? The strong French tradition of visiting family graves at Toussaint, All Saints' Day, on 1 November. Dozens of chysanthemum stalls have set up shop outside the cemetery gates. The town council has even set up a system of voiturettes, basically golf buggies, to transport visitors within the cemetery. (But only from 9-12 and 14-17 heures: even here, the two-hour lunch break must be respected). Halloween is present in France but rather more muted than in England, let alone the United States. And a good thing too.

Shameful

I notice that I haven't posted anything since 12 September. That's, er, more than a month ago. My fans (slight exaggeration here) have been clamouring for more. What happened? I think I'll just fall back on "Never apologise, never explain."

Actually life has been quite busy. First I was away teaching and playing a concert on the Lute Society's residential course in the Yorkshire Dales, then Lowri was away for 10 days playing chamber music at Prussia Cove in Cornwall (see pics on her blog), then I was off for nearly two weeks on Sambuca's grand concert tour of England and Wales, covering all the corners from East Grinstead to Huddersfield to Cardiff. A lot of driving. Back home now and practising for the next events - Monteverdi's Orfeo in the Aude and an early dance theatre production with La Saltarelle in Castres.

Out in the open air today with Fearnley, who hauled me along to a favourite VTT site (off-road biking...). My twenty-something-year-old three-speeder wasn't really up to the job but we had fun skidding down slopes and avoiding ruts. (Ah! that's the word for a 'rigolle'. Better than ditch or furrow).

I had a bit of fun last week doing the 'selection interviews' for University Challenge - The Professionals at the ITV Centre in London. Following which, our Lute Society Team has been chosen as one of the 10 teams to take part, fighting off stiff competition from The Antiques Roadshow and 78 other hopefuls. So I'm going to be on the telly! Filming is in Manchester on 1 and 2 December.