DISCOVER YOUR REAL POTENTIAL
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and pursue a career in music?
I didn’t really pick piano at first. I wanted to play the organ. I loved the sound of it, the huge range of colours and mainly the music of Bach. When I was 9 and it was time to enter the conservatory in Bari it was mandated that I take five years of piano before making the switch to the organ. And here I am, still playing the piano! I never really chose to pursue a career, it just happened, step by step.
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Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and pursue a career in music?
There was a piano in my grandmother’s place when I was growing up in Siberia and I would bash away on that. Also, my mother used to play violin when she was younger, so I was keen to play it too, but there weren’t places for violinists in the local music school. So, on their advice, I started with the piano, and it stuck.
Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?
I had a great teacher in New Zealand, where we moved when I was eleven. She was called Judith Clark and she really encouraged her students to investigate unusual repertoire. So while we were brought up on a diet of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninov, we also played a lot of music by contemporary composers, including pieces written specially for us. Alongside that, we were introduced to neglected repertoire that deserved to be better known, for example works by women composers.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
In addition to performing myself, I’m also director of performance at Nottingham University. So it can be difficult to balance things in terms of time, and try to lead a normal life. The pace of life today is so fast: with the development of technology, we’re expected to be available all the time, and to answer things quickly. Plus I’m naturally a workaholic and it’s easy to get into the cycle of doing rather than being, simply in order to keep busy. So it’s good to fight against that.
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Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and pursue a career in music?
I was born into a musical family – my mother is a violist, my father is a pianist – and I always heard music at home while my parents were practicing or teaching pupils. I don’t remember choosing the piano consciously, I just played the keyboard whenever I could and my father finally started to give me lessons. I am often asked when I knew that I wanted to make it my profession, but I am unable to answer because it was somehow always obvious to me that I would play the piano. No other choice has ever occurred to me!
Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?
Most of all are my teachers – my father, with whom I studied until I was eighteen and who still advises me, and Nelson Goerner.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
The greatest challenge, which will probably last all my life, is trying to understand how to be completely myself on stage, how to convey my own ideas without getting distracted by anything else and be 100% into the music.
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Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and pursue a career in music?
My wonderful mother was a passionate amateur pianist, and she joyfully shared her playing with me when I was still in the womb! A little later, she taught me to sing melodies before I could speak. She also composed melodies to represent individual words, and taught me to communicate in this way. Also my father played the violin, and the house was always full of live and recorded music. I’ve always had a deep emotional connection with the language of music, and Bach’s in particular. So any other profession? Impossible!
Who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?
There have been many powerful influences which have shaped my artistic priorities and my development as an interpreter. Despite being privileged to have excellent piano professors (such as John Lill and Arnaldo Cohen), after a number of years I came to the realisation that I must devote my life to early music. So as a pianist, I decided to move away from piano repertoire.
The single most influential individual has been the harpsichordist-organist-scholar David Ponsford. My lessons on the harpsichord were a revelation, and through this knowledge I was inspired to create a vocabulary of sound and expression on this beautiful modern instrument which allows me the greatest emotional freedom.
Listening to other early instrument performers has also been a primary influence. Anner Bylsma, John Eliot Gardiner, Michael Chance, Philippe Herreweghe, and of course Gustav Leonhardt (one of David Ponsford’s professors) … these are only a few names which immediately come to mind with reference to my development.
I would also mention the work of certain musicologists, such as Yo Tomita whose name is synonymous with Bach research.
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