Yes to Bach, no to Debussy

The ‘poet of the piano’, Murray Perahia, talks to Igor Toronyi-Lalic about being championed by Horowitz, his rise to fame and how his injury taught him what to play

Murray Perahia was 17 when Vladimir Horowitz, perhaps the finest pianist of the 20th century, knocked on the door of his family house in the Bronx. ‘Could I speak to Mr Perahia?’ the great man said through the door. ‘Hold on, I’ll get my father,’ said Murray. ‘No,’ said the voice. ‘I mean Murray Perahia. It’s Mr Horowitz here.’ Young Murray still had no idea who this visitor was. ‘In my Jewish neighbourhood, everyone was Mr Horowitz,’ he says.

But once he opened the door, the penny dropped. Though Murray hadn’t yet decided to be a pianist, news of his talent had spread across the city and reached the ears of the master. And once Horowitz heard Perahia play he immediately offered to take him on as a student. ‘In the end, actually, it didn’t happen then,’ says Murray. But Horowitz remained interested, and the invitations continued over the years. ‘I kept getting messages, saying, “Mr Horowitz would like you to call him.”’ Thirteen years later, when Perahia was established as one of the world’s finest players himself, he finally returned the call. ‘Horowitz’s first words to me were, “Why didn’t you study with me?” Then he said: “I know: you were too frightened.”’ Perahia pauses. ‘And, you know, he got it right.’

It wasn’t just that Horowitz was an infamous ball-breaker — a ‘tornado unleashed from the Steppes’ as one reviewer described him. It was more that Perahia wasn’t yet Perahia. At 17, he didn’t know whether he wanted to be a solo pianist. Like the young Horowitz before him, he was conducting, composing, performing chamber music, biding his time.

If you’d told him then that he would rise to become one of the world’s great pianists, a sell-out star, an interpreter of the music of Mozart and Bach without equal (one of the many reasons why you’ll be hard pressed to find a step to sit on for his Mozart and Bach concert at the Barbican next week), he would have been amazed.