Sunday 22 April 2001

I spent this morning doing the first edit of the keyboard pieces for the next CD.  It's a horrible experience listening to your own solo playing in great detail, as you only hear the things you wish you'd done better.  It's only when you play the finished thing back in full, while looking out of the window to half-distract yourself, that you realise it's not so bad after all ... or is it?  The Venetian swell on the 1793 Broadwood sounds suitably over the top.

I had a day of writing on Friday - I got the programme note for the Gentle Shepherd finished, and made serious inroads into the CD liner notes.  I'm not a natural writer, so I spent nearly two hours tidying my desk before I wrote a single word.  But then most real writers do that too, maybe I am one after all.  

I'm playing in the SCO next week - Ursula Leveaux is playing one of the Vivaldi bassoon concerti, with Giovanni Antonini of Il Guardino Armonico conducting.  I was slightly taken aback on Wednesday, watching the on-train television on the Paddington Express from Heathrow, when sandwiched between the BBC news and two minutes of an Enya video, appeared Signor Antonini and his cohorts, looking extremely stylish in outdoor monochrome, playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons.