Music of my life Jonathan Plowright considers the recordings he could not live without

HERE WERE THREE ARGO EPS just this morning I saw that the daughter of Ampico piano rolls issued in of my old piano teacher had put up on her T1966. One had Lhevinne playing Facebook page this very same track, saying the Blue Danube. It's done with such that discovering it was one of the defining panache and a sense of fun you just don't moments of her teenage years. Bizarre. hear nowadays. But the one I enjoy most There was a time in my life when I is the compilation of various pianists, formed a string ensemble, Capital Virtuosi, and two in particular stand out. One is with two friends from my student days Dohnanyi playing Dohnanyi. There's a at the Royal Academy, the violinist Rita moment in the Concert Study Op 25 No Manning and the cellist Nicholas Cooper. 5 where it seems for all the world that They were top-class freelance string there's a French horn playing a suspended players and we wanted to explore the note in the middle of a harmony. I don't four Mozart chamber concertos and other The Golden Age of Piano Virtuosi, know how he does it - an accumulation repertoire, away from a conductor. There Vol3 of pedalling and all the notes - and it's was something magical about playing Arqo DA 43 just fabulous. The later recording he surrounded by that free, unfettered sound. I made, he'd lost it by then. The other is the get quite defensive about the English string The Dark Side of the Moon Mischa Levitzki playing his own Waltz in sound. You never hear people say, 'Oh, you Harvest SHVL804 (first release) A, Op 2. It's simply the finest bit of piano really want to hear an English orchestra playing I've ever heard. Of course it's his playing English music' in the same way they The English Connection own piece designed for the way he played, talk about Russians playing Russian music Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields/ but it's done with such elan, dexterity and and the French playing French music. The Neville Marriner lightness. Breathtaking! These guys played English string sound is very 'unsoloistic' ASVCDDCA518 with such freedom and rubato, yet they and unassuming. Neville Marriner's The Beethoven: Symphonies Nos 1-9 never upset the pulse. They had so much English Connection CD has got The Lark Berlin Philharmonic/Herbert von Karajan technical command that they could just Ascending, a bit of Elgar and other things DC 0289 439 2002 5 (6 CDs) say, 'OK, today I'm going to do it like this' and it struck me as being the pinnacle of Concert by the Sea on the spur of the moment. that kind of sound. Erroll Garner (pf) Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon I was a struggling artist, concerts weren't Columbia came into my life at a time when I was really happening and I moved down to not at all interested in being a classical Brighton and started doing some DIY on concert pianist. I was 17, a moody teenager the house. It's very difficult to practise the the notes are there, the music's been written. with dreams of being a pop star - the piano when there's nothing specific to Jazz pianists play in the way that suits them usual thing - and then I came across this work for. Whenever my wife and I finished and choose what is most natural for them album and one track in particular called decorating a room we'd sort of celebrate by to do at the keyboard. Erroll Garner has . It has a female putting on this 1980s recording of Karajan the lightest, most amazing octaves I've ever singer called Clare Torry. I had no idea conducting the Beethoven Symphonies. heard. It's so effortless it makes you smile. who she was, whether she was part of the I just got so involved with them and He takes the ground away from you, like a group or just brought in for this recording, the I listened to them, the more I film of those hang-gliders who run down a but she uses her voice as an instrument realised they were so transportable to the field and jump off over a cliff. ." - almost like an electric guitar - and it's piano. Listening to this set affected the way INTERVIEW BYJEREMY NICHOLAS as if she's soaring like a seagull, yet at the I started to think about the Sonatas. same time there's this constant breathing, I think Erroll Garner is probably my Jonathan Plowright's latest recordings include sighing, breathlessness, as though her favourite musician. I find everything about the Zelenski and Zarzycki Piano Concertos whole body has become an instrument. him life-enhancing - even the way he sits at and Brahms Sonata No 3 in F minor Op I love the timbre of her voice. It just the piano. He girates, he moves with it, he's S and Variations and Fugue on a theme transported me. At the time it was the so attached to the instrument. It's part of by Handel Op 24, both out now on the most important music to me. Amazingly, him. We classical pianists have no choice - Hyperion and BIS labels respectively

90 International Piano November/December 2013