15th December 2025 – St Paul Minnesota – 5 am It’s 5 am and I am sitting at my desk-for-the-day, on the 13th flower, downtown St Paul Minnesota, looking down at a very different river from my home stream above, the Mississippi, which is frozen solid (It’s minus 13 degrees out there) and I am […]
August 12, 2025
August is my quiet time, and for me, quiet involves conversation. The conversations include the talks with friends as we travel across the Midwest of the USA, and now, from Connecticut to Washington ( I am writing this from a roof terrace overlooking New York’s Upper West Side in the early morning light). And, in […]
July 31, 2025
If the art we love is about anything, it is about us. People are a never-ending source of inspiration for me, and I am lost in wonder every time I walk down a street, sit in a living room, travel on a train… So here is a selection, observed over the past few months […]
May 6, 2025
Day by day – May 5th – 10th 2025 Zagreb Croatia I first came to play in Zagreb in 1999. That visit was as an ‘honorary German’, with my trio with Jörg Widmann and Jan Philip Schultze. I was immediately charmed, but unprepared for how much this city would influence my work as an artist […]
April 24, 2025
An occasional rattle bag of response to musicians who write to me Letter to a young musician from the USA 24 4 25 What a fascinating letter! I really appreciate that you are thinking deeply about these questions: I apologise if my answer is a little perfunctory, and will endeavour to amplify points later. Your […]
March 17, 2025
An extraordinary early piece of violin music by Heinrich Utrecht (?-1633) active at Celle, in Lower Saxony at the time of his death in 1633. This can be found in the extraordinary codex collection, compiled by Franz Rost (a cleric, music and copyist) in between 1640-1687
February 20, 2025
December 26, 2024
A list of music which I love to play, building day by day, by composers of all eras and ages! Have fun, as this builds. 31st January – Schubert’s Birthday! Day 31 of ‘Things I like/love to play, and I hope you will like to listen to’. It’s Franz Schubert’s birthday, so here is the […]
October 2, 2024
Knowledge Exchange Violin is now back and running, in earnest! Note – I am posting updates on this post in reverse order, so older posts will be below. Stillwater Minnesota – 16-17th October I arrived in the USA 48 hours ago, and the first day or so have been hectic, so now, it’s not a […]
September 18, 2024
As I begin a new set of collaborations with younger composers in the USA, Sweden and the UK, I have decided to make some of the conversation public: this won’t come in any particular order, and will simply put up the to-and-fro, where an interesting technical or compositional issue is covered. I will just publish […]
December 15, 2025