Fundamentally, things aren’t so different now to what they were 10, 20 or 100 years ago. To make it in classical music, you need to play well. Quality is the most important thing on stage, and everything should work towards that one moment .
Music is so accessible today. We’re so surrounded by it wherever we go that I do sometimes think we are afraid of silence. Creating silence in a concert hall so that you can concentrate and really listen to something is just as meaningful for an audience as a performer. Last year I wanted to play Bach’s Goldberg Variations, but kept asking myself: what’s the point of doing it now, in this age, when people are so busy and will never have the time to turn off their phones and just listen? Who’s going to stop their lives for an 80-minute recital ?
Both my parents are pianists and I grew up surrounded by classical music, but I went to a normal school. I was the only one in the class studying the piano. I tried to explain to my friends that classical music is not something that belongs to another scary world. They started coming to my concerts because they were my friends, but now they all go to all kinds of concerts whether I’m there or not – which makes me so happy!
Music is part of our culture, and should be as important in schools as literature or maths. I don’t think there’s any single magical strategy that will bring in a younger, more diverse audience but it helps, I think, if the performers are from a younger generation.
Sometimes people forget that artists are normal people and they find us intimidating – I like putting photos of my life, on stage and off, on Instagram to try and demystify all that. Would I have built my career without social media? Maybe, but certainly not so quickly.
Classical music expresses so much – it can be transgressive, revolutionary, intimate, powerful … it feels to me the most modern of musical genres, and the very opposite of boring. I could never imagine doing anything else .
