Just back from my London trip, enjoying a jet-lagged and cloud­less day. Every­body I met in London apol­o­gized for the gray weather there, though I don’t think any of them were at fault. I didn’t mind, even though I failed to find a proper mack­in­tosh. Today is devoted to those post-travel chores which seem extremely neces­sary; deliv­er­ing dry cleaning, facing the ball of black once-lettuce in the fridge.

Can anyone explain the follow­ing phenom­e­non: Until this morning, I hadn’t touched a piano since playing the final note of my Wigmore show last Friday, and now I sound fantas­tic. I just ran through Schu­man­n’s Gesänge der Frühe, a peren­nial favorite, and I think it may have been the best I’ve ever played it in my life. Now, I am sure that this is really not the case; it must be some sort of aural/perceptual illusion at work. But even so, I had some quite real inter­pre­ta­tional ideas about the piece, new details I hadn’t uncov­ered in the last 12 or so years I’ve played it. I suppose I’ve just proved true the pedes­trian advice that taking a break is some­times helpful. But I wonder how many profes­sional musi­cians make a point to take time off their instru­ments. Most of the ones I know seem too neurotic by half.

Lots of people told me that (the) Wigmore Hall (it’s got a paren­thet­i­cal pronoun like [le] Poisson Rouge) is a fantas­tic place to play, and I’m happy to report that it is. The expe­ri­ence is very old-world; there is nothing super­flu­ous. The hall is orna­mented but not over­bear­ingly so, and the stage is just about the perfect size for a concert grand and a body. The acoustic is perfect, which is to say you don’t notice it; the piano just sounds like the best possible version of itself. There was a nice-sized crowd of what looked to be mostly young people; appar­ently I scared most of the gray-haired ladies off (I love you too, gray-haired ladies! You’ll come around even­tu­ally). There are differ­ent ratios for things in London; for instance, I think Wigmore must have the largest for size-of-green room to size-of-hall. My hotel also had the largest size-of-shower-head to size-of-bathroom ratio of all time. I’d say about 20% of the bathroom was shower-head. Wigmore Hall also has a dread­fully polite coughing policy which, as far as I could tell, appears to work quite well.

Tried many inter­est­ing food­stuffs. Did not try the Brown Sauce. I’d say that I prefer Eccles cake over Eton mess, and kedgeree over every­thing. For a proper take on kedgeree, watch this video, then commit it to memory.