Music of my lifeJonathan Plowright considers therecordings he could not live without

THERE WERE THREE ARGO EPSof Ampico piano rolls issued in1966. One had Lhevinne playing

the Blue Danube. It's done with suchpanache and a sense of fun you just don'thear nowadays. But the one I enjoy mostis the compilation of various pianists,and two in particular stand out. One isDohnanyi playing Dohnanyi. There's amoment in the Concert Study Op 25 No5 where it seems for all the world thatthere's a French horn playing a suspendednote in the middle of a harmony. I don'tknow how he does it - an accumulationof pedalling and all the notes - and it'sjust fabulous. The later recording hemade, he'd lost it by then. The other is theMischa Levitzki playing his own Waltz inA, Op 2. It's simply the finest bit of pianoplaying I've ever heard. Of course it's hisown piece designed for the way he played,but it's done with such elan, dexterity andlightness. Breathtaking! These guys playedwith such freedom and rubato, yet theynever upset the pulse. They had so muchtechnical command that they could justsay, 'OK, today I'm going to do it like this'on the spur of the moment.

Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Mooncame into my life at a time when I wasnot at all interested in being a classicalconcert pianist. I was 17, a moody teenagerwith dreams of being a pop star - theusual thing - and then I came across thisalbum and one track in particular calledThe Great Gig in the Sky. It has a femalesinger called Clare Torry. I had no ideawho she was, whether she was part of thegroup or just brought in for this recording,but she uses her voice as an instrument- almost like an electric guitar - and it'sas if she's soaring like a seagull, yet at thesame time there's this constant breathing,sighing, breathlessness, as though herwhole body has become an instrument.I love the timbre of her voice. It justtransported me. At the time it was themost important music to me. Amazingly,

just this morning I saw that the daughterof my old piano teacher had put up on herFacebook page this very same track, sayingthat discovering it was one of the definingmoments of her teenage years. Bizarre.

There was a time in my life when Iformed a string ensemble, Capital Virtuosi,with two friends from my student daysat the Royal Academy, the violinist RitaManning and the cellist Nicholas Cooper.They were top-class freelance stringplayers and we wanted to explore thefour Mozart chamber concertos and otherrepertoire, away from a conductor. Therewas something magical about playingsurrounded by that free, unfettered sound. Iget quite defensive about the English stringsound. You never hear people say, 'Oh, youreally want to hear an English orchestraplaying English music' in the same way theytalk about Russians playing Russian musicand the French playing French music. TheEnglish string sound is very 'unsoloistic'and unassuming. Neville Marriner's TheEnglish Connection CD has got The LarkAscending, a bit of Elgar and other thingsand it struck me as being the pinnacle ofthat kind of sound.

I was a struggling artist, concerts weren'treally happening and I moved down toBrighton and started doing some DIY onthe house. It's very difficult to practise thepiano when there's nothing specific towork for. Whenever my wife and I finisheddecorating a room we'd sort of celebrate byputting on this 1980s recording of Karajanconducting the Beethoven Symphonies.I just got so involved with them andthe more I listened to them, the more Irealised they were so transportable to thepiano. Listening to this set affected the wayI started to think about the Sonatas.

I think Erroll Garner is probably myfavourite musician. I find everything abouthim life-enhancing - even the way he sits atthe piano. He girates, he moves with it, he'sso attached to the instrument. It's part ofhim. We classical pianists have no choice -

The Golden Age of Piano Virtuosi,Vol3Arqo DA 43

The Dark Side of the MoonPink FloydHarvest SHVL804 (first release)

The English ConnectionAcademy of St Martin-in-the-Fields/Neville MarrinerASVCDDCA518

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos 1-9Berlin Philharmonic/Herbert von KarajanDC 0289 439 2002 5 (6 CDs)

Concert by the SeaErroll Garner (pf)Columbia

the notes are there, the music's been written.Jazz pianists play in the way that suits themand choose what is most natural for themto do at the keyboard. Erroll Garner hasthe lightest, most amazing octaves I've everheard. It's so effortless it makes you smile.He takes the ground away from you, like afilm of those hang-gliders who run down afield and jump off over a cliff. ."INTERVIEW BYJEREMY NICHOLAS

Jonathan Plowright's latest recordings includethe Zelenski and Zarzycki Piano Concertosand Brahms Sonata No 3 in F minor OpS and Variations and Fugue on a themeby Handel Op 24, both out now on theHyperion and BIS labels respectively

90 International Piano November/December 2013