ArtView November 2015 | Page 49

So you've been playing for a while now, do you
feel like you're still learning the instrument, or
do you feel like you've completely mastered it
and it's now just a case of learning different
pieces?

Audience question: Obviously you've spent a lot
of time practising and performing - are there any
songs that you don't play, or any songs that you
ceased playing for a long time after you recorded
them?

Learning the ukulele maybe... No, as I was saying
before, the bigger pieces that you play, the more
you realise that you just don't know. It's simply like
being human. Life is about overcoming, and really
art is life, and life is art, and art is about overcoming
as well. It's about overcoming one's inner blockages
and it's about overcoming one's foibles and that's
what piano playing is about as well. The bigger
pieces you play, the more techniques you have to
learn, the more colours you realise are possible and
the more you find out about yourself as a human
being - the more you find out as a performer what
you're capable of. It's a never-ending journey. You
never actually hit that mark where you think, oh I
can play the piano now, it never happens. You look
at Richter again, or you look at Toscanini - they
remained frustrated and restless for their whole
lives, and I know why.

I don't play much Chopin, and that's not because I
don't like him, but probably because it emotionally
overwhelms me. I don't play much Bach, because
I'm awed by it - he's sort of like the bible, or the
benchmark: he's the one from whom all musical
tradition and musical impetus flow. And there are
pieces I simply don't like, such as Islamey by
Balakirev, which is known as the hardest piece ever
written. But I think if you're going to go to all that
trouble, play the Art of Fugue, or play the
Waldstein. I'm not really into pyrotechnical pieces,
just in the same way that violence in cinema has to
have a place, or violence in art, and the same goes
for technique.

That must be quite exhausting.

Very much so. I love a lot of movie music, I have
this strange taste for music written in the 1970s for
films. I like progressive rock, I think a lot of that's
absolutely marvellous. Of course it's a cliché but
some of the greatest musicians have been so restless

Again, you know me, Lily!

Kind of an extension to that - are you attracted
to other genres of music besides classical, and
which areas are you attracted to?