Many young musicians said sadly that in music the bar is set very high for ‘success’. In the world of performance, everyone thinks ’success’ means international stardom; this is what most students strive for when they enter music college. By the time they leave, it has dawned on most that stardom only comes to a few, and not always to the most deserving. If they discover they’re not amongst the high-flyers, they turn their thoughts rather belatedly to other ways of making a living within music. But they often feel that their revised goals make them second-class members of their institutions, whether anyone says so or not. It’s enough to study in an atmosphere where the high-flyers are so idolised.

Someone gave the example of a well-known American music department which took in 100 clarinet students and was thrilled when one of them landed a Principal Clarinet job with a major symphony orchestra. The college authorities boasted about this achievement at various meetings. ‘What about the other 99 clarinettists?’ someone asked. ‘They don’t count’, was the answer. A joke, perhaps, but not that far from how the other 99 often feel.

Music is unusual because the training usually starts in childhood. Young players travel hopefully for years towards ‘success’, bolstered by the support and dreams of their families. By the time they’re full-time college students they have invested a lot, financially and emotionally, in their musical careers. It’s very difficult then to revise their aspirations ‘downwards’, yet most of them eventually have to do so. When this happens, they stop thinking of themselves as potential winners and start wondering if they’re second-rate, even if they are excellent musicians and well placed to be tremendously useful to their communities. It’s an unfortunate by-product of a training which starts with a childhood dream, long before the age of rational decision-making or a realistic view of the world and its opportunities.

I can’t think of other professions where ‘being successful’ means being internationally acclaimed. If you are a teacher, doctor or lawyer, success means that you are making a valued contribution to your community. You don’t have to be known internationally to feel that you’ve ‘made it’. If only the same were true of music.

Winners and ‘losers’ is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

So last night I tried to google the result. There was nothing; not on the news pages, not in a general internet search, not even on the BBC web page devoted to the competition. Yet I knew the competition had finished in Gateshead hours before. Why was nobody publishing the result? It seemed bizarre. I watched the 10pm BBC news which didn’t mention it either.

This morning I tried again – still no result. The BBC Young Musician website had still not been updated. Shame on you, BBC Wales! There was nothing on the news pages. And finally it was from Norman Lebrecht’s blog that I learned the winner’s name. I’m thrilled that cellist Laura van der Heijden was the winner (readers will remember I mentioned her at an earlier stage of the competition), but surely there should be far more fanfare and celebration of her and of the other outstanding young musicians? For me, and I imagine for many others, these young people have been an inspiration over the weeks of the competition. Why on earth is the publicity so reticent? Shouldn’t we be shouting from the rooftops about talent of this order?

BBC Young Musician result is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

We took some of Bob’s home-made sourdough bread, cut up into tiny chunks, to feed to the new arrivals. The parent coots came on shore with alacrity to get the bread and went straight back to the nest to feed it to the little ones. It was thrilling for Bob to see the cootlings eating his home-made bread for their breakfast.

Arrival of the baby birds is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Billy Mayerl was the famous pianist of the Savoy Hotel in London in the 1920s. His sparkling piano music is some of the best light music I know. Some years ago, I recorded a whole album of it for Virgin Classics. People often ask me if there’s going to be another album. I realised I could follow the lead of those artists who’ve successfully recorded themselves playing in their own basements. I thought it would be fun to be able to record on my own piano, in my own living-room, so I’ve called the recordings ‘Tomes at Home’.

In my MP3 store you can listen to sound samples and buy these tracks:

• Song of the Fir Tree
• From a Spanish Lattice
• Parade of the Sandwich-Board Men
• Marigold
• Funny Peculiar
• Ace of Clubs

You don’t need a PayPal account to buy a track; you can also use a credit card. Just follow the steps described in the MP3 Shopping Instructions. You can buy just a single track, or more than one at a time. You can also write in to receive a free track download of me playing ‘Ace of Diamonds’.

Visit my MP3 store and tell me what you think. More tracks will be available soon. Do you have a favourite Billy Mayerl piece you’d like me to record?

My MP3 Store is now live! is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

It has been a lot of work, and a lot of travelling (especially for Erich, coming from Vienna each time) but it has been very satisfying. In fact, it has been one of my favourite projects in recent years. We were touched when we began to realise how many people had made major efforts to be at every concert, in some cases coming up by train from London, driving up from the north of England, or down from the north of Scotland. It may not have been the biggest audience ever gathered in Perth, but it must have been one of the most loyal.

After Wednesday’s concert, we stayed on for an extra day and went for a fabulous walk through The Hermitage at Dunkeld (see photo) - a walk which Mendelssohn once did on a visit to Scotland.

There was a five-star review of our final concert in today’s Herald. Click here to read it.

Herald review is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

During the instrumental part of the evening, a young violinist and pianist played a Kreisler piece which started off slowly and became increasingly fast in the middle, before returning to a slow final section. During the fast section, as the speed of notes increased, the audience broke into applause and clapped enthusiastically throughout the virtuosic section, so that although we could see the violinist’s bowing arm weaving madly about, we could hardly hear anything. When the notes slowed down again, the applause faded away and everyone listened quietly to the end.

I had read about audiences in Beethoven’s day behaving something like this, but had never witnessed such a reaction myself. It was interesting partly because it reduced the virtuosic passage to spectacle alone. I wondered whether the musicians felt furious that the fieriest bit of music was completely inaudible, or whether they were gratified by the noisy appreciation.

We also saw something very funny from the page-turner assisting the pianist. The final page-turn came, and then there were two pages of music still to play. But as the page-turner made the final turn, he also wheeled smartly about and marched into the wings, leaving the pianist alone for the final minutes of music. By doing this the page-turner probably hoped to be as unobtrusive as possible, but it had the reverse effect.

History coming alive is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

My only disappointment was the absence of girls from the Piano final. Where were they? Many of my best piano students are girls and I can hardly believe there weren’t any good candidates.

These days, everyone seems to be able to tackle virtuosic pieces with incredible aplomb; competitor after competitor presented programmes of enormous technical difficulty. Despite the rising level of virtuosity, however, it remains the case that what the audience is hoping for is someone who can combine instrumental mastery with emotion and understanding. That combination is as rare as it ever was. But we did see it, notably in the case of Laura van der Heijden, the 14-year-old cellist who won the String final last night.

BBC Young Musician 2012 is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

In the old historic part of Havana there’s a colonial house with a statue of Mozart, of all people. When I visited, a magnificent peacock was in full display in front of Mozart’s face. For me it was a good illustration of the strange and unexpected things which co-exist in Cuba.

Back from Cuba is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Oh yes, I agree: it’s hard to imagine me in Cuba, even for me. I’m a bit scared of the tropical mosquitoes, but I’m really looking forward to hearing some fabulous music.

I won’t be dealing with e-mail or comments to this blog while I’m away, so please don’t expect an immediate reply.  Until I start writing again, enjoy this beautiful photo of cherry blossom in the Imperial Gardens in Tokyo, kindly sent to me by a friend in Japan.

Easter blog holiday is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Once again it’s not clear what is really being said about classical music.  On the one hand, transport bosses say their older passengers appreciate its ‘soothing atmosphere’. On the other, they say it will deter ‘gangs of youths’ who will re-schedule their loitering rather than have to listen to it. Presumably this isn’t because of how it actually sounds, but because of what it represents.

Bach, Handel, Mozart and Vivaldi would all be horrified if they knew their music was being used to drive youngsters away. Luckily for them, in their day there wasn’t the separation between ’classical’ and ‘popular’ music that there is now.  They used the musical language of the time, and so did buskers on the street and musicians in cafes. Mozart famously found that tunes from his opera ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ had been taken up by barrel-organ players in Prague when he went there a few months later.

It’s sobering to reflect that Mozart, Bach etc would never have encountered the silver-haired audience whom today we regard as the ’core audience’ for classical music. When life expectancy in Europe was around 30, there was obviously no such thing as an entire audience of people in their fifties, sixties and seventies. Nor was there ever a silver-haired Mozart.

Bus station classics is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Reviews and viewers’ comments had suggested it was either a masterpiece or a shocking waste of two and a half hours. Both sides seemed to agree it was in the ‘Suddenly, nothing happened’ school of arthouse movies, which we generally enjoy. And we loved this film, especially after the quarter-hour of deafening movie trailers which preceded it. Its first ninety minutes, where a small group of disenchanted policemen escort two murder suspects through the Turkish countryside in the dark to identify the place where they buried the body, had a pacing and a patience which reminded me of certain favourite pieces of music.

I don’t think we were able to unravel the plot of ‘Anatolia’ any more than anyone else has, given the bits of evidence carefully pointing in different directions, but that only made it seem more realistic. Like many good works of art it prompted us to talk for ages afterwards – about the film, about what life must be like in Turkey, about the film’s silent women and why they are catalysts. We discussed the character of the doctor, and for whose sake he decides to conceal a discovery made during the autopsy in the final scene. Even this morning I was still trying to figure out whether the various characters who report seeing the dead man alive and well after the night of his alleged murder were deluded, or whether their sightings might indicate that Yasar had not died where or when the ‘murderer’ said.

It’s a funny thing: those loud all-action films, like the ones we saw trailers for, are often swallowed whole and forgotten the next day, but ‘Once upon a time in Anatolia’ will stay with me for a long time.

Ceylan’s ‘Anatolia’ is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Apparently it can ‘lessen fear’ and reduce the heart rate of patients who are played ‘easy listening’ and ‘chart classics’ while having surgery under local anaesthetic.

Although ‘easy listening’ is balm to some people’s ears, it won’t work for everyone. Whenever I’m having any kind of treatment with one of those ’cosmic vibrations’ CDs burbling away in the background, trying to make me feel at one with the universe, I feel actively irritated. The other day I was subjected to a ‘soothing’ CD in which bits of Mendelssohn and Liszt (played by a computer program) were faded out now and then into the sound of waves breaking on the shore. After a while of listening to this I felt distinctly less peaceful. If I were forced to listen to ’chart classics’ during an operation, I’d probably feel like biting the surgeon’s arm.

A recent study from Japan raised interesting questions. Mice were found to survive surgery for a longer period if during their recovery period they had been played excerpts from Verdi’s opera ‘La Traviata’, or from Mozart symphonies. Such music is far from ‘chill-out’ – it engages the emotions powerfully and probably raises the pulse rate. The Verdi-medicated mice evidently experienced beneficial changes to the functioning of their immune systems, but the effect was not the same with pop music. For me, that’s a more intriguing result than the ‘easy listening’ experiment. Could it be good to play surgery patients music which draws them in, works on different layers of their perception, and takes them on a long imaginative journey? It worked for mice, and they presumably didn’t have any preconceptions about whether or not they liked classical music.

Playing music during surgery is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

I looked at the website statistics to get an overview. The number of readers continues to go slowly up, but I have never experienced the ‘whoosh’ effect described by people who find that there comes a day when, all of a sudden and without any apparent reason, there’s an exponential rise in their readership. Perhaps this is because I don’t use Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Should I learn? I can hardly face the thought of yet more things to check and respond to. I’d probably never get to sit down at the piano again.

I’m close to launching ‘The Shop’, a page on this website where you’ll be able to buy mp3 files of me playing Billy Mayerl piano pieces at home. The pieces are newly recorded, and are not on my existing Virgin Classics disc of Mayerl’s piano music, ‘Loose Elbows’.  Watch this page for more news of my ‘Tomes at Home’ project.

Third anniversary of this blog is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

I said to Bob, ‘I wish this lot would come to my concerts. They all look so nice! How can I get them all to come?’ He suggested I might try to tag them all electronically, so that I could subtly infiltrate their minds at a later date with a deep and irresistible yearning to be present at my concerts. I shall ponder this further.

We were looking forward to hearing Charlie Brooker, but he wasn’t able to be there because his wife is having a baby. However, it was thrilling to see three of my favourite Guardian writers who had stood in at short notice: Gary Younge, Tim Dowling and Lucy Mangan, whose every word we follow avidly in this house.

When I saw Lucy afterwards on the terrace, I tried to convey our ardent appreciation, but ended up feeling foolish, as one always does. It’s maddening how difficult it is to get this right. As a performer, I’m familiar with people coming up to me to say things after a concert, and I know it’s a tough thing to do. You’d think that after observing it so many times I’d have worked out how to be the perfect compliment-giver, but no. I stammer, go red, and hear myself mangling phrases as though I’ve never been in this situation before.

Guardian Open Weekend is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

The parakeets have been a feature of the park for some years, but still strike an exotic note with their vivid green plumage and their exuberant screeching. When flocks of them fly overhead, the effect can be quite startling. I’ve heard people explain their presence here in various ways – escaped from captivity, arrived on a barge on the Thames, let out of a container at Heathrow Airport by mistake – but I believe they may simply have changed their migration habits and alighted on the UK as an acceptable destination.

It’s a lovely day, and we’d gone to the park to see if anything was in bloom. Not much was, but the white magnolia trees in the Isabella Plantation were looking splendid, and there was a large herd of dappled deer browsing under the trees.

Parakeets in Richmond Park is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

I started to search around on art-history sites and paint history websites for a description of that particular colour. In the process I found all sorts of interesting stuff about the history of yellow paint and the ingredients – rocks, minerals, plants, flowers, berries, clay and earth – which are used to make it. I read about a yellow called ‘gamboge’, and about umber and burnt sienna, about Naples Yellow and lead-tin yellow, about King’s Yellow, and about red and yellow ochre. I read about orpiment, a dangerous reddish-yellow which contained arsenic sulphide, and about the expensive saffron. I learned about apprentices whose task was to mix up colours from ingredients hard to obtain and infuriating to grind. By switching the search to ‘images’ I found cascades of glorious pictures of all these yellows, and instances of their appearance in paintings and art objects around the world. From which I concluded that Bob’s blood orange tart was perhaps the colour of orpiment.

Blood orange tart is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

The Japanese edition, published by Shunju-sha, will come out in early summer. I’m excited about that, and extra-pleased because it will have at least 12 photos, mainly nature scenes, taken by me. I only recently started taking photos and never expected to see any of mine in a book.

Noriko sent me this delightful photo from Tokyo. It shows Hinata, the grandson of friends of Noriko, inspecting the English edition of my book. My youngest reader!

My youngest reader is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

All the performers agreed that talking to the audience is a fine thing, desirable from many points of view, but much more difficult  to do than is commonly realised. It seems that talking uses a different part of the brain than playing an instrument does. Many performers reported that, no matter how calm they felt before they went on stage, their focus was disrupted by the act of talking to the audience. After speaking, they turned to their instrument, only to find that their concentration had become frazzled. Their heart was pumping, their hands were shaking, their vision might be disturbed. Even singers said that, although they obviously use words when they sing, it’s a different matter to use their own words and their own tone of voice when speaking to the audience. Everyone felt more vulnerable.

Performing from memory seemed to be especially affected by talking to the audience immediately beforehand. Some performers agreed that the process of public speaking somehow drags their thoughts up onto a conscious level, and this is counter-productive if you are about to play from memory, when you need a deeper, more trustful attitude. You really need to quell that inner voice which questions things.

In short, it seems that no matter how fervently musicians believe in talking to the audience, there may be inherent difficulties in doing so, and these difficulties might have a neurological explanation.

To talk or not to talk is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

Of course, as it turned out, McLuhan had seen the shape of things to come. We didn’t downgrade the importance of the phone, even when we had all got used to having one. I thought of McLuhan yesterday when a colleague was telling me about a piano competition she adjudicated in Hong Kong. One of the competitors came on stage, started to play his piece, and then stopped to answer the mobile phone which was ringing in his pocket. He calmly told the caller that he couldn’t speak right now because he was playing in a piano competition, and then he put his phone away and resumed playing where he had left off. And when the adjudicators gave him a low mark, he came up afterwards and asked them why.

‘I can’t talk right now’ is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog

I particularly admired how open they were to trying out new ideas. Sometimes people don’t (or can’t) really try out new suggestions – for a variety of reasons: they don’t want to look silly, they may not have enough technical flexibility to try something new on the spur of the moment, or they’re too heavily invested in doing something the way they planned.

Sometimes people try out your idea for a few bars and then revert. At other times they subtly sabotage the idea, by doing it half-heartedly and making it look unconvincing. It takes a certain largeness of mind to be willing to try out new ideas in front of an audience, and my participants all had it. In the case of the Trio Paul Klee, they took on board the idea of using less vibrato in Mendelssohn’s D minor trio, and they even persisted with the idea and made a success of it in the final concert – quite a tribute to their open-mindedness, I thought.

Masterclass report is a post from the Susan Tomes: Pianist & writer blog