Friday 10 November 2000

Not the most productive of weeks - I've been ill.  This is not something I'm used to, having inherited the stubborn constitution (and attitude) of my father, who never lost a day's work until he was well into his 60s.  But on Wednesday I was reduced to a shivering mess wrapped up in a duvet on the floor, drifting in and out of sleep in front of the fire.  It must be about 15 years since I was last ill enough to stop moving for more than half an hour.

Today I felt strong enough to don my BBC hat and look after Nancy Argenta and Maggie Cole's lunchtime concert at the RSAMD.  I've never been a great fan of Maggie's harpsichord playing (although I did once consider having lessons with her, just because our styles are polar opposites), but her fortepiano accompaniments were exemplary.  Listening to her made me realise I've still got a long way to go playing those things.  Strangely enough, Gary Cooper and I had a brief guilty conversation after his gig the other week along the lines of 'Have you got the hang of this fortepiano lark yet?' 'No.' 'Me neither.'  And he's just made a great record of the Mozart piano quartets with Sonnerie - hope he doesn't read this.

Nancy had a terrible cold, and by halfway through the concert her speaking voice had pretty much gone (she went straight for the inhaler every time she came offstage), but her singing was uncannily precise, and vividly coloured.  You'd never have guessed she wasn't a picture of health.  And then she went on to give a long masterclass immediately afterwards - what a pro.

Brian McMaster at the Edinburgh Festival wants me to go and see him to talk about The Gentle Shepherd, so I'm going to have to do some swotting up over the next week or two to try and convince him it's worth putting on.  Apparently he's not wild about it as a text, so perhaps I can sell it to him as an essential piece of Scottish theatre history: it did run for about 70 years in Edinburgh, so it can't be complete tosh.