Susan Tomes has won numerous international awards as a pianist, both on the concert platform and in the recording studio, including several Gramophone Awards and the 2013 Cobbett Medal for distinguished service to chamber music. She grew up in Edinburgh and was the first woman to take a degree in music at King’s College, Cambridge. Her career encompasses solo, duo and chamber playing; she has made over fifty CDs and has been at the heart of the internationally admired ensembles Domus, the Gaudier Ensemble and the Florestan Trio with whom she won a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. She has served on international music competition juries in London, Vienna, Munich, Trondheim, Graz, Lyon and Weimar.

Since the 1980s, when as a founder member of Domus she helped to put up the portable geodesic dome which enabled the group to perform in unusual settings, she has explored ways of reaching out to listeners. As the author of six acclaimed books and a long-running blog, she has carved out a special niche as an interpreter both of music and of the classical performer’s life. Her most recent book, The Piano – a History in 100 Pieces, was published in 2021 by Yale University Press and launched with a concert at Wigmore Hall in London. It was a ‘Book of the Year’ in The Spectator, the Financial Times and The Scotsman, and it won a Presto Music Award.