One day in the ’70s I was driving and switched on the radio. I missed the beginning of the symphony, the Brahms C minor – I didn’t hear the announcement. It was towards the end of the introduction of the first movement. By the middle of the first movement, I had to pull the car off the road to stop and listen, not knowing who this was. By that time, I was fairly sophisticated. I had heard a lot of music and a lot of live concerts with very good people. It turned out to be Furtwängler, one of many accounts of the work he made, but this was a live performance from 1952. It was one of those magical life moments. I could not drive because I knew I would not be safe. It would distract me too much. It’s monumental, a commitment to monumentality. If that’s not what you want, fine. There’s chocolate and vanilla too!

Also in the early ’70s I knew very well the people who ran the International Piano Library in New York (which became the International Piano Archive at the University of Maryland): Gregor Benko and Donald Manildi. And as I became friendly with them, I would often spend afternoons there listening to 78s of great pianists that were not available on LP. Endlessly fascinating, educational and great fun. At one point, Gregor put on Callas’s ‘Qui la voce’. Of course, I knew her recordings, but not this one when she is in her prime with that incredible intensity and messa di voce. And her coloratura! She’s beyond a genius.

Chopin’s music more than most responds to the personality of the performer. Now, should you approach it in a chaste classical way, or like Callas, knowing that verismo has happened? Cortot at his best shares the same spiritual emotional world as Callas.

Ernst Lévy was a Swiss Jewish pianist. I got to know him when a composer friend gave me his Hammerklavier, one of those inexpensive LPs you could buy at a supermarket on a cheap label. Then I heard his Liszt Sonata. It’s outrageous, it’s awful, it’s transcendent and it’s wonderful all at once! I looked him up. He taught physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he taught music, and gave the world premiere of Berlioz’s Te Deum to which Toscanini came. I was intrigued, found out where he lived in retirement in Morges near Geneva and visited him. Playing the piano was behind him; he had never had the intention of being a pianist. It was just something he did. I found his aesthetic in the early ’70s an intriguing mix of that solid Germanic culture instilled with that weird imagination of pianists like Rachmaninov and Horowitz.

Why Björling? Well, this was one of the things that changed my life. I heard him live – once. It was 1960, shortly before he died. Nobody knew he was going to die, of course, but he was in his prime. I had a Swedish father and the Swedes are immensely proud of him. He sang in a benefit concert in Carnegie Hall for the Swedish Seamen’s Association. First there was a Swedish choir, then a Norwegian pianist by the name of Grant Johanessen – not bad! – and then the man came on. Same format in the second half except Björling stayed on and gave about six encores. I was vastly inexperienced at 12 and, although I had been to several operas, the moment he opened his mouth, well, I didn’t know a voice could do that. So that was the beginning of my addiction to great singing.

I didn’t know about Schnabel and I didn’t know the Schubert B flat Sonata at all until it was reissued by Angel Records (the American EMI) in their Great Recordings of the Century series. This was in about 1961, so it’s another ‘imprint’ moment. My first piano teacher said I should hear it. At that point I had just got my first turntable. It was in my bedroom where I could listen to things on my own, and the turntable was one of those that, at the end of an LP side, would lift off the needle and turn the power off. I was just beginning to discover these transcendent works like late Beethoven quartets and sonatas which often had big noble movements that left you in a state of suspension. So what I would do is put on, for example, the Schubert as I went to sleep. The slow movement ends the side, and I thought maybe I can achieve transcendence as I sleep. In other words, break the cycle of rebirth and maybe get a glimpse into the next world as I drifted off. I was looking for a lot in music as a young kid!

This article originally appeared in the June 2023 issue of International Piano. Never miss an issue – subscribe today