This is Benjamin Grosvenor, playing at the first night of the Proms
just a few weeks ago.
At 19, he's the youngest ever soloist to perform at the first night of the Proms,
and his virtuosity has dazzled both the audience and the critics.
RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE
Six years ago, Imagine discovered this musical prodigy in the making.
This is an 11-year-old Benjamin Grosvenor on his way to winning the piano section
at the Young Musician Of The Year competition in 2004.
I'm absolutely bowled over by him.
It was fabulous really.
Completely natural feeling for colour and gesture, extraordinary.
I really felt like I was witnessing some historic moment.
Benjamin's very clear about his future.
In about 10 years time or 20 years time, I'd like to be a concert pianist.
It's what I want to do in life.
But what does it mean to be a concert pianist today and what is Benjamin letting himself in for?
The idea of having to walk on stage and play the piano
in a packed concert hall is one of those universal fantasies, or is it nightmares?
Unfortunately, I can only play the piano in my dreams.
Yet, I'm still magnetically drawn to the instrument.
I can never resist sitting down at a piano and touching the keys.
Unlike the violin, it is at least easy to get a sound from.
But at the same time, there's something so improbable about serious piano-playing.
The speed, the technique, the memory.
Great piano players appear to be endowed with mystical qualities.
What's more, the swaying, crouching, tormented figure hammering
and caressing the ivories is still one of those archetypal romantic images.
It's not hard to understand why a young boy like Benjamin Grosvenor
might want to be a concert pianist. Who wouldn't?
Great!
Concert piano playing really began in the 1830s when the composer,
Franz Liszt, first introduced the notion of the solo piano concert.
Piano recitals rapidly became a widespread and highly popular form of musical entertainment.
Liszt and his friend, Frederic Chopin, were the first
in a long line of great pianists who became the cultural heroes and pin-ups of their time.
They were followed by such piano giants as Ignacy Paderewski,
whose fame as a pianist led him to become Prime Minister in his native Poland.
The Virtuoso pianist and composer, Sergei Rachmaninov and Artur Rubinstein,
who in his 70-year-long career, became the ultimate international superstar.
The tradition of heroic pianists continued
throughout the twentieth century, with iconic figures like Horowitz...
Richter...
..and Glenn Gould.
In today's fiendishly competitive music world, the star pianist still retains an elite status.
'I went to see the leading British composer, George Benjamin, who both writes and performs at the piano,
'to talk about Benjamin Grosvenor's chances of success.'
When a young pianist like Benjamin Grosvenor, for instance, here he is, he's at the beginning of this.
It's a hugely competitive area.
What is it that's going to make a concert pianist for today stand out
in this very competitive environment?
It's very difficult because there are thousands wanting to be concert pianists.
Obviously, natural virtuosity, the ability to learn and to conquer the instrument.
All the obvious things.
Depth of interpretation, understanding,
the ability to listen to oneself, to hear the piano while playing it.
Also, charisma for the audience, having that quality that forces
the listener to empathise with you while you're playing and to force the public to listen.
Essentially, if you want to master it, you have to start young.
I think so, on the whole, there's always exceptions.
Usually, people do start pretty young - six, seven, eight.
To conquer music...
People can be extraordinarily brilliant at music at an early age.
More than anything else, mathematics is the equivalent.
One must be born with talent. That is the most important thing.
You must be born with talent and then you can only develop it when there's nothing to learn.
You can't learn talent.
There's no question, becoming a concert pianist is an olympian task
and it certainly helps to start young.
Not all but most of today's top pianists began playing at an extremely early age.
Piano for me is like my childhood friend.
My parents bought a piano, an upright piano for me
when I was one year and eight months,
almost two years old.
My mother tells me I started to play the piano when I was three.
I was just a kid who played the piano.
I guess nature decided for me from the beginning.
I started to play the piano at aged two,
or to be precise, when I was two years and two months old -
as soon as I was tall enough to reach the keyboard.
Do you have a first memory of the piano?
When you first heard a piano?
No!
I don't think I was a Mozart
and went up to the piano and started playing when I was about three.
I started when I was about six and a half.
I think then I wasn't really
very determined and confident.
I didn't want to practise a lot.
I suppose a bit more like Beethoven,
he tried to avoid music lessons when he was younger.
Over the years, I got used to it and it grew on me.
There has to be a moment when you think to yourself,
I want to do this. I remember a couple of years ago,
playing on the stage at the local cricket pavilion, the concert hall,
a charity ball or something.
When I came off, I said to my mum, I really want to be a concert pianist.
I had so much fun being on that stage and playing to the people.
So there's definitely a performer in you,
someone who likes the appreciation of the audience?
Likes that scary moment when you get up on stage? Is it scary?
No. It's fun, I suppose.
When you receive the audience's applause it's...
..I suppose it gives you self-confidence.
There's no doubt that Ben has the necessary enthusiasm as well as a huge dose of natural talent,
but he also needs to be immensely dedicated.
He practises for up to eight hours a day, six days a week.
On Sundays, he travels up to London with his mother
for lessons with Christopher Elton, head of the piano department at the Royal Academy Of Music.
There are different types of prodigy.
In a way, I don't like using the word.
There are those who're incredibly well developed physically.
They can tear around the piano in a very gymnastic way.
There are also people who are prodigious in,
just somehow, and who knows where from, having a deep understanding,
sensitivity and even spirituality.
For me, this is the more interesting one
and I would have to say that Benjamin is stronger on that front than the purely pianistic front for his age.
He's capable of giving a performance which is very moving,
which has enormous integrity to it, which is natural.
He finds his own voice in many ways, but he also works very hard
at the physical side of things, as has to be done, in order to be able
to deliver and to communicate what it is he wants to say.
Change, change...
Good.
Hold on...
That was fine, the pedalling there.
The first time, there was almost none which is a fantastic way to practise it.
There's no point evading the fact that playing the piano is physical to a large extent.
It's easier to train physically when you're young, to develop muscles
which are supple, to develop strength when you're young.
If a pianist hasn't got the basic technique really sorted out by the time they're 15 or 16, they may
advance and get very good, but there are always going to be some hang-ups,
feelings of insecurity, fillings that they aren't naturally developed enough.
How does this all fit into your school routine? I take it you still have to go to school.
I have quite a lot of time off school.
I have 16 free periods a week off.
It's quite a lot of time.
With school, I don't really get the amount of practice I want to get done.
I'd like to practice eight hours a day, but I can't do that because of school.
What do you do in your time off or don't you get any?
Most of the time, I'm practising.
You get enough satisfaction without worrying about all the things you're missing.
I don't really see what I am missing,
because it's not like... I do do other things.
I'm not always on the piano.
Most of the time, I'm on the piano but I do do other things.
For the moment, Ben is carrying on at his local grammar school
with just a weekly visit to London for a lesson.
But for how much longer?
Most teenage wannabe pianists will sooner or later head off
for full-time piano education at one of the music hothouses.
The Juilliard School in New York attracts piano students from all over the world.
They come here often at huge personal and financial cost to study.
Unsurprisingly, there are no slackers at the Juilliard.
Juilliard provides incomparable atmosphere for budding artists.
You have to be incredibly strong and confident in a certain way
to be able to survive the pressures of the school.
It can ruin a person.
It's notorious for being a competitive place because everyone plays at such a high level.
There are 25 students in this college class.
All of whom come in here
with the wish to fulfil a dream,
a dream that they've had since childhood,
of being able to make music and share it with an audience.
I would say that almost all of them want to be concert pianists.
Many of them come in here having no idea what their potential is.
Some come with inflated views of what they can do,
some come with very little confidence.
They all want to find out, find out how far they can take it, and that's what they're here for.
The one common thread here is their love of music, which becomes almost their religion.
I was five and half and I started winning competitions after competitions.
Finally, my piano teacher said
"There's no more room for her to grow artistically here.
"I feel like I've taught everything I know.
"You should take her to America where there are more opportunities and more...
"I guess, just a wider horizon for music."
My mother took me here when I was... I think I just turned 11.
She was always a very successful businesswoman in China.
We had a very well established life and were comfortable.
When we came here, all of a sudden, we were starting from the beginning.
Given the incredible opportunity to do it and to have my parents go against all odds
to make that possible for me, has only fuelled this drive that I've always had to be successful at this.
I love playing and I love performing.
Yeah, I basically just work!
Because of the enormous pressures, students need to be actively discouraged from overplaying.
An optimum number of hours for practising for a concert pianist is between four and five.
Six is a maximum and beyond that, the law of diminishing returns starts setting in.
The muscles are worn, they're depleted of blood
and fluid supplies and they're much more likely to become injured.
At some point, it becomes apparent which students have the potential to make the transition into artists.
I know that a student has the making of an artist when you give them an idea and they fly with it.
They don't just...
simply reproduce what you tell them.
They take the idea and take it a step further
and that step opens the door for them.
Teachers in general can teach them what to do at this spot, what to do at that spot.
Once you get that down in your system,
you have to go into a practice room
and think about it all over again from the first note to the last.
I'm quite surprised when we have masterclasses
and somebody else is playing the same piece that I worked on.
We have the same teacher but it sounds totally different and I don't understand how that can be.
That's when the personality thing kicks in.
The scene today is such that the percentages of the people who are actually going to make it is low.
They know realistically that their chances
of making it are slim statistically, but they want the chance to try so that there are no regrets later on.
They give it their best shot and some are lucky, some are not.
In my last 20 to 30 years of listening to young pianists, I remember only
maybe a couple or three whom I say, I think you can make a big career.
So every year, hundreds of brilliant piano students get to the end of a training for which they've literally
given up the whole of their life so far, only to discover there's still a long way to go.
If they're serious about being a pianist on the concert stage,
they'll need to continue studying, maybe with one of the great masters.
I had a few very fine pupils.
I have a passion for it.
I love it. What do you try to communicate?
What is it that you want to teach, to instil into them?
I not so much communicate, I try to discover who they are for them.
I think that one has relied too much, too long on methods for everyone,
and that's very wrong in art.
The great master, the great professor, the one who discovers possibilities and impossibilities
in his pupil. I have good results with it, I must say.
You have to develop something powerful, authentic and original to say about the music that you play.
That means a profundity of soul and an insight into the music.
That's something you can't tell if it's going to come.
It can come along later than you expect or not at all.
Just absolutely brilliant, pianistic, virtuosity is in the end uninteresting
and won't feed a whole life.
The Portuguese pianist, Maria Joao Pires, is one of the great figures on the world concert platform
and an inspirational teacher, who gives masterclasses to a select group of exceptional students.
Now, what is the meaning of this?
What means this?
What do you feel?
I feel like it's not a clear image, like a ghost
that is passing by, that you can never really see what it really is.
But after, you have felt this...
Then you cannot play, ba ba ba ba...
because it doesn't fit. Feel with your body, don't feel it here,
don't hear what I am saying, I am not talking to you.
I don't exist. You are...
You are...feeling now something.
I'm just helping you to feel something.
Feel it with all your being.
(Go, go, go, go!)
Why is it staccato?
Who says? You?
You're feeling that it is staccato?
Really? Promise me?
My feeling of...
My brain says...
My sense of style says I have to play everything staccato.
Also not good. No!
We encounter most people trying to read literally what the score says.
The score says a lot of things,
but we're looking for that thing that is beyond the notes, the bars,
the crescendo, the innuendo there.
It is a safe haven for teachers.
Most teachers rely on a literal reading, very accurate,
exact reading of what's written. Then you hear this music
played this way and it's that - it doesn't express anything.
It is very literal reading of the score.
As Mahler used to say, the print of the score
has everything you need to know about the music except the essential.
Time.
What is the difference between my way of playing and yours?
It is just one thing
and one little thing.
I think it's something to do
with giving space
to certain notes.
The space is given by time. No time,
all the world is mine.
I have the space, I don't have to do.
I just feel.
Time.
The paradox of being a pianist is that much of your life is spent in almost monastic isolation,
in the relentless soul-searching business of practising alone at the keyboard.
But eventually, you have to emerge in front of a large crowd of people
and perform for an hour or even two on a stage.
There's no doubt that part of our fascination with the pianist,
lies in witnessing something very private being revealed in public.
The business of people playing music, for others listening to music,
in the ceremony of a concert hall is incredibly important.
Not only is it some form of social gathering and it's a ritual, but people love to be played to.
People who play music yearn to play for others, so there's an osmosis
between performer and audience, which is the heart of music.
The recordings are fantastic things, incredibly useful, a wonderful gift to a musical civilisation,
but the truth is the danger of the concert, the risk of the theatre of a concert where so much
can go wrong and so much can go mysteriously right.
Where in the best moments, a magic performer playing a great piece can hypnotise hundreds,
if not thousands of people and take them to another world and move them very deeply.
A young pianist who's recently joined the upper echelons
of the piano world, is the 22-year-old Chinese virtuoso, Lang Lang.
'Five minutes, please. Five minutes, thank you.'
Lang Lang now performs an exhausting schedule of concerts right around the world.
Tomorrow, he's playing in Berlin, but tonight, it's Symphony Hall in Birmingham.
Talking about performance day which is a great subject to talk.
It is a little bit hard because now I have 100 concerts a year.
And so basically three days, one concert, plus the travelling.
It's very different between the performances.
Before the concert, I rehearse a little bit and normally I like to eat some chocolate or fruit.
Also I just like to stand up, not playing piano, but just thinking about this music
and then start...not conducting,
because I really don't know how to conduct,
but something...
Look out to the moon and start touching the air.
Sometimes I start thinking about images, or thinking about
a good vacation, lying on a beach or in a mountain.
Basically thinking about nature.
Sometimes I even play with closed eyes and it's very helpful.
Very helpful.
'All soloists, this is your call to the stage, please. Thank you.'
Perhaps I don't think I need to be nervous.
Even when you're nervous, it can start to help you.
Please go, I don't want to be late!
Maybe the first time I performed, you're quite nervous when you walk the stage.
Then you see the audience, the piano, the light in the concert hall, it is very warm.
For me, that's the reason I love to perform.
When I was five, I gave the first recital.
In the beginning, I was nervous because I didn't know what the stage was like.
The stage lights are there, it's very beautiful.
Basically it is big yellow shining lights
and then you don't feel any cold, or any nervousness.
It feels like home sweet home.
This piece, it's the Beethoven Piano Concerto Number Four.
It's quite a religious piece.
It is very mysterious and the second movement is like a mystery.
It's like how to solve mystery.
It is like, kind of a pre-movement.
Then I think the most sad thing is the end of the piece.
This note...
It is dead inside.
I do find it easy to play, but I certainly find to play the piano
is such an enjoyable thing to do in life.
Sometimes I'm tired, but after I play a few notes...
Those don't count, but I play something!
Then I'm like... It's like I get out from a vacation for 10 days.
It is that kind of freshness.
APPLAUSE
Are you cultivating a personality for your concert performances?
I don't want to play concerts.
I don't like to dress up.
I don't imagine myself going on with tails and flapping out of the seat!
I play in a BHS shirt!
Totally casual I suppose.
I tried all my life to find the best way of feeling well-disposed for a concert.
I spend the day eating a big steak at luncheon, I lie down to rest.
I read a book,
I go for a short walk, I had slept 10 hours that night.
Everything that a little good boy should do, yes?
In the evening, I come out and suddenly, something drops in me.
There is no inspiration,
not a real wish to play.
On other days, I arrive half dead from a trip. I hadn't slept,
it was very inconvenient, they didn't give me any good things to eat.
I'm nervous, very restless,
I feel weak, I imagine some pains in my arm, a headache.
I come out to the audience and all those things drop from me
and I'm the highest of spirits.
Jo MacGregor, one of Britain's most innovative and popular classical
musicians, is playing one of the keyboard masterpieces,
Bach's Goldberg Variations, at London's Wigmore Hall.
I've waited a long time to play this piece. I've had the score of it for 20 years.
I didn't think I was anywhere near ready to play this.
Obviously, I've known the two Glenn Gould recordings since I was young.
I have lots of recordings of people playing it.
I just waited until I thought the time was right for me to start playing.
I always think of these pieces as you make these friendships.
You take them into your life, if nothing too bad goes wrong with the piece first time round,
you go, OK, you're part of my life and come back to them.
Your relationship with them gets deeper and deeper.
There's an element of...
a spiritual connection that you have with these pieces.
When you practise the piano for hours every day, for months and years,
which is what you're doing, even when travelling,
there are certain parts of you that become very focused.
You learn to deal with solitude, learn to...
direct your time on your own. You become very self-sufficient.
You also begin to have a strong fantasy life.
You have a strong creative landscape.
You become somebody who reacts strongly to pieces
and you extract things from them that can only come because you've spent hundreds of hours on these pieces.
That's what the audience sees on stage.
You have to be not mad while you're doing it too.
You have to keep things in proportion.
You feel very cut off
sometimes when you're playing and become so...
self-critical,
so hard on yourself if things don't go well.
That can be hard.
I've always thought that pianists, like boxers, should have trainers in the corner.
You go back to them after each piece and they go, "You're doing really well!"
You don't have that, as a pianist, you're on your own.
You do it for yourself and have to be very strong.
It's interesting to me how you...
you think to yourself, "I want to be a pianist.
"Lots of people have played this, lots of people I've admired."
How do you make it your own, the pieces? Is that easy to do?
Well, the Chopin Ballade, I've got about...ten recordings of it.
I listen to all of them.
From them, I get my own interpretation of it.
What do you think it is that you want to bring to those pieces when you listen?
What is it that you have to offer do you think?
It's got to sound natural. What do you mean by natural?
If it doesn't sound convincing, you can do anything, but if it sounds convincing it will sound all right.
So I suppose you think of your interpretation and keep practising it.
Make the piece your own.
There's one bit...
Rubinstein goes like that.
I prefer it to go...
So, we all do it differently I suppose.
Rachmaninov's second piano concerto is one of the most popular
and frequently performed pieces in the repertoire.
The challenge for every pianist is to somehow forge a fresh interpretation.
Top British pianist, Stephen Hough, received widespread acclaim for his recent Rachmaninov recording -
an interpretation in the spirit of the composer's own playing.
Today he's rehearsing the work with conductor Richard Hickox and the National Orchestra Of Wales.
Rachmaninov's second is perhaps the most popular piano concerto
because it's just a most beautiful piece of music.
It's filled with gorgeous tunes and everyone loves a great melody.
The piece is fascinating for all sorts of reasons, partly because of its popularity.
Something that, 100 years after it was written, is still the most popular concerto.
It has to be doing something right.
It's a very well-constructed piece.
I don't think there are any bars in it that you feel could be cut.
It's very exciting. It's a wonderful piece to sit in an audience and listen to.
We know that Rachmaninov was a nervous performer.
We're told that sometimes he had to be pushed onto the platform.
He was terrified of playing in public.
I have a personal feeling about the piece.
It's perfect for the nervous pianist because it begins with some chords to warm up, to feel the instrument.
You're sitting down at the piano and thinking, what's this like?
You're playing these chords to feel the instrument.
Then you reach the big one.
From that moment, you can't hear the piano for another two minutes.
He's playing lots of notes, warming his fingers, but he's given this luscious theme to the orchestra.
They're covering him, perhaps deliberately,
because you always are nervous - am I warmed up enough?
Here you try the piano out, play for two minutes without anyone
hearing whether you're playing any wrong notes.
Then you have a glorious melody to prove what a marvellous lyrical gift you have.
Whenever I learn a new piece for the first time, I've got to want to play it.
That is the first stage. If you want to play a piece because you love it
and feel you have something to say about it, it's a good start.
It's not the sort of inspiration when you're sitting in a field, looking at the sky thinking
artistic thoughts. It's graft. It's sitting on a piano stool with a piano there, a pencil and a score,
cutting through the thicket of this music and finding your way to the heart of what the music is about.
This is hard work.
For me, to avoid listening to too many other recordings or performances is essential.
To know the tradition and the tradition of Rachmaninov,
of the composer's own style of playing and the pianist that he liked,
but once you have that language, you have to speak your own words with it.
I hope that having something original to say makes it worth going to the other side of the world
and stepping out onto the stage and wanting to share what I feel about piece with the audience.
I think this burning quality, this compulsion to play, it should be there in every human being.
In order to live a full life, you have to burn about something.
Let's not pretend that this is a nicely air-conditioned room.
This is a furnace at times and so it should be.
You're dealing with things which are at the heart of what it means to live a meaningful life.
Fantastic. Thank you, Stephen. Bravo!
Stephen Hough is one of Benjamin Grosvenor's two favourite pianists, the other is Yevgeny Kissin.
I admire Kissin's phenomenal technique.
It's amazing really.
It's to be in awe of.
I like the sound he creates.
He can play extremely fast and can get round notes octaves down the piano.
He's extremely confident on the stage.
He is known to have nerves of steel!
Kissin started the piano earlier than I did.
I know that he was always doing technical exercises like thirds and tenths.
I'm always preparing pieces and I don't get time to do the technical exercises.
He did the two Chopin piano concerto's when he was 12.
I'm going to do that next autumn.
I'm trying to follow in his footsteps.
I'm a bit behind him.
Russian prodigy, Yevgeny Kissin, exploded onto the world stage
in the 1990s, astounding audiences with the physical virtuosity of his playing.
He was the first ever solo artist to perform an entire prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
For young players like Benjamin Grosvenor, Kissin is undoubtedly the pianist pin-up of the moment.
I've been very lucky because from since when I was a child, I was in very good hands.
My teachers as well as those of my parents.
Looking back, I realised that...
..they brought me up in the right way.
I became famous quite early.
And...
they realised how a child should be brought up in such circumstances.
They kept criticising me all the time,
and looking back I realised that was the right thing to do.
However, I also know that by nature,
I have never been ambitious, let alone vain.
So...
As far as I can remember, I never really cared
when other people used to speak about me and my playing
in some lofty terms.
As I say, what I cared about most was music itself, music as such.
Usually, the number...
..of my concerts remains below 50 per year.
The paradox is that I love playing in public.
On the other hand,
each concert...is an event for me.
I could also say that each concert is a stress for me.
Kissin is notorious for his total dedication and note-perfect performances.
This afternoon, he's rehearsing hard in an empty Royal Festival Hall for the evening's recital.
I give a lot.
I give everything I have at that particular moment during my concerts.
So, I need some time
to sort of refill myself.
I often have problems falling asleep afterwards. Why?
Do I keep hearing the music I played a few hours earlier in my ears?
No, not necessarily.
Do I keep thinking about it? No.
During my concerts, my adrenalin boils
to such a high temperature that it takes a while for it to cool down.
Also, after my concerts...
..when I put on my trousers, I realise each time that I've lost weight.
Sometimes, I'm being asked if I ever want to escape from music
and my answer is no.
I simply wouldn't find it possible.
Even if I don't touch the piano for several weeks in a row, that doesn't mean that I'm escaping from music.
Music is always in me
and will always remain there.
This is the way I am.
Why do we try to communicate something?
Why do people still come and want to be communicated, want to receive a message?
That is the main question.
Art is not just entertainment.
I never thought that from my childhood.
Art is something terribly essential, terribly important.
It communicates something eternal.
When it doesn't, then it's entertainment.
When I make music,
it is so heavenly.
I am in love with music.
Actually, when I play, I make love.
It is the same thing.
If there's one thing that unites all of these pianists, it must be their absolute and obsessive commitment.
The great technical challenge of the piano, is that basically
it's a machine, you press a key and it makes a sound.
What pianists do, is dedicate their waking life,
practically their whole being, into battling with this machine, to make that sound their own.
It's a subtle and yet superhuman struggle
and it's this struggle that can make the performance of great pianists feel so close to musical perfection.
Benjamin, of course, will never need to find out how to be a great pianist.
He'll either be one or he won't.
You can see more of Benjamin Grosvenor's Proms performance
when he returns to the Royal Albert Hall
and is joined by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.
That's on BBC2 on 13th August 2011.
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk