There was no classical music in my home when I was growing up, but I had an aunt who had a piano that I used to play when we went to visit. I begged my parents for lessons so they finally agreed and bought me an instrument for a fiver from an antique shop in Stockton Heath in Cheshire. I was six, and within a year I was in the finals of the National Junior Piano Playing Competition at the Purcell Room. My parents were always tremendously supportive and began buying classical music records. One of the first recordings they bought me was an LP called Keyboard Giants of the Past released by RCA Victrola. Inside were recordings by Rachmaninov, Cortot, Paderewski, Lhévinne, Gabrilowitsch, De Pachmann and Samarov. It completely changed my life and has informed everything I've done since, because I've always measured my piano playing against it. I fell in love with that style of playing from the 1920s and ‘30s - the pedalling sound, texturing, rubato, phrasing. The stand-out track of the record was Rachmaninov playing his Kreisler Liebesleid transcription, taken from an acoustic recording from 1923 – among the greatest three minutes of piano recording in history.

My next choice is Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius with the Hallé Orchestra, John Barbirolli, Janet Baker, Richard Lewis and Kim Borg. At Chetham's School of Music my composition teacher was Douglas Steele, an assistant to Thomas Beecham and Bruno Walter in his youth. During the Second World War he had a nervous breakdown and afterwards became a teacher. In lessons he would suddenly play something and shout out, ‘What's that?’ One day he played a series of chords – the accompaniment to the Priest's first appearance in the Elgar. I had no idea, but something in those chords resonated deeply with me. When I confessed that I didn't know what the piece was, he told me to go and get the score. I listened to the Barbirolli recording, and it was my second awakening to classical music and the beginning of a mature interest in music. It also opened another door because it was my first encounter with Catholicism.

When I was growing up my parents used to take me to the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, and I remember hearing a recital by Alfred Brendel there in the late 1970s. He played the Schubert G major Sonata and Beethoven Opp 109 and 110. In those days there was a regular recital series, and many great pianists played – Richter, Radu Lupu, Rubinstein, John Ogdon. Brendel's style was so different from the keyboard giants of the past, but it opened my eyes to Schubert and made me understand the greatness of that kind of serious playing. Brendel made recordings of the last series of Schubert sonatas, including the G major Sonata, released in 2001. Nothing moves me more than those particular Schubert sonatas. I've played the B-flat Sonata often over the years, and its second movement is so affecting that I find it hard to move on to the third movement. It's as though everything has been said, and we should all go home.

Keyboard Giants of the Past

Recordings by Rachmaninov, Cortot, Paderewski, Lhévinne, Gabrilowitsch, De Pachmann and Samarov pfs (RCA Victrola)

Elgar The Dream of Gerontius

Janet Baker contr Richard Lewis ten Kim Borg bass Hallé Orchestra, Hallé Choir, Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, Ambrosian Singers/Sir John Barbirolli (Warner Classics)

Schubert Piano Sonatas D575, D894, D959, D960

Alfred Brendel pf (Decca)