Recent Activities




                         My 1978 David Rubio (Duns Tew) harpsichord 
A copy of a Flemish 18th century instrument by Joannes Daniel Dulcken

A sketch of me by the Italian artist Rosetta Berardi in 1980

 Suanono piano...

All softly playing
With head to the music bent
And fingers straying
Upon an instrument

 ti ricordo!   Rosetta
I have recently been completely tied up with recent activities of a definitely non-musical nature.


However I have recently been doing far more harpsichord practice than usual - mainly Bach, Couperin and Scarlatti.

Like many of you I expect I have been watching and listening in awe to  the extraordinarily gifted young people taking part in the Tchaikovsky Competition on medici.tv

I am looking forward to attending the Duszniki Zdroj International Chopin Piano Festival and also the Chopin i jego Europa (Chopin and His Europe) Festival in Warsaw, both in August.

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Elisey Mysin recital - XVII International Piano Forum - Bieszczady Without Borders - Sanok, Poland

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Astounding musical experiences a lways happen i n Poland! Has been happening to me for as I long as I began visiting the country to work in 1992. The astonishing recital by the child prodigy  Elisey Mysin   I watched online last night prompted me to write this review immediately. It was broadcast from the International Piano Forum, a Polish musical event now in its seventeenth year. The Forum (lectures and concerts) is held in the town of Sanok (the 'capital' of the remote Bieszczady Region). I knew or know nothing about this remarkable Forum until last night.  The concert was  'In Memoriam Tatiana Shebanova',  that magnificent Russian pianist who died so tragically of leukemia in 2011 whilst at her pianistic peak. The concert was organized by her husband, the Chairman of the Piano Forum Council, Prof.  Jaros ław  Drzewiecki.    Tatiana Shebanova was one of the first pianists I heard play works by Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) in concert in Poland in 1992. It was an over
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78th International Chopin Festival in Duszniki-Zdrój, Poland. August 4-12, 2023

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  78th International Chopin Festival Duszniki-Zdrój Poland  August 4-12, 2023   An introduction from Piotr Paleczny, Artistic Director Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Music Lovers, Hard as I find it to believe, it is already for the thirty-first time that I have the pleasure, honour, and great joy to welcome you – lovers of Fryderyk Chopin’s music and all the piano enthusiasts – in Duszniki-Zdrój and invite you warmly to the recitals presented during the 78th International Chopin Piano Festival. I am deeply convinced that this year’s Festival concerts will meet with your great interest and prove to be major events; that the emotions and experience of contact with the invited artists and their art will long remain in your memory. The names of those artists guarantee that our concerts will uphold the highest artistic standards. The Festival opens with a recital by Francesco Piemontesi, called the ‘Wizard of Sound’. Similarly extraordinary emotions also await us in the following evenings, feat
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The Polish Romantic Guitar - The Polish Musical Renaissance - National Chopin Institute Recording Review

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Mateusz Kowalski Works by Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) Jan Nepomucen Bobrowicz (1805-1881) Felix Horecki (1796-1870) Stanisław Szczepanowski (1811? - 1877) Marek Konrad Sokołowski (1818-1883) Guitarist:  Mateusz Kowalski CD number: NIFCCD 118 Again, this ghastly pandemic has opened up caverns of reading time for me without distractions. I am once more inspired in my life and music practice by that singularly appropriate text from Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius taken from the poem of the same name by Cardinal John Henry Newman And while the storm of that bewilderment Is for a season spent And, ere afresh the ruin on me fall, Use well the interval. I brought this to bear in the following review of a CD devoted to the guitar in Poland and outstanding Polish guitar compositions. I agree, at first sight an arcane and not a well-known subject, but it suffers undeserved neglect. I have always loved the classical, acoustic guitar. My harpsichord builder, the great luthi
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