This was the best kind of week. It started with a three-hour road trip with my manager/surrogate father/shrink/bodyguard to Monmouth to record album no. 5. Glenn Gould (whom I worship with the fervour of a pre-teen Belieber) talked about the ‘womb-like security of the recording studio’. Which was why, in a somewhat pussy move, he retired from performing in public. And he was spot on. Bless my mum, but my first womb was a Valium- and gin-infested warm place of loveliness, and the recording studio is absolutely the next best thing. Me, the safety net of the retake, a (phenomenal) Steinway, heaters, Kit-Kats, tea and Beethoven can give any pharmaceuticals a run for their money. Even if Gould somewhat greedily chose all that and the pills too.
Then back up to London for a weekend of practise before two same-day concerts in Vienna. And by practise I mean four hours a day of piano and 14 hours of whatever I fancy.Which on Sunday meant lunch with Stephen Fry at the Soho House ‘Little House’ in Mayfair and The Great Gatsby with a pretty girl. I have a little game whenever I meet Fry. I am so desperate to appear clever and obtain his approval that I try to come up with just one thing he doesn’t know. My reasoning being that I can then hold court and impart wisdom wittily and charmingly. And then I’ll get on QI. And meet Tim Minchin. It hasn’t, doesn’t, will never work. Even my opening shot of ‘I’m learning some Alkan right now… [expectant pause]’ was met with ‘Oh my God, I love his Opus 63 Esquisses!’ followed by ten minutes on his life, works and influences. So I ordered steak and ‘forgot my wallet’.
I recently went to visit a middle school in a leafy part of Hertfordshire to see what the state of affairs is concerning music tuition in schools. I was confronted with a class of 30 children who were engaged, eager, passionate and genuinely keen to immerse themselves in music. Their (brilliant) teacher has a total annual budget of £400 for 160 children. What I witnessed was a kind of miniature Stomp — dustbins, margarine tins, chocolate boxes used as instruments, a cello that looked as if it had been used as firewood and a couple of mangled trumpets that were unplayable. There is something hideously wrong with an education system that has all the necessary ingredients for learning — passion, curiosity, incredibly hard-working and inventive teachers — and rewards that with mops and dustbins rather than instruments and subsidies for private tuition. Watch this space: I can’t remember the last thing that made me quite this angry (excepting anything Piers Morgan-related).
How many future Adeles, Ashkenazys, Rattles or Elton Johns are we missing out on simply because they haven’t the opportunity to explore music-making? Perhaps more importantly, regardless of future commercial success, how many young creative minds are the government stifling out of laziness, vote-chasing and misplaced priorities? Another one of the arts is biting the dust. In the age of entitlement and instant fame that is so encouraged and idealised by The X Factor and its ilk, at a time where record companies won’t give you a second glance unless you’ve 20,000 Twitter followers, a million Youtube hits and an album already written and produced, someone felt it a worthy idea to treat music education as an extravagance rather than a basic right. If that doesn’t change, the impact cannot fail to be far-reaching and long-lasting.
On Monday I was in Vienna. Backstage at the Konzerthaus, they had a fridge full of chocolate, a Nespresso machine, bananas and Haribo (Queen Elizabeth Hall take note). And even more delightfully, a smoking room where I sat with my coffee and chatted to a few violinists and cellists — who turned out to be members of the Vienna Philharmonic. Feeling a little like a football fan in Stamford Bridge’s players’ cafeteria, I dribbled and blushed my way through five minutes of music chat (turns out Sakari Oramo is a proper gent) before rushing back to the piano, realising stupidly late that I was about to play Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin to a sold-out Konzerthaus in bloody Vienna.
And it went well. Good enough, anyway. Which is the best I can hope for. Five encores and the terrific realisation that the Viennese have a sense of humour even about what is most sacred — comparing Franck Ribéry to Schubert (short, aesthetically challenged, genius) was met with genuine laughter, and not just from my mum, who had made the trip and doesn’t even know who Franck Ribéry is.
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