(piano music)
- From very early on, I was obsessed with the piano.
The moment I woke up,
which unfortunately for my parents was very early,
I would go straight down to the piano and start playing.
My dad would come and pull me back to bed.
(piano music)
I just loved playing, loved learning a repertoire,
and even at music college, I wasn't really thinking,
oh I'm going to become a pianist.
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I was lucky that I had a piano teacher
that really looked out for me
in terms of where's he going to go next?
And she suggested I did a couple of piano competitions,
and I won one of those,
and so I started getting concerts and that.
So that's how it all started.
It's not that I ever thought I would do anything else,
but I guess I didn't have much imagination
somehow for the future,
and I was lucky that it happened.
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There is this received wisdom,
it's the musician's job to stand back
and let the composers speak through you.
I think that is nonsense.
The music can't say anything without us.
The way that the music speaks through us
is that we bring our own emotions to it.
I think the reason people are nervous to say that
is it seems like you're somehow putting yourself
on a level with the music,
but if you're not actually bringing something
that has depth and commitment and passion,
what are you doing on stage?
(energetic piano music)
The notes that are written
and what the performer does with them are as important.
If you sort of stand back and try
and let the music speak, it's boring.
Oh it's wonderful to be back in the Philharmonia.
It's been a few years since I've been in,
I've got a few friends in the orchestra.
Got wonderful memories.
One of my few times with Ashkenazy
it was playing Shostakovich in the Festival Hall.
It's gonna be great, I'm sure.
This piece really reminds me of an ice skating routine,
because near the beginning of the first movement,
there are three really difficult things
in fairly close succession
that reminds me of these triple Salchows,
they have to fit into their routines
and they generally get them out of the way fairly early,
so they can forget about it and get on
with the rest of the routine.
One of them goes like,
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but faster.
That's just about the first thing you play.
And then soon after there's a couple of other things
that are real, it's like tongue twisters for the fingers.
Yeah, you need to be well warmed up
and you need to be just sort of calm and relaxed.
(soft piano music)
Beethoven was the first composer that I fell in love with,
and that was very early on.
I obsessively listened to the first movement
of the Pastoral Symphony and the Moonlight Sonata,
and still the Pastoral Symphony
is the happiest thing in music,
which is funny because my wife's a clarinettist
and that's always in orchestral auditions.
So for her, it has a very different meaning.
I think Beethoven has always been the composer
I felt closest to.
Obviously an incredible range of emotion.
There was an incredible intellectual engagement
in what he does, but it's never to be clever.
It's always so profoundly
in the service of what the piece of music's saying.
(energetic piano music)
The way he puts different movements together,
to take the cliche, the sum of the whole is greater
than the individual parts.
Amazing structural instinct,
which sounds like it's an abstract thing,
but for him it seems like a really passionate thing.
And it's that kind of passion
that just lights me up somehow.
(piano music)