Article published in Manchester Evening News 10th February 2017

PIANIST Paul Lewis – Merseyside born and Chetham’s trained – is on an international recital tour this year, and one of the venues (which includes the UK, Europe, US and Asia) is the Bridgewater Hall. He’s here on February 12.

“Manchester is near the beginning, so the programme will be quite fresh!” he says, cheerfully. He’s playing Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Weber – a programme where he says all the music has a common quality … dance.

“I wanted to come back to Bach, because I haven’t played him in public for a while. The Partita no. 1 is all dance movements – and Beethoven’s sonata no. 4 has that quality, too.

“I’m playing three Chopin waltzes, and then Weber’s second piano sonata – a piece that used to be very popular, and isn’t heard so much now, but it’s still the most fantastic music.”

Paul – who made a big impact at the London Proms a few years ago, playing all the Beethoven piano concertos – grew up in Huyton, and his first keyboard was a toy organ his parents got him for Christmas.

“At my school there was no piano teacher, and I started with the cello. But I was really terrible at that,” he says. “But at 14 I was accepted for Chetham’s Music School in Manchester. I’d come from the local comprehensive, and now I was mixing with like-minded people. My memories are all of enjoying my time there.”

He went to the Guildhall School in London, and in his third year took part in a masterclass with the pianist, Alfred Brendel. It led to individual teaching from the great interpreter – “I used to go to see him five or six times a year, and it was wonderful and very inspiring.

“He’s not interested in sorting out your technical problems, or even in what makes you tick as a player – he’s there to offer you his views on the music. You have to take what you can and translate it into your own terms.

“After talking to him about a piece, I couldn’t even play it afterwards! There was so much to think about.”

Paul lives in Hertfordshire now, with his wife Bjorg Lewis (a cellist) and their three children. He was appointed joint artistic director of the Leeds International Piano Competition a little more than a year ago, and made a CBE in the Birthday Honours last year. The boy done good.