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PASCAL AMOYEL
There are two categories of pianists, those who play Chopin and those
who don’t. When did you know you belonged to the first category?
At a very early age, as a child. When I was around six or seven I would try to
reproduce by ear the music I heard around me, and Chopin figured prominently
among those pieces. At that time I had no knowledge of the fact that certain
pianists played his works while others refrained from doing so. When I started on
my real piano studies at the age of ten, it was naturally towards Chopin, but also
towards Liszt, that I turned.Theirworks seemed accessible tomewhile at the same
time presenting a genuine challenge: to be able to play this music someday. In my
imagination, the Polonaises of Chopin, with their exceptionally affirmative tone,
their narrative dimension, and above all their élan which so naturally matches
the momentum one feels when learning and then mastering the piano, became
objectives for me very early on.