Norris will introduce Southampton’s 1796 Broadwood grand piano in the lunchtime concert in the Turner Sims on Monday February 6th, performing works by Haydn & Beethoven. Earlier that morning, with Dr. Cheryl Metcalf, he will present the first musical application of H.A.W.K. technology:

The Hand of the Pianist: sound & motion: An unprecedented collaboration between Health Science & Music at the University of Southampton, with industrial partners Blüthner Pianos and Vicon.

• New knowledge about how to make beautiful sounds at the piano
• An archive of famous pianists, with special HAWK (Hand & Wrist Kinematic) pictures to accompany sound recordings, showing us exactly how they do it
• A new state-of-the-art recording studio with variable acoustic
• A magnificent new grand piano for Southampton’s music students
• New information on musicians’ hand health, to combat wrist injury

The presentation will be made on a nine-foot Bluthner concert grand. After the lunchtime concert on the 1796 Broadwood, the public is invited to inspect and play both instruments – a rare opportunity! No charge for any of these events.

The film The Prince & the Composer, in which Norris deconstructs Parry’s Jerusalem (see the Review section) was repeated on BBC2 on Christmas Day at 3.10pm. Charles Dickens’s iPod was repeated on Radio 4 on New Year’s Day. And Robert Burns’s iPod will be repeated on Radio 4 Extra on Burns Night (January 25th) at 8.30, 12.30 & 19.30.

 Cheers! : a history of toasting with the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, was broadcast on Radio 4 on New Year’s Eve

2011 highlights: Radio 4’s iPod  series  4 more programmes for Saturday mornings, broadcast in November & December: Pick of the Week twice, and Critics’ Choice in Guardian, Telegraph & Radio Times.

Queen Victoria – recorded at Buckingham Palace with the Queen’s 1851 Erard piano

Robert Burns – recorded in the room where Burns learned to dance & founded his Bachelors’ Club

Oscar Wilde  – recorded in Wilde’s room at the Cadogan Hotel, where he was arrested

Thomas Hardy – recorded in the house Hardy built for himself, Max Gate

New programmes in preparation for early 2012: Shakespeare & James Joyce

iPod programmes broadcast in 2011:

Jane Austen (in her house), Lady Hamilton (amongst her music collection in Greenwich, where Nelson’s body lay), Samuel Pepys (in his library), Benjamin Franklin (in his house) & Charles Dickens (in his house)

Schubert song-cycles

in theatrical productions with puppetry & projection: Thomas Guthrie (baritone)

Rosemary Branch Theatre, Islington: November 5^th & 6^th

Tristan Bates Theatre, Covent Garden: December 12^th – 17^th

Recent Record Releases

Entertaining Miss Austen (Dutton), with Amanda Pitt, was launched in June at the Dolphin Hotel in Southampton, where Jane Austen celebrated her eighteenth birthday. The launch featured Florence Nightingale’s piano, and a performance of a piano sonata which could have been composed by Jane Austen herself, as her great-great-great etc. nephew Richard Jenkyns explained.

The Complete Piano Music of Roger Quilter (EM Records) was launched in October at St. Paul’s Covent Garden with a performance from Quilter’s manuscripts (kindly brought along by Leslie East) on Quilter’s own piano.

The incomparable Richard Briers narrates Peter & the Wolf, The Carnival of the Animals & Babar the Elephant (Cathedral Classics) with David Coram at the organ of Romsey Abbey and Norris at the piano.

Mr. Hook’s Original Christmas Box – Bagatelles for Juvenile Amusement (Dogstar), will be available before Christmas and can be ordered through this website. Norris accompanied the Highcliffe Junior Choir on his 1828 Broadwood in a complete recording of a publishing phenomenon of the 1790s: 36 Nursery Rhymes arranged by James Hook. Jane Austen copied half a dozen of them into her collection.

Viola Sonatas by Sir Arnold Bax & Sir John McEwen (EM Records) with Louise Williams, Cello Music by Percy Sherwood (Toccata) with Joseph Spooner, and Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, in JW Davison’s edition recorded on Gustav Holst’s piano, will appear next Spring.