Paul Lewis on BBC NEWS

[salymap]

I have CDs of Uchida and Brendel playing those last three Schubert Sonatas and can't chose between them. They are really music to treasure, especially the last one with Brendel IMO.

[amateur51]

I have CDs of Uchida and Brendel playing those last three Schubert Sonatas and can't chose between them. They are really music to treasure, especially the last one with Brendel IMO.

I agree salymap.

I've heard them both play the last sonata in concert and preferred Brendel by a long chalk but Dame Mitsuko did not have [Sir] Alfred's experience when I heard her. She's in her eartly 60s now so maybe if she brings it back to the concert hall, I'll listen again and be more sympathetic. Who knows?

[Pianorak]

. . . And Rachmaninov said that he hadn't realised that Schubert had written any piano sonatas ...

Again, I hope I've got that right; but wasn't S. Richter credited with popularizing Schubert, and not only in Russia. If true than perhaps it isn't so surprising to hear that Rachmaninov was unaware of Schubert piano sonatas.

[cping]

Sad to hear that THAT masterclass is still going the rounds... and unfair to its participants too. There should be no objection to participants doing (including the Master) agreeing to do a TV programme but to drag it up time and again when everyone has moved on seems to give it greater weight than a learning session deserves.

[cping]

There is some more of PL's pre Cheetham's life

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/paul-lewis-the-keys-to-success-589808.html

Amateur is quite right about the music libraries, but more important was mum. Like many talented working class kids Paul seems to have had some school support from a poorly financed school in it's music department and then steered his own career. The luck was finding patrons (teachers) at Cheethams and then later.

Can he still speak scouse?

[french frank]

There is some more of PL's pre Cheetham's life

Thanks for the link, cping. It goes some way to explaining what I was wondering about - how in the standard of his playing, his technique, he started late and caught up with the prodigies: he had the musical gift and caught up very quickly. Not quickly enough to get to Chethams at 12 - he appears to have started piano lessons at 10 - but he did by 14 ("in no time at all, he was tackling virtuoso stuff such as Balakirev's Islamey and Liszt's Mephisto Waltz" ). And then Brendel.

[Mary Chambers]

Can he still speak scouse?

He must have spoken scouse once, but now it seems to have disappeared almost entirely. Even Simon Rattle has more of it, another Liverpool man though from a much more privileged background, and privately educated.