Sound theory: used properly hands can give a lyrical, limpid effect. Photograph: Getty
London was the first place I lived as an adult. I dropped out of Juilliard at 18 and came over to live with my boyfriend (now my husband) and to study with Maria Curcio. I lived there for three very formative years.
I still love London. But as an 18-year-old just setting out, it was thrilling. I moved into a flat on Leopold Road in Wimbledon, just up from a parade (a new word to me) with a grocer, an off-licence, a pub, a Greek Cypriot convenience store and an Indian restaurant. On my walk to the tube I would pass rows of handsome Edwardian houses interrupted by new buildings from the 1950s, filling in (I soon found out) war damage.
When I first moved to Wimbledon, I was lonely. My husband would leave for work in the morning and, as much as I was practising, there was still time left over. To fill the gap I joined a discussion group on the novels of Thomas Hardy run by the Open University. I was easily 50 years younger than the next youngest member, but they could not have been more welcoming. I remember endless heated arguments about whether or not Tess had asked for it ("She lived on a farm! She should have known!"). It was my first experience of the vigour of English discussion.
But my lessons with Maria Curcio were what gave meaning to the entire experience. Maria lived in a small, dark garden apartment in Kilburn. She would usher me in twice a week, pour both of us an espresso and apply her fierce attention to whatever new piece I had brought (and I brought a new one each time). Maria came from a tradition that I have great respect for. She had been a favourite student of Artur Schnabel, and for her music and technique were inseparable. Once you had conceived of a musical idea, your responsibility was to realise it fully, and the more able you were to realise an idea, the more vivid and imaginative your ideas could be.
Her approach to sound was unique. It's so easy for a piano to sound clangorous, vertical and heavy. In Maria's hands the piano was limpid, translucent. Hers was a distinctive, pre-war aesthetic, deeply lyrical, richly coloured and inflected like the human voice. Like so much of my three years in London, it's unforgettable, and I'll be thinking of her when I play at the Wigmore Hall this month.
