How do you typically listen to music?
I still listen to CDs instead of downloading, preferably over good speakers but occasionally with headphones. I am really interested, however, in the resurgence of vinyl and plan to buy a high-end record player soon. It will be interesting building a new collection again …
What was the first-ever record or CD that you bought?
Maurizio Pollini: Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy, with the Caspar David Friedrich painting on the cover. It did set a standard.
What was the last piece of music you bought?
Truthfully, the Korngold suite Op 23 for two violins, cello and piano left hand. I had to perform it in Denmark in October and it is not something that typically exists in a pianist’s library. We owe some amazing works to the brave industry of Paul Wittgenstein, for whom the Korngold suite was written. He lost his right arm in the first world war and went on to commission some wonderful repertoire for the left hand alone.
What’s your musical guilty pleasure?
Guilty pleasure sounds wicked – here’s my tame answer. In a sense, my guilty pleasure is to practice aimlessly for hours on end without looking for a result. This is my most creative but also least productive time!
If you found yourself with six months free to learn a new instrument, what would you pick up?
I would learn the accordion – in particular the Schrammel accordion so I could sit in the Heuriger (wine taverns) in Vienna and play in groups. Another guilty pleasure would be born …
Is applauding between movements acceptable?
It really depends on the piece, I think. I don’t see any harm in the audience expressing their pleasure, but if it is between the first and second movement of Beethoven Op 111, it kind of ruins it nowadays. However, applauding between movements was of course completely standard when most of our repertoire was written. I suppose that taking it even further would be to applaud particularly well-executed passages in the middle of a movement. You can see that happen during Lang Lang’s Campanella in Beijing.
What’s been your most memorable live music experience as an audience member?
Mahler Symphony No 2 in Avery Fisher Hall with Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic, Christa Ludwig and Barbara Hendricks. This was in 1990, and in some ways nothing has come close to this concert. My wife and I were completely overwhelmed by the sheer emotive energy coming form Bernstein, and the singing and orchestra were spectacular to hear live. It makes an interesting case in favour of different responses to a live performance compared to listening to a CD. I don’t particularly engage with the recording of that concert. So should we after all play differently in concert than on a recording?
What do you sing in the shower?
I just sing inside my head – it’s better that way. There was only one great singer in the family, and I couldn’t claim that was me.
We’re giving you a time machine: what period, or moment in musical history, would you travel to and why?
The past is for me pretty well documented , and as much as I would savor sitting down with Mozart for a coffee, I think a time machine would have to take me about 500 years into the future. Will we still, or perhaps again, be wearing tails? Will the concert of so-called classical music still exist, or will there just then be a revival of concerts as they used to happen in the 21st century?
Do you enjoy musicals? Do you have a favourite?
I must admit I don’t particularly enjoy musicals – but I do think West Side Story is pretty good.
Which conductor or performer of yesteryear do you most wish you could have worked with?
Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter and Raphael Kubelik.
Which non-classical musician would you love to work with?
Since in my case such a collaboration is unlikely to happen anyway, I will say two artists who have sadly passed on: Amy Winehouse and Joe Cocker.
• Andreas Haefliger will give a recital at Wigmore Hall on Thursday 3 December, performing Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. No. 27 in E minor Op. 90 alongside works by Mozart, Bartók and Brahms.
• This article was amended on 30 November 2015 to correct the spelling of Andreas Haefliger’s name in the photo captions.
