Very tired, iritis returning, I may spend tomorrow morning in Eye Casualty in the hospital across the road when it opens ...

Anyway ... last night in Belfast was a very interesting exercise in playing while extremely stressed. The day started well: the flight was on time, I took the bus to the hotel in 10 minutes, and the journey from the stage to the safety of my spacious hotel room took exactly three minutes and five seconds (I checked). But ... there wasn't enough time to rehearse; the harpsichord turned out to be a 1970s Goble in equal temperament, which the tuner didn't know how to fix and he hadn't been booked to standby for the concert anyway, prompting CB to remark 'it's at times like this that you realise what the early music movement was for'; it was going to be broadcast; and the controller and head of music of Radio 3 (neither of whom have heard me play live before) and a few producers for good measure, were all there and watching.  Hmm.  I've found that the best thing to do in these situations is to quietly and calmly check all the avenues of possible improvement of the situation: for example, waiting for the tuner to arrive and gently pointing out that I'm only playing in sharp keys and does he know Werckmeister or Young, for example? 'No, you'll have to make do with this'. I had brought my own tuning hammer just in case, but it didn't fit the 1970s-design pins. So I went to Marks and Spencer's and bought some food instead, and then forewent the first part of L'Arpeggiata's set (even though they were great) and sat in my hotel room alternately reading the score and lying on the floor, with breaks for eating. And then five minutes before we went on, Kate and I made each other laugh a lot backstage, and then went for it (and C Bott going for it is a powerful thing indeed - listen and tremble). So I don't know if I'd win any accuracy prices but it was definitely a performance. Listen if you dare tomorrow night (I might). And then Roger Wright took us all out for a splendid meal, and we staggered out of the restaurant at 2am - not doing my iritis any favours but I didn't care.

I had a very interesting conversation today with the pianist Artur Pizarro about playing from memory - he chooses almost always to play with the score on the stand in front of him, despite knowing most of his repertoire by heart. He said 'if you play something from memory three times, it will be more or less the same each time. But if you play it with the score, it will be different, because you'll pick out different bits of information from it every time.' Of course you have to learn both the music, and the look of it on the page, so that you know exactly where to look at any given point (because you're not actually reading it all) but it's a good theory I think - borrowed from Sviatoslav Richter. Although on Tuesday I must remember to ask Artur why he plays Mozart sonatas from Bartok's edition.

Also on the subject of pianos, I decided against doing the Debussy after all, my life is too full already ...