- Music is my first language more so than words, I think.
I definitely listen more than I talk.
It's the way I feel most comfortable
expressing myself.
And if I've had a difficult experience,
I'll write a piece of music
and I find it very cathartic to do that,
in the same way if I've had a beautiful experience.
I'll tell it to the piano
and then I'll share it with other people
rather than sitting down and talking about it.
My name is Isobel Waller-Bridge and I am a composer.
The thing about music that I find really interesting,
is that for me, it always is about feeling.
And then it's like, what is that feeling?
Why are you having that feeling?
And what's the narrative behind that feeling.
Your own kind of imagination is freed
into the world of the composer's music
and that to me is a really beautiful thing.
The journey to becoming a composer,
it started with just exploring sound
when I was very, very small.
There were photos of me at four years old,
on someone's knee, at the piano,
pressing the keys.
And it really was from then on,
I started playing quite seriously from quite a young age.
I was taught by this wonderful teacher,
this piano teacher called Mrs. Lee at school.
I'll never forget Mrs. Lee.
I carry Mrs. Lee with me.
At the beginning of every lesson,
we would spend maybe five minutes
just connecting with the instrument
and she would make me place my hands on the keys
but not make any sound
and just run my hands up and down the piano,
put my head on the piano,
and just really breathe and become really connected.
And I've taken that through to this very day,
I do it depending on what I'm about to work on,
but if I'm starting something new,
certainly it's really important
that I feel so present with the piano.
And she taught me that.
And I never forget, it's such a simple instruction,
but to breathe,
and I forget to breathe sometimes.
And so I can hear her just saying, "Isobel breathe,"
and it's everything.
When I was growing up
and I was playing the piano all the time,
I was finding that I was really drawn
to the romantic composers.
And so I went through definite phases.
I went through a big Rachmaninoff face
and again, it was just all feeling, all emotion,
big sound, nothing kind of too delicate.
I think I'm quite a quiet person.
And so all my expression came through
playing these huge pieces.
With Rachmaninoff, it's very, very melodic,
which is very satisfying to play
because it falls under the fingers
and you understand it instantly.
And I really enjoyed that journey.
And then as I got to university, I found Janacek.
And Janacek just changed so many things for me.
It was melodic, the harmony was unusual.
It was interesting to play, the shapes under the fingers
were challenging in a new way.
The way that the harmony evolved,
it's quite minimal sometimes,
certainly in In the mists,
which is the piano piece that really captured me.
It doesn't sound very, very complicated,
but there's a real delicacy that is needed, I think,
for playing it.
And it's so poetic,
but in an understated way,
it shimmers in ways that I hadn't experienced
in playing the other pieces
that I've been growing up with.
From there, I went to Kurtag
and then I also found Poulenc.
And those three composers,
really broke open music
for me in a totally new way.
So with Rachmaninoff for instance,
I've been used to playing these...
really melodic, really, really melodic.
I found Poulenc,
and I found this piece, his "Trois Pieces"
And the harmony just blew my mind.
It starts...
The way I start composing,
it's quite interesting to me anyway,
because I find that actually a lot of the composing, I do
conceptually in my head before
I write anything down.
So that involves quite a lot of walking around.
Yeah, certainly at the beginning, walking, reading,
doing nothing, looking out the window,
that sort of thing.
I don't get a commission
then instantly sit down at the piano
and say, "Oh my God, what is it gonna be?"
It doesn't really work like that.
I have to spend a lot of time thinking about it.
And that I'd say it's about 80% of the work for me
and then the final stage is the craft.
A lot of that is done with a computer
and I know that if I'm ever stuck,
if I can't think of the way a melody should evolve
or something, instantly I go to the piano
and the whole thing is unlocked.
And I have to kind of trick myself, I'm working,
but I have to pretend that I'm not working
in order to relax my mind
so that I can come up with the idea.
I think for young composers,
the only advice that I could give,
is based on my own experience,
which is just make music as much as possible.
And it really doesn't matter kind of who for.
And also then it's important
to explore the different kinds of music making.
There's music making with collaborating
with other people in other disciplines,
there's the more introspective kind.
And to find your way, to experiment as much as possible.