Showing posts with label Alicia's Gift concert of the novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alicia's Gift concert of the novel. Show all posts

Monday, October 10, 2016

A cheesy weekend in Wensleydale

At least, the cheese came home with me. Wensleydale, natch, with cranberries. It has a small yet special role to play in Alicia's Gift and it's nice to find a seriously good one.



Meanwhile, Alicja Fiderkiewicz and I were delighted by the warm welcome of the Wensleydale Concert Series in Aysgarth Parish Church, and much enjoyed working together for the first time.

Alicja, who hails from Warsaw, trained at the Central Music School and Conservatoire in Moscow and is sought after as recitalist and teacher. She got in touch a while ago having noticed that the concert involved her name! In her hands, select pieces in the usual programme are replaced with the likes of Szymanowski and Bacewicz (WHAT an amazing composer!) and there's Chopin and Debussy to die for. Here are a few photos from Saturday.
















Sunday, February 21, 2016

So what's it really like to perform at the Wigmore Hall?

Viv and muggins, delivering
What's it like to perform at the Wigmore Hall? I doubt I'd ever have found out if I'd kept on with my piano studies...but in one of those weird twists of fate I found myself up there yesterday, with wonderful Viv, presenting Alicia's Gift: the Concert of the Novel to an extremely well-sold auditorium, full of people aged from what looked like 3 to 93, who listened attentively, applauded Viv's playing with great enthusiasm, and laughed at the jokes.

It's the musical equivalent of...having tea at the Ritz. You're in there with the ghosts of the finest music-making in the history of London. In the Green Room you're surrounded by the dedicated photographs of musicians who have been there over the past 115 years, from Edwin Fischer, Daniel Barenboim, Jessye Norman, Christa Ludwig, to Stephen Hough, Angela Hewitt and - the final photo you see just before you walk on to the platform - András Schiff standing beside a bust of Beethoven.

Viv McLean in rehearsal yesterday
The platform itself, under the famous cupola depicting the Soul of Music, feels protected, intimate and reassuring, bathed in golden light. It's neither slippery nor intimidating, and from the front of the stage the hall looks smaller than it really is, rather than bigger, so you feel safe and happy. The Steinway we met there yesterday was new just over a year ago and if you're me - playing it for three minutes at the very end of the concert - it's like taking a ride in the most luxurious car you could imagine, only far better; one of those pianos where you only have to think of what you want it to do and out it comes. If you're Viv, of course, it's even better.

Nor can you imagine a more helpful team of people. There's even someone whose job it is to look after the performers backstage - not that Viv and I need a great deal of looking after, as we always bring our own gf chocolate muffins etc, but it's nice to be offered tea, and there's a quiet room upstairs where Viv was able to go for a pre-concert snooze.

It's scary. You bet it's scary. I don't usually suffer nerves for our narrated concerts - only a little bit for the duet at the end - but when you're sitting on a stage and you can almost see Jelly d'Arányi three feet away playing Tzigane, and you can picture your parents up there in the balcony where they always used to sit, waving and being proud, and you're remembering all the hundreds of times you've been in there listening to the great and good, but now you have to deliver, that's another matter. Even so - what an unimaginable treat it was to do so.

We had a lively panel discussion in the Bechstein Room downstairs after the performance: cellist Guy Johnston, pianist and Chet's head of keyboard Murray McLachlan and RNCM artistic director Michelle Castelletti joined me to talk about what makes a prodigy, what special challenges face them and what the peaks and pitfalls of prodigydom can bring. Excellent questions from a capacity audience, especially three young musicians in their teens whose eager participation made the whole event extra rewarding.

Things we learned that are to the advantage of this concert project as a whole:
• Age range of audience is basically unlimited and this is quite valuable;
• Format with discussion to follow works brilliantly;
• It may be a newish and unfamiliar way to listen to music, but people do seem to like it, so if you are a promoter who hesitates to give something different a whirl, don't be scared. Apart from anything else, it's stuffed with absolutely wonderful music.

Dearest Wigmore, THANK YOU.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Dates for the diary...

It's a busy little patch, this, so here's what's coming up.

• On Saturday afternoon, 20 Feb, Viv and I are performing ALICIA'S GIFT at the Wigmore Hall, 2pm. The concert is an hour long and at 3.30pm I'm chairing a panel discussion about child prodigies, with Murray McLachlan (head of keyboard at Chetham's), Michelle Castelletti (artistic director of the RNCM) and Guy Johnston (cellist par excellence). Tickets are going fast - and you need to book separately for the two events - so do grab 'em now. Here's the link.

• At fairly short notice, thanks to an heroic effort on the part of the Ealing Autummn Festival's devoted artistic director, Gillian Spragg, a performance of my play A Walk through the End of Time is being given in Ealing on 5 March, together with the complete Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen. It takes place at Christ the Saviour Parish Church, New Broadway, Ealing, London W5 2XA (a few minutes walk from Ealing Broadway tube) and starts at 7pm. The actors Caroline Dooley and David Webb present a rehearsed reading of the play and the Messiaen Quartet features a group of local celebrity musicians from Ealing: Colin Bradbury (clarinet), Richard George (violin), Adrian Bradbury (cello) and Gillian herself on piano. Details here and booking through Eventbrite here.

Ghost Variations is steaming on apace and I am delighted that we'll give the first public presentation about the book, with words and music, at the Hungarian Cultural Centre, Covent Garden, on 21 March. Viv (piano) and David Le Page (violin) join me to play music associated with Jelly d'Arányi, including Ravel's Tzigane and music by Bartók, Brahms and...Schumann. I'll be introducing the topic and reading some extracts from the novel. Admission is FREE, but you need to book a place in advance. The plan at the moment is for the book to be released in July. Meanwhile I am desperately trying to get the manuscript brushed up properly for the editor to tackle with red pen in March. http://www.london.balassiintezet.hu/en/events/current-events/983-0321-ghost-variations-by-jessica-duchen/

Back to the desk...


Monday, February 08, 2016

TOMORROW: Alicia's Gift goes to Hampton Court House

Across the road from Hampton Court Palace, down a little gravel side-street, you'll find the beautiful mansion known as Hampton Court House.

An historic venue with beautiful gardens and mysterious grottos, it is now home to an adventurous independent school, whose headmaster, Guy Holloway, has been much in the news of late for advocating a later start to the school day for teenagers, whose natural body rhythms make it seriously difficult for them to get going in the early morning.

Viv McLean and I, fresh from a gorgeous afternoon at St Mary's Perivale yesterday, are off there tomorrow evening for an Alicia's Gift performance - at a place in which the pressures facing gifted youngsters is all too relevant. The hour-long concert will be followed by a discussion in which Guy and I will be joined by Hugh Mather, artistic director of St Mary's Perivale, to consider the whole matter of child prodigy musicians.

Do join us - and you can book in advance here. Hampton Court House is about ten minutes walk from Hampton Court Station and you can arrive for a pre-concert drink any time from 6.45pm for a 7.30pm start.

All details here: http://www.formseven.co.uk/products/alicias-gift-tuesday-9-february

Monday, February 01, 2016

Eight and a half days...

I have a busy week ahead! Please come and join in if you can make it to any of these. One, of course, only involves your kitchen radio.

TUESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY: MUSIC INTO WORDS
Fran Wilson of The Cross-Eyed Pianist has organised a wonderful evening at Senate House, Bloomsbury, in which five speakers - academic Mark Berry (Boulezian), blogger and editor Simon Brackenbury (Corymbus), journalist Mary Nguyen, Imogen Tilden of The Guardian, and I - will be speaking about the agonies and ecstasies and everything in between of writing about music, and doing our best to answer audience questions. Is it really like dancing about architecture? The event is now sold out, but you can still take part by tweeting your questions with the hashtag #musicintowords. More info at the Facebook page here.

THURSDAY 4 FEBRUARY: JD & MARIN ALSOP ON BBC RADIO 4 'WOMAN'S HOUR'
I'm honoured to be joining Marin Alsop in the Woman's Hour studio to talk about Schumann, the Violin Concerto and Jelly d'Arányi. The confluence of GHOST VARIATIONS and the OAE's performance of the concerto on Saturday night seems a perfect excuse and I'm really pleased this is happening. Listen online here.

SATURDAY 6 FEBRUARY: SCHUMANN VIOLIN CONCERTO
It's the Schumann Violin Concerto at the Royal Festival Hall! I'm looking forward to attending this with a group of GHOST VARIATIONS supporters. (You can also hear this programme in Basingstoke on Thursday 4 February.) http://www.oae.co.uk

SUNDAY 7 FEBRUARY: ALICIA'S GIFT AT ST MARY'S, PERIVALE
Viv McLean and I are giving the first of our three February ALICIA'S GIFT performances - 3pm at St Mary's Perivale, my favourite "sacred space" place. The 12th-century church, tucked away behind the A40, is worth a visit in itself, but it's a fabulous venue to enjoy music at intimate quarters, so if you're a west Londoner or you just fancy coming to check it out, please join us. The programme also includes some gorgeous songs from soprano Sarah Gabriel with Viv at the piano. The story of the child prodigy pianist Alicia and her impact upon her family forms the second half of the concert. Admission free, with a collection at the end.

TUESDAY 9 FEBRUARY: ALICIA'S GIFT AT HAMPTON COURT HOUSE
Viv and I are taking ALICIA'S GIFT to Hampton Court House - an extraordinary historical venue across the road from Hampton Court Palace. It's a magnificent mansion that these days is home to an interesting international school whose headmaster, Guy Holloway, has been in the news recently advocating a later start to the school day for teenagers. After the performance we're having a panel discussion about child prodigies, in which Guy will take part along with myself and Hugh Mather, artistic director of St Mary's Perivale, who I'm sure has encountered prodigies aplenty. 7pm arrival for 7.30pm, tickets available on the door.


Speaking of prodigies...I'm mildly disconcerted to discover that the latest on the scene, little Alma Deutscher, has a father who shares a name with that of my Alicia. Besides sharing her own initial. This is pure and mere, if weird, coincidence. She was born in 2005, the year I started writing ALICIA'S GIFT. Alma has been playing her own violin concerto with some big orchestras and has been signed up by Askonas Holt aged 10. Here's what happened when David Lister at the Independent met her last week. 

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Booking is now OPEN for OUR WIGMORE HALL GIG

A tastefully sepia adaptation of Alicia's Gift's cover
Thrilling stuff for me and my wonderful pianist colleague Viv McLean: we are performing ALICIA'S GIFT: THE CONCERT OF THE NOVEL at the mighty and marvellous Wigmore Hall, on 20 February at 2pm. You can find all the programme details and online booking here.

The seriously scary thing about this is that the final number in the concert is actually a duet, so this means I have to play the piano in the bloomin' Wigmore Hall and even if it is three minutes of slow and gorgeous Ravel it's still...a bit terrifying. But hey.

This version of the concert lasts one hour and it will be followed at 3.30pm by a panel discussion, which I'll chair, on the topic of child prodigies - which is what the novel is all about. On our panel are Murray McLachlan, head of keyboard at Chetham's School of Music; Michelle Castelletti, artistic director of the Royal Northern College of Music; and Guy Johnston, cellist par excellence, who was something of a child prodigy himself. Book for the panel discussion here.

Alicia's Gift explores what the presence of a child prodigy can do to a family, and what a misguided family can do to a child prodigy's talent. And that is not always a pretty or painless tale. The novel is therefore not suitable for children, but the concert (mostly) is, and has often been enjoyed by those aged 10 upwards.

Alicia's Gift is published by Hodder and can be found as an e-book or paperback here.

Here's what's in the concert...



  • Viv McLean  piano
  • Jessica Duchen  narrator
Author Jessica Duchen and pianist Viv McLean unite to tell the story of a child prodigy pianist trying to grow up, exploring her talent’s effect on her family and her family’s effect on her talent. 
Jessica’s readings from her novel Alicia’s Gift alternate with Viv’s performances of the relevant music to create a compelling joint narrative in words and music.
    • Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849)
          • Ballade No. 3 in A flat major Op. 47
    • Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
        • Estampes
          • Jardins sous la pluie
    • Fryderyk Chopin
          • Etude in C minor Op. 25 No. 12
    • Enrique Granados (1867-1916)
        • Goyescas
          • Quejas, o La maja y el ruiseñor
    • George Gershwin (1898-1937)
          • Rhapsody in Blue
    • Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
          • Sonatine
        • Ma mère l'oye
          • Le jardin féerique. Lent et grave


    Saturday, July 18, 2015

    Pinch me - I'm doing a concert with Peter Donohoe

    I can't quite get my head around this one, but Peter Donohoe has invited me to his festival in Fishguard to give a performance of the Alicia's Gift concert with him, week after next.

    Repertoire will be tweaked as appropriate - the Scriabin Sonata No.5 will have the party-piece spot in the second half. There's the Ravel duet to conclude, though, so, yeah, I have to play a duet with this guy whose playing I have admired enormously ever since hearing him on the radio for the first time as a teenager, so it is a scary if also thrilling prospect. Last year when I was in Moscow I heard Peter play Rach 3 at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, with that same Scriabin as an encore - a stunning, unforgettable concert.

    Alicia's Gift is on Tuesday week, 28 July, at St Peter's Church, Goodwick, at 2pm. More here. 

    Here is Peter playing Rach 3 at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1982...




    Friday, September 19, 2014

    Better together


    Scotland has decided to stay after all, which is nice. Above, a picture of me and Murray McLachlan finishing the Alicia's Gift concert at Chetham's last month with clear proof that a Scot and an Englishperson can cooperate rather beautifully when given half a chance. Murray hails originally from Aberdeen and is now head of piano at Chet's.

    Speaking of Alicia's Gift, the first of several for the new season finds me reunited with Viv McLean this Sunday at 4pm at Westminster Cathedral Hall, courtesy of the Chopin Society. We're very honoured to be part of such a distinguished series - and are looking forward, additionally, to the wonderful tea that habitually follows these recitals. Do please come along and join us. Info and tickets here. (and more about the book here.)

    By way of a taster, here's Viv playing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which features in the programme alongside the likes of Chopin, Granados, Falla, Debussy and Ravel.





    Monday, September 01, 2014

    September: some gigs and a song

    Hello, it's September. How did that happen?!

    Here are a few things I'm doing this month: do come along if you're in the vicinity of any of them!

    14 September, 3.30pm:
    HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE LITERARY FESTIVAL: JOHN OGDON. I interview Ogdon's biographer Charles Beauclerk about the life and work of the troubled musical genius. LJCC, Ivy House, North End Road, Golders Green, London NW11.

    21 September, 4pm:
    ALICIA'S GIFT, the Concert of the Novel. Viv McLean (piano), me (narrator). Chopin Society, London, Westminster Cathedral Hall.

    24 September, 6.15pm
    PANUFNIK CENTENARY Pre-Concert Talk at the CBSO, Symphony Hall, Birmingham. I interview Sir Andrzej Panufnik's daughter, composer Roxanna Panufnik, about the life, legacy and influence of her father and his music. Concert includes A.Panufnik's Piano Concerto (with Peter Donohoe) and Sinfonia Elegiaca. 


    September is one of the most beautiful months of the year. Here is its eponymous song by this year's top anniversary man, Richard Strauss, from Four Last Songs. The soprano is Nina Stemme, and it's the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by Tony Pappano. 

    I am sick as the proverbial parrot about having missed Nina's Salome at the Proms on Saturday night. I was in Salzburg to interview a VIPianist and was travelling back at the time. Apparently it was totally sensational and you can hear it on the iPlayer here: click on Listen Again, even if you haven't listened before.

    Tuesday, July 15, 2014

    Buxton Festival TOMORROW

    Viv and I are giving the first performance of our new coffee-concert version of the ALICIA'S GIFT show at the Buxton Festival, Pavilion Arts Centre, tomorrow at 12 noon. The story is set in Buxton, so effectively we are taking it him! Do join us if you're in the area! Repertoire includes Chopin, Debussy, Granados, Ravel and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which is Viv's party piece and quite an experience in his wonderful hands. And...the sun is shining! http://www.buxtonfestival.co.uk/music-series/alicias-gift-concert/

    Meanwhile I am very much looking forward to hearing Dvorak's The Jacobin at the Buxton Opera House tonight, conducted by festival director Stephen Barlow. Off to Euston shortly...

    Sunday, January 19, 2014

    A filmed interview with...me.

    The lovely Melanie Spanswick has uploaded to her Classical Piano and Music Education Blog a filmed interview with me for her Music Talk series, complete with forthcoming concert dates for my stage projects and some wonderful Ravel played by Viv McLean at one of our Alicia's Gift concerts. Please pop over to her site, here.

    Monday, December 09, 2013

    "Sacred space" syndrome

    Or...an afternoon at St Mary's, Perivale. 

    We used to hear a fair bit about the concept of a "sacred space": a place that builds up an atmosphere over years, decades, centuries - and that transmits this special energy to people who enter it and breathe it in.

    I well remember reading a particularly beautiful book by lutenist Anthony Rooley which went into this idea in some depth and discussed the question of what it adds to musical performance. The short answer was "a lot". The epitome of this sacred space, if I remember right, was Dartington Hall.

    In recent years - at least since the financial crash - the notion of something sacred has become inordinately tied to associations with fundamentalism (in many forms) and the question of experiencing something perhaps "psychic" or "esoteric" has become somehow old-hat new-age.

    Fortunately for us, though, these matters don't cease to exist just because we stop taking notice of them.

    In the past week, I've encountered two manifestations of sacred-space energy in musical performance. One was at St Bartholemew the Great - probably the most beautiful church in London, part of which dates back to 1123. Last week Peters Edition held its Christmas concert in there, candle-lit and featuring a cappella contemporary choral pieces from Britain and the Baltics, performed by the choirs VOCES8 and Lumina. Such composers featured as Morten Lauridsen, Vytautas Miskinis (from Lithuania), Eriks Ešenvalds (from Latvia), Alexander Levine (Russian-born British resident), our own Roxanna Panufnik and a fine organ piece by Judith Bingham. Anyone who thinks that beauty in music is dead should have been there. Some of the pieces were breathtaking in their use of original harmonic language and sonic imagination that - especially in the case of Ešenvalds's The Long Road - could stretch our consciousness out towards the most unexpected of developments, blending tradition with absolute originality. In the audience, it was magic.

    Then yesterday Viv McLean and I went to perform Alicia's Gift at St Mary's, Perivale, and got more than we bargained for. Pictured above, Viv warming up...

    St Mary's is a tiny 12th-century wooden church tucked away behind a west London golf course and the A40 just north of Ealing. For the past few years Hugh Mather - a retired medic and devoted pianist himself - has been running a concert series here. The place seats about 80 and admission is free; the audience can give a donation at the end if they wish. It's small, white, wooden-beamed, with 15th-century brasses in the floor stones protected by a carpet; and the platform area is currently dominated by a small but excellent Yamaha and a large and lovely Christmas tree. It is a comfortable, intimate space for a performance; speaking without a microphone is no worry, and the exchange between us in the cosiness of the space made unifying the two mediums of words and music remarkably easy.

    But then, sitting close to the piano while Viv played Rhapsody in Blue, I noticed something extraordinary taking place. It is hard to describe, but I think some might call it "grace". It's a feeling of being suspended within the flow of time and space and breathing something lighter and purer than oxygen. A form of happiness, perhaps. Joy in its purest form: motionless and light and lacking in any worldly element. It resembles the state of a very good meditation session, yet it's spontaneous, not striven for;  something that lands on you, and you accept it because it feels so astonishing. And it is definitely to do with the space, because I've only experienced anything like it a few times before, and always in places that contain deep resonances and/or long-rooted dedications. Jerusalem, Lincoln Cathedral, that kind of place. And, yes, St Bartholemew the Great.

    I told Hugh about this impression and he remarks that prayers have been said in that church for 800 years, "around 30 generations in which people have assembled there in good times and bad, and the accumulated spirituality soaked into the walls".

    Incidentally, I'm supposedly an atheist. You can be as cynical as you like, but that doesn't change the fact that these things happen sometimes.

    Anyway, the audience seemed to love the concert, we had a completely adorable day and it was lovely to finish the show and be greeted, heading off stage, with a nice cup of steaming hot tea.






    Wednesday, November 13, 2013

    TONIGHT: Alicia's Gift goes to Leighton House

    Tonight: we are delighted that Alicia's Gift: The Concert of the Novel will be presented by the Kensington & Chelsea Music Society at Leighton House Museum, 12 Holland Park Road
    London W14 8LZ. It's an amazing venue, the former home of Lord Leighton and his art collection, where east meets west...

    Kick-off is 7.30pm and Viv and I, much encouraged by Saturday's successful outing (unexpectedly alongside a Mighty Wurlitzer), are looking forward to it immensely. Enormous thanks to the doughty Peter Thomas and the enthusiasm of KCMS for this project. I read; Viv plays Chopin, Falla, Debussy, Ravel, Granados, Messiaen and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue; and we finish with eine kleine piano duet...
    BOOK HERE: http://www.kcmusic.org.uk/alicia_concert.htm

    Saturday, November 09, 2013

    Connections...

    I've been having some fun with the connections between Gypsy music and classical, with the help of such individuals as Jascha Heifetz, Grigoras Dinicu, Ginette Neveu and Roby Lakatos...and the result is up on the Sinfini site now. Enjoy.

    Speaking of connections, a friend asked me how she could subscribe to JDCMB by email, since she doesn't do Facebook or Twitter. I didn't know, so I've been finding out, and now I've put a "Subscribe by email" box in the sidebar. If you sign up to this, you'll automatically receive a message whenever I publish a new post. I hope this is a useful new way to connect.

    Premiere of ALICIA'S GIFT is tonight at the Musical Museum, Kew Bridge. Next up, Kensington & Chelsea Music Society at Leighton House, Wednesday evening. I narrate the story from my novel about a child prodigy pianist and her talent's effect on her family. Viv plays Chopin, Debussy, Granados, Gershwin, Ravel...and I need to practise glissandi. Please connect by coming to say hi afterwards if you're there.

    Monday, November 04, 2013

    Invitation to drinks & books on Friday

    JDCMB readers are warmly invited to a drinks party on Friday at Houben's Bookshop, 2 Church Court, Richmond (about 5 mins from Richmond station) to mark the start of the ALICIA'S GIFT Concert tour-ette. 6.30pm-7.30pm and copies of the book will be on sale, as will concert tickets. Space is limited, so please call to book your place! 020 8940 1055 or 07889 399 862. 

    A concert trailer is here, with Viv McLean playing Rhapsody in Blue: http://jessicamusic.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/a-trailer-for-alicias-gift-concert.html

    Friday, October 18, 2013

    A trailer for the ALICIA'S GIFT concert



    Here is my Alicia's Gift Concert partner, Viv McLean, playing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which will feature in our programme in a big way. This was at the gorgeous 12th-century church of St Mary's, Perivale, where the tireless Hugh Mather runs an exceptional concert series - Viv is a regular there. Enjoy.

    Alicia's Gift will be at St Mary's on 8 December, but don't forget we kick off on 9 November at the Musical Museum, Brentford, with Kensington & Chelsea Music Society to follow on 13 November, Vernon Ellis's Queen's Gate Terrace salon on 27th, and finally before Xmas a performance for our North London fans at Burgh House, Hampstead, on 15 December.

    Monday, October 14, 2013

    My autumn & winter schedule

    Here are some dates for your diaries, fresh from my writing desk: a brand-new words&music concert, a brand-new play, more HUNGARIAN DANCES. Please come along! (The info is also in the sidebar, but certain people are telling me to put it somewhere more prominent...)

    ALICIA'S GIFT: THE CONCERT OF THE NOVEL - new!

    Starring Viv McLean (piano) (left) & Jessica Duchen (narrator).

    A concert adaptation of my novel, lifting the lid on the world of a child prodigy pianist trying to grow up. Music includes Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Viv's famous performance of Rhapsody in Blue, and a little surprise to end (clue: I have to practise...). News story in International Piano, here.

    World premiere: 9 November, Musical Museum, Kew Bridge.To book tickets, call Houben's Bookshop, Richmond-upon-Thames, 020 8940 1055 or Yvonne Evans, 07889 399862. Ticket price includes a tour of the museum's amazing collection plus a glass of bubbly.

    13 November, Kensington & Chelsea Music Society

    27 November, Vernon Ellis Foundation, 49 Queen's Gate Terrace, SW7. Info from Yvonne: 07889 399862.

    8 December, St Mary's, Perivale

    15 December, Burgh House, Hampstead, NW3. Tickets from Yvonne: 07889 399862.

    18 January, Soirees at Breinton, Woking


    SINS OF THE FATHERS - new!

    World premiere of my first full-length play, exploring the relationships of Wagner, Liszt and Cosima: rehearsed reading starring John Sessions (right) and Sarah Gabriel. 24 November, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond-upon-Thames. Part of the International Wimbledon Music Festival. NB - the performance is sold out, but please watch for returns/standing room!


    HUNGARIAN DANCES: THE CONCERT OF THE NOVEL

    A dazzling journey in words and music through the 20th century, following the story of Mimi, a Hungarian Gypsy violinist who becomes a famous classical soloist, but at a terrible personal price... Works by Bartok, Dohnanyi, Brahms, Ravel, etc.

    27 October, 7.45pm, Teesside Music Society.
    Bradley Creswick (violin), Margaret Fingerhut (piano), Jessica Duchen (narrator). (Team pictured left)

    27 January 2014, Hungarian Cultural Centre, Covent Garden
    David Le Page (violin), Viv McLean (piano), Jessica Duchen (narrator). Special performance for International Holocaust Memorial Day.

    2 March 2014, St Mary's, Perivale: again, Dave, Viv & muggins.