Cruise ship pianists

When Crystal Cruises invited me to join their flagship as the guest classical pianist for a springtime voyage around the Aegean, I had my doubts. Inspecting their website, I anticipated jazz-age glamour, Art Deco-inflected design and gourmet cuisine. But playing Beethoven on a boat? What about the noise, and the movement — not to mention the psychological effect of the environment on my interpretation? How, for instance, would my inner Richter fare in a face-off with my inner Liberace in a venue called the Galaxy Lounge?

I have a genetic piano-seeking compulsion, however. I play them wherever I can find them. Could a luxury passenger vessel, I asked myself, really be much worse than a rowdy London pub? A Brazilian jungle lodge? Besides, perhaps great music strikes one more powerfully when heard in unusual circumstances.

As I climb aboard in Athens, I muse that the cruise-ship ivory-tickler in his crisply pressed tailcoat is an elegant remnant from a vanished age, when travel was always sociable and slow. I half expect Bertie Wooster to bustle past me, whistling a jaunty tune, or Hercule Poirot to appear at the top of the gangplank. I will be treated as a guest on the ship, I’ve been told. And as I have only three concerts to give in a fortnight, vast vistas of leisure open up before me.

My recitals are designed to complement our itinerary — a lovely tour of the Greek islands during Holy Week. One recital is about the sea, with plenty of shimmering Ravel; the next about myths and legends, with my own piano reductions of Liszt and Beethoven; and the third about Easter, with works by Haydn and Bach.

There are also enjoyable workshops from Californian film-school professors, and lectures by retired US army generals.