Pianists From England

"As a musician you can cover everything. I'm not just a concert pianist."

"Memory is the fear, and I play most of my repertoire from memory."

"I've played Bach since I was a little girl. I can't let a day go by without playing him. He's so witty and secretive and funny and mathematical and brilliant."

"I was given so much advice. About how my hair should be, what I should wear, which competitions I should enter, what stuff I should play. None of that was relevant for me. I just had a kind of instinct."

"I got my apprenticeship, with the Young Concert Artists Trust, playing all these warhorses in Raymond Gubbay concerts. Some are not for me anymore, but I'd still play the Grieg at the drop of a hat; it's so fresh. I'm very careful to keep on playing a lot of mainstream repertoire. I'm not into being the court jester who just does the wacky stuff. Making the connections and taking people down new paths is what I enjoy."

"I quite like shutting the door, putting the answering machine on and sitting at the piano for six or seven hours."

"I wasn't part of that hothouse thing. I didn't go to the Yehudi Menuhin school. I grew up with the idea of trying to make music available to people of all abilities." The Guardian - 26/05/2000"

"What was most odd was that teachers would tell you what to do and what to think and they would write everything on a blackboard and you would copy it all down." The Evening Standard - 04/07/2002"

"I'm trained quite classically but quite freely by my mum, so even when I was little, I had this rather freewheeling approach. When I trained more seriously in my late teens at college, it was: here are the notes, here is what is expected of you. I didn't mind because you need technique, particularly on the piano, which requires a lot of stamina. And it was natural that once I had done that, I would want to go beyond classical music. How can you be yourself if all you do is reproduce someone else's notes?" The Guardian - 05/10/2001"

"Not only was I fiddling around at the keyboard but there were all these other children of all backgrounds wanting to play every sort of music bits of classical, jazz, pop, improvisation." The Guardian - 26/05/2000"

"School was strange, rather amusing - with a teacher standing at the front telling you what to write. The camaraderie was interesting. I tend to remember the things you can't recreate on your own - queuing up for your dinner, learning team games, which were a complete mystery to me. I remember having to pretend I knew how to play hockey, that kind of thing." The Mail on Sunday - 06/02/2000"

"I used to do Grade Exams, but my mum will tell you I didn't over-practise for them at all. I never practised, just played. I loved to play. I loved to play a lot* If one mistake is made with young children, it is trying to make them practise rather than just letting them play.' She played hymns at church ('My parents were very religious when we were young') and 'all the Top of the Pops number ones next morning at school. Things like David Bowie's "Life On Mars". That's got a very good piano part. And ever since I was six or seven years old, I always liked Bach - that's why I recorded the Anna Magdalene Notebook, little 16-bar preludes that Bach wrote for children.' I was amazed at how serious the other kids were about the whole thing, much more disciplined than I was, and with this attitude of "Ooh, I can't play sports because I might hurt my fingers" or "I can't listen to pop music because that's really terrible."

"If you want a nine-to-five existence with weekends off then don't be a musician. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now if I had children. But it hasn't worked out like that."

"It's a life of planes and trains."

"I didn't go to school until I was 11. On your own you develop imagination."

"In a lot of classical playing there isn't much expressiveness: I don't hear a voice in the playing. What I really admire about jazz musicians is that they develop a sound early on and it's unique to them. Classical players are screened from that by always playing other people's notes."

"As I get older I realise that start has made me rather, well, different. It set down a tremendous template for the rest of my life. I grew up believing the piano is a great instrument because you can play everything on it."

"My education was very intensive and I applied that training later on to playing the piano. I had always played, but having no one to compare myself to, I had no idea if I was any good."

"I don't really go along with this sense that you sometimes pick up - that is, classical music is superior to everything else. I think classical music is a very great music form, but I can also think of other great music forms. And certainly within each field, you have absolute geniuses operating. Over the years, I've tried to bring together different people from different fields, and I do try to put Bach and Beethoven next to other types of musicians."

"I can see it must seem strange, but to me it was normality. Really, my memory of my childhood is that the sun always shone and I spent all my time playing in the park. Since then I've discovered that some of the great musicians I admire - Charles Ives, John Cage, even Bob Dylan - had quite unconventional childhoods." Evening Standard - 04/07/2002"

"Words can be very powerful. I find them very difficult."

"When I stopped touring in the early '80s for a few years, it was a mistake looking back. I lost touch with my audience in a way and I think that was a bad career move."

"I like the name Atomic Kitten. It's so great."

"I don't think I've ever played the Olympia before, but I'm not totally sure."

"All those rappers, they're the only glamorous people working in music now. The rock bands are rather drab, even the good ones. You definitely don't want to look at them. But some of those R&B people are very good."

"People think I wake up in the morning and put on a tuxedo."

"The way that the Nazis staged themselves and presented themselves, my Lord! I’m talking about the films of Leni Riefenstahl and the buildings of Albert Speer and the mass marches and the flags — just fantastic. Really beautiful."

"This is the most riotous satire on legal procedure that has ever been written."

"Mr. Herbert's is one of the most interesting and moving English war books."

"It [The Secret Battle] is one of the most moving books I have ever read."

"Justice should be cheap but judges expensive."

"A man who has made up his mind on a given subject twenty-five years ago and continues to hold his political opinions after he has been proved to be wrong is a man of principle; while he who from time to time adapts his opinions to the changing circumstances of life is an opportunist."

"A highbrow is the kind of person who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso."

"The critical period in matrimony is breakfast-time."

"The whole Constitution has been erected upon the assumption that the King not only is capable of doing wrong but is more likely to do wrong than other men if he is given the chance."

"There's alcohol in plant and tree. It must be Nature's plan That there should be in fair degree Some alcohol in Man."

"Citizens who take it upon themselves to do unusual actions which attract the attention of the police should be careful to bring these actions into one of the recognized categories of crimes and offences, for it is intolerable that the police should be put to the pains of inventing reasons for finding them undesirable."

"Nobody's wrong but England – and England's always wrong, Too late – or else too early – too soft – or else too strong. And when for once the wide world begins to praise her name Her own sons crowd and hurry to shout her back to shame."

"How proud upon your quarterdeck you stand, Conductor, Captain of the mighty bus! Like some Columbus you survey the Strand,A calm newcomer in a sea of fuss."

"The race is run - the winner wears the laurels, But you and I not empty go away; For we have seen the least unkind of quarrels; The young men glowing in the friendly way. Let us be glad - but not because of winning, Let us go home, to family today. God make our Games a glorious beginning, And hand in hand, together guide us on our way."

"It is like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock, which not only is itself discredited but casts a shade of doubt over all previous assertions."

"The portions of a woman which appeal to man's depravity Are constructed with considerable care."

"Let's stop somebody from doing something! Everybody does too much."

"As my poor father used to say In 1863, Once people start on all this Art Goodbye, moralitee! And what my father used to say Is good enough for me."

"The Englishman never enjoys himself except for a noble purpose. He does not play cricket because it is a good game, but because it creates good citizens. He does not love motor-races for their own sake, but for the advantages they bring to the engineering firms of his country. And it is common knowledge that the devoted persons who conduct and regularly attend horse-races do not do so because they like it, but for the benefit of the breed of the English horse."

"Was the cow crossed?" "No, your worship, it was an open cow."

"The laws were very comical; to bet was voted lax, But your betting was the only thing that nobody could tax."

"This story of a valiant heart tested to destruction took rank when it was first published a few months after the Armistice, as one of the most moving of the novels produced by the war. It was at that time a little swept aside by the revulsion of the public mind from anything to do with the awful period just ended. But on rereading it nine years later it seems to hold its place, and indeed a permanent place, in war literature. It was one of those cries of pain wrung from the fighting troops by the prolonged and measureless torment through which they passed; and like the poems of Siegfried Sassoon should be read in each generation, so that men and women may rest under no illusion about what war means."

"The best book yet published about life in the trenches."

"For I must write to The Times tonight, and save the world from sin."