I believe it is an interpreter's job to free musical works from the constraints of time and practice. We must illuminate each work from within, working in the spaces and boundaries of the text so musical meaning comes to the forefront. A listener should be able to hear a work for what it is, on its own terms, rather than the styles or schools to which it belongs.

This was my motivation in creating the programme for my debut album, Mirrors, a project which is inspired by Maurice Ravel's suite Miroirs. It is Ravel's earliest work for solo piano where he defines his unique style and aesthetic, encompassed in five movements. It is a beautiful, challenging suite. I have sought to find resonances with its tableaux in six later pieces by Rachmaninov, Tailleferre, Dutilleux, Unsuk Chin, Timo Andres and Freya Waley-Cohen, woven through the suite to foster a dialogue between past and present.

This approach is rooted in my attraction for the strange and unusual in music. I am drawn to these qualities because they are the indelible fingerprint of every personality expressing itself authentically. In classical music, as with any practice with an established canon, there is a tendency over time to standardise: to whitewash a work's idiosyncrasies, conceal its challenges and normalise its differences. This sort of beige-ification is particularly common in how French Impressionist music is portrayed nowadays, making it known for its immediacy and the pleasure it gives listeners.

How revealing it is, then, to read a damning review of Ravel from The Times in 1924, where the author states that listening to the composer's music was akin to watching someone ‘doing clever, but very small, things within a limited scope… [with] almost reptilian cold-bloodedness’. Another critic of the Westminster Gazette in 1915 was even harsher: ‘An attentive audience listened in absolute bewilderment to some of the strangest exercises in ultramodern cacophony which it would be possible to imagine.’

Listening to Miroirs today, it seems inconceivable that anyone could have described Ravel in these terms. But a closer reading of the score reveals just how adventurous this piece really is. Though the piano textures are always lush and beautiful, interesting dissonances abound throughout the work. Ravel's use of chromaticism and musical modes frequently leaves many harmonic progressions without any sense of resolution. That, along with his generous use of pedal and resonance, gives many passages a sense of vagueness and ambiguity. The pacing and structure in movements like ‘Oiseaux tristes’ and ‘La vallée des cloches’ invoke a sense of timelessness, where empty space is a narrative device in itself rather than something to be filled by music. All these things and many more are laid in plain sight on the score.

The six other works I have chosen are in some way a reflection of Ravel's Miroirs. I imagine standing in front of a mirror whose reflecting surface is not made from a physical material, but rather time itself; the images appear amidst a flotsam of history, hearsay, emotions and impressions. By interleaving Miroirs with these works, it is possible to draw connections between a variety of sounds, gestures and sensations across styles. The context shifts towards that of the current world, filled with all the rich sounds and sensations of our lives.

Some works play with movement and wit, like Bad Habit by Freya Waley-Cohen or Unsuk Chin's Toccata; others are more lyrical and intimate, like Rachmaninov's Prelude in G major Op 32/5 or Germaine Tailleferre's Pastorale; there are also works more thematically related to Miroirs, like Henri Dutilleux's Le jeu des contraires which is built on mirror images, or Timo Andres' Clear and Cold which is a fantasia on New England winters and the third movement of Miroirs, ‘Une barque sur l'océan’. Taken as a whole, the album serves to disorient the ear, challenging historical/stylistic categorisations and reorienting us towards the sensibilities of our current age.

This eclecticism reminds me of when I moved to London in 2017. I fell in love with the city almost immediately. What I found especially moving was the mix of old and new, like how the London Wall lives amidst glassy skyscrapers and the imposing Barbican Centre, or how an ancient church sits next to a modern block of flats, or how Borough Market still keeps many of its old signs even as new generations of businesses sprout up. London is an organism with long traditions whose history has shaped its appearance, literally constructing new buildings over the scars of war, fire and famine. As different generations of Londoners pass through, it also keeps on redefining itself and changing.

I imagine my album to be a city like London. There are works from different periods, schools and styles, all existing side-by-side, but brought together by a common experience. Listeners can stick to the main path and experience the programme as I've presented it, or they can choose their own path. I would be a very happy pianist if, after some time, people start discovering their own connections.