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Jun 13, 2015
Barry Douglas on the pressures and benefits of competitions
As the Tchaikovsky Competition kicks off, we revisit a 2014 interview with the great Irish pianist Barry Douglas, who won the contest in...


May 8, 2015
Why you should stop practising
Observing masterclasses can be a brilliant way to learn and find inspiration, and yet students rarely turn up to watch. They may be too...


Apr 27, 2015
Interview with Shmuel Ashkenasi
The former Vermeer Quartet leader and Curtis Institute professor discusses the negative sides of Ilona Fehér's 'tough love' school of...


Oct 5, 2014
The return of Kyung Wha Chung
The legendary violinist Kyung Wha Chung makes her much-awaited London comeback this December, after more than a decade away. On a recent...


Aug 29, 2014
Everything you need to know about violin playing (but were never taught)
Musical timing and closure, hearing and thinking for ourselves – just some of the things that teaching often fails to help us with,...


Aug 26, 2014
A plea on behalf of amateur violinists
Two weeks at a violin practice retreat were life-changing for me, but left me wondering why there aren't enough places for amateur...


Aug 21, 2014
Leopold Auer weighs in on the vibrato debate
Responses to my post about Menuhin's vibrato drew a mixture of responses. I’d remarked on it being ‘perfectly shaped’ and ‘fluid’ and...

Aug 3, 2014
How Sheila Nelson made me love the violin
You probably didn’t know that my mother was also a journalist – the apple never falls far from the tree, as they say. She was the...

Jul 5, 2014
Sheila Nelson and her work in Tower Hamlets
In the 1980s, string pedagogue Sheila Nelson took her seminal teaching techniques to underprivileged schools in the London borough of...
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