True or False: World-class concert pianists grow up in musical families.
True or False: Solo pianists must begin lessons early to develop the coordination and concentration they will need.
Meet Paul Lewis. While both of the above are usually true, the English pianist who will appear January 11 for Friends of Chamber Music broke both rules. He didn’t start playing the piano until age 12. His father’s favorite composer was John Denver. During his childhood in Liverpool during the 1970’s, the hometown Beatles still epitomized musical stardom.
And yet, young Paul found his way to an international career from the keyboard of a toy organ he received as a gift at age 4. He picked out tunes so enthusiastically that his parents enrolled him in cello lessons, an instrument he claims to have played “terribly.” As a child, he walked to the public library around the corner and checked out records from a well-stocked collection. He discovered for himself Alfred Brendel, who would later become his teacher, and listened intently to the piano music of Schubert and Beethoven.
“I wasn’t some kind of prodigy,” Lewis said. “I think it’s important to go at your own pace, discover your affinities and come into your own, as everybody does at different stages of their life. The piano is a fantastic instrument for creating illusions, and I knew it was the right instrument for me.”
Lessons gave him the means to cultivate dexterity and concentration, and to develop the musical personality that would later be described by a critic as “natural and unaffected, while at the same time full of power and depth.”
During the Covid period, he delved into the works of French composers and renewed his enjoyment of Mozart. In Denver he will present two Mozart sonatas, one to begin and one to end, with Debussy’s “L’isle joyeuse” in the middle surrounded by all 15 of Poulenc’s fanciful “Improvisations.”
Given time and release from a busy concert schedule during the pandemic, Lewis discovered things Mozart has in common with both Poulenc and Debussy. For one, all three were masters at witty improvisation. For more, let’s go find out.
Paul Lewis, piano
SUN, JAN 11, 4:00 PM
Gates Concert Hall, Newman Center for the Performing Arts
by Kim Millett
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