Chopin is the deep poet of music. But he also invented this terrible thing called piano recitals. That made me suffer all my life.
Competitions take the soul out of the musicians.
I could have had a bigger career, but I didn’t want one. In fact, I never really chose to be in the public eye, it sort of happened by itself. I’ve never become used to this idea of being the centre of attention.
I don’t really like to play concerts. I don’t like to be onstage. That’s not a comfortable thing for me.
I don’t want to communicate my vision of the music; I just want to let the music speak.
I have small hands. Many technical problems – not many but some. Of course I found my own body language with the piano and my own way of getting out of my problems but they’re still problems.
I sometimes dream of a more natural way of making music, where life and music come together more closely.
I’m not crazy about cities. I have a strong relationship to nature, the air, the wind, the sun – everything. In the city I feel thirsty.
Learning music is learning about life. You don’t learn how to play an instrument without learning how to discover music through yourself. Your relationship to the outside world is very important.
Struggling and fighting is not the solution. The solution is the step back, observe, know why and understand why and then see the reasons it happened. And I was a fighter all my life. I think now I’m much less.
