Graininess and Sheen
Handel House Museum → Handel House Museum

A slow walk around the two floors of Handel House Museum, on Brook Street, just off Oxford Street in Central London. Handel House, where the composer lived for 36 years, is an oasis of calm, a beautifully hushed Georgian townhouse in the middle of London shopping madness. The voices you hear are of the volunteers who people the Museum, sitting quietly there during the day among the wood panelling and creaky floorboards. The instruments you hear are the three keyboard instruments, which are housed in three different rooms – two harpsichords and a very out-of-tune spinet; I recorded myself playing on them and later brought them together as a trio in the studio. You can walk up the stars and explore this calm, spare space, its artwork and instruments, its staircase and grandfather clock, and its deep red bedroom.