What was the first record or cd you bought?
Possibly Nigel Kennedy’s Vivaldi Four Seasons with the English Chamber Orchestra – which makes my new position as Artistic Director of ECO Charitable Trust particularly special.
What was the last piece of music (written or recorded) you bought?
Biber Battalia, which I’m working on at the moment for an ECO concert. Biber is possibly one of my favourite composers: ground-breaking, ahead of his time and one of the greatest musical innovators. Without him Bach, Mozart and Beethoven would have been very different composers.
How do you mostly listen to music?
Sadly I only listen on the iPhone now with headphones when I’m travelling. When I have free time at home it generally involves Lego building with my son, relaxing or practicing.
What’s your musical guilty pleasure?
I’m not sure I’m the right person to answer that: I don’t think I feel guilty about anything musical. I just feel very fortunate and blessed to have a profession where I am allowed to express myself.
Did you ever consider a career outside of music? Doing what?
I’m very lucky there is nothing else I have ever had any aptitude for at all apart from music. In my parallel fantasy life I would probably be an architect or a writer. Both seem incredibly rewarding professions.
What single thing would improve the format of the classical concert?
Well this is an interesting one. I’m fascinated by the evolution and different fashions of programming and presenting concerts. I hope that in the future there will be no separation between “period” performance, contemporary/popular music and classical performance. It seems a shame to keep such incredible music apart sometimes. Why is it still unusual to put Biber next to Nick Drake for example? Or the Beatles next to Elgar? It’s all great and equally important in its own ways.
If you had to pick one work to introduce someone to the wonders of classical music, what would it be?
As much as I would like to say Bach Goldberg Variations, Mozart Requiem or Beethoven’s fifth symphony, I find more often than not that the best route in to classical music is music of extreme atmosphere. So probably Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time, Shostakovich’s fifth symphony or Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet?
What’s the most unusual place/venue you’ve performed?
Easy: in someone’s kitchen at a festival in Trondheim, Norway. Actually it worked very well!
What’s been your most memorable live music experience as an audience member?
That’s difficult as there are so many. Possibly hearing the Borodin Quartet perform a Shostakovich cycle in London as a student. Theirs was such a powerful and intense approach to this music. Their founder, cellist Valentin Berlinsky, was one of the greatest cellists and a big influence on me.
We’re giving you a time machine: what period, or moment in musical history, would you travel to and why?
Possibly to save Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Hans Krása and Viktor Ullmann from their premature deaths at Auschwitz. This whole school of Janáček was wiped out by the Holocaust and has denied us all of these extraordinary composers. Twentieth-century music might have developed in such a different way with these composers.
Which non-classical musician would you like to work with?
Brad Meldau, Elvis Costello, Sting....
What do you sing in the shower?
Whatever I have been practicing previously – which always has an annoying knack of staying in my head.
Lawrence Power performs in the Radio 3 lunchtime concerts at LSO St Lukes on 3, 10 & 17 November. He performs with the Nash Ensemble at the Bath Mozartfest on 13 November and at Wigmore Hall, London on 19 November.
