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 photo: Corinna Desch |
I write for and about music, dividing my time between journalism, biography, fiction and stage works.
My latest book is Myra Hess – National Treasure, the first new biography of the great British pianist in nearly 50 years. It is published by Kahn & Averill in spring 2025.
I contribute to the Times and Sunday Times, the I Paper and BBC Music Magazine, among others, and was classical music correspondent for The Independent from 2004 to 2016.
As a librettist I’ve written numerous texts for choral works and operas for the composer Roxanna Panufnik, including Silver Birch, commissioned by Garsington Opera and shortlisted for an International Opera Award in 2018, and Dalia, also for Garsington, which won an Excellence in Music and Education Award in 2023. My libretti for two works for Garsington Youth Opera are based on stories by Oscar Wilde: The Happy Princess with composer Paul Fincham (2019) and The Selfish Giant with John Barber, premiered in summer 2021 and by its co-commissioner, Opera North, in 2022.
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My novel Immortal (2020) is based on the latest research into the identity of Beethoven’s mysterious ‘immortal beloved’. Ghost Variations tells the astonishing story of the suppressed Schumann Violin Concerto’s bizarre discovery in the 1930s. Among my earlier books, Alicia’s Gift is about a child prodigy pianist (“the book that inspired our family” – The Kanneh-Masons), and Hungarian Dances is the saga of a family of violinists through the 20th century.
I often perform my own narrated concerts and concert dramas. Some are based on my novels, including Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved, Ghost Variations, Alicia’s Gift, Hungarian Dances and Odette. Musicians I’ve worked with include violinists Philippe Graffin, David Le Page, Fenella Humphreys and Bradley Creswick, and pianists Viv McLean and Margaret Fingerhut. Being Mrs Bach is a concert drama about Anna Magdalena, originally created for the Australian Festival of Chamber Music 2018. Seeking Utopia, commissioned by the violist Shiry Rashkovsky, explored the friendship of Vaughan Williams and Lionel Tertis, and Archangel: A Foray into Fauré, with Fenella Humphreys and Viv McLean, was created for the centenary of Fauré’s death.
I was born within the sound of Bow Bells, studied music at Cambridge and live in London with my husband and our cat. I love theatre, playing the piano, cookery, hiking and obscure old books about music. |
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