Paul Lewis

Sat, 12 Jun 2010

Recital at the Royal Festival Hall

Some thoughts after a big home game....

It's always a huge thrill to play at the Royal Festival Hall. My first time there was in 1994 at the London Piano Competition - hardly the most enjoyable of circumstances for me, not being much of a competition animal, but still a wonderful experience in many ways. Since then, every time I've rehearsed before a concert at the RFH I've always felt a flutter of excitement in my stomach.  Also at every rehearsal, until now, there has been an orchestra on stage. This was my first time alone in the space and, to put it mildly, I'd been concerned about it for a while - over 2 years in fact. Not that playing a recital there should be different to playing a recital anywhere else, really. But somehow, it is different - for me. Mainly because of what I associate with piano recitals in this hall. As a teenager at school in Manchester, gangs of us used to travel down to London by the coachload to hear piano recitals at the RFH. I remember hearing Pollini at least a couple of times, and also Richter. Although I tend not to get too hung up about these things, the prospect of playing a recital here did seem unusually daunting. Anyway, 8th June arrived and, frankly, I felt like shit. Never before in my life had I been nervous for a rehearsal on the afternoon of a recital. Crazy, really - just me and the piano like it always is when I practise at home. The difference was, of course, having an empty RFH to myself. There's a lot of empty space in that place. Demons thrive on it.....

Pre-concert nerves are strange things - sometimes they disappear just as you walk on stage, but occasionally they can outstay their welcome. I had my fair share of them that day and was pretty convinced that the concert, based on my afternoon stress level, would be something of an uphill struggle. I wish I knew more about how nerves work - as does everyone who plays concerts for a living - but there is one thing that I've come to recognise over the years. Significant pre-concert nerves usually facilitate a more relaxed and focused state of mind once the concert starts. It's as if you've worried all your nerves away, and the only option left is to enjoy the concert. Thankfully, that's what happened on this occasion, just as I walked out for the start of the recital. Suddenly the space didn't feel intimidating any more. It even felt as if there was some sort of warmth about the place - perhaps partly due to the seats on the platform which enable people to sit relatively close to the piano, but more importantly for another reason which revealed itself within the first few notes. Projecting a big sound and character from the piano into a large hall is something of a test, but in relative terms, the easy bit. Shrinking a hall of that size in order to create a feeling of intimacy is a different challenge altogether, and that's where a performer usually needs a bit of help. That sort of help can only come from an audience. The level of listening that night was, I felt, something special. This was an audience that had already shrunk the hall before I'd even got to the piano, and through sheer intensity of listening and concentration, kept it that way. There's no greater gift a performer could hope for during those hours on stage. I was a lucky, and extremely grateful, pianist.

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Wed, 05 May 2010

Volcanic activity

When my flight to New York was cancelled on Tuesday, it was clear that my recital in Middlebury, VT on Friday - to which I was especially looking forward - would become a volcanic casualty along with the recital I should have played in Bologna just a few days before. But I hadn't yet given up on the idea of somehow getting myself to New York for the concert there on Saturday. After looking into some unlikely flights from Paris to New York, an even more unlikely idea occurred to me.

The chances of many people thinking of routing themselves through Reykjavik at the moment were, I imagined, fairly slim. And sure enough, the only carrier on the planet that could offer me a ticket to JFK last week was indeed Icelandair, which I snapped up without a second thought. Predictably I suppose, there weren't many people at the gate waiting to board an aircraft bound for the airport closest to the erupting volcano, but I couldn't help feeling some excitement at the thought of possibly seeing it in action. The captain of the B757 clearly grasped the idea that there could be a few volcano spotters on his plane, and obliged us by pointing it out as we flew east to west across the country. I'll admit I'm no photographer, but cameras on mobile phones have a knack of making the most impressive sights look thoroughly unspectacular.

I'm afraid this is no exception, but if you look closely you can see it somewhere in the middle- complete with half an (ash deposit free) engine and a retro-fitted winglet. It actually felt quite a privilege to be there. But all the same, I was very happy to make it to New York...

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