Happy New Year! The big challenge for me in 2024 will be a performance of Brahms 2nd piano concerto in Poland with the Filharmonialubelska. I last performed the concerto in 1986 and the process of returning to this great work is immensely exciting. There will also be some recitals to prepare, not least of which will be a fundraising concert for Brain and Mind Health at Jesus College Cambridge in March.

Mining the archive can be very satisfying. My old recording of Scubert's A minor sonata, D.845 and D major sonata, D.850, has recently found its way onto streaming services. And at the very end of 2023, a recording of the Arensky Quintet from over 20 years ago with dear friends and colleagues (Krzysztof Smietana, Dimitar Burov, David Greenlees and Leonid Gorokhov) and never previously released, landed in my inbox courtesy of our producer Andrew Hallifax. This is also going onto streaming services coupled with the Shostakovich piano quintet. This will join other old recordings like my first CD, a recording of Shostakovich's piano sonatas and preludes (recorded in 1996) on Spotify and my most recent recording (2019) of violin sonatas by Busoni and Respighi with Krzysztof Smietana.

Frustratingly, events still conspire to force a postponement of the Beethoven cycle with violinist Krzysztof Smietana but we are working on the series for the 2024-25 season. In the meantime there is still this popular video of Beethoven's Spring Sonata.

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