In 1993, shortly after finishing my post-graduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music, I embarked on what turned out to be, for me, one of my most influential, motivating (and exhausting!) projects to date. It was a recording of virtuoso solo piano music by four British composers; Michael Tippett, John McCabe, Paul Patterson and Nigel Clarke. In preparation for this recording I met with all the composers individually to discuss their works. Their encouragement was an extraordinary boost for a young musician such as myself at the start of a performing career. Working closely with a composer takes one inevitably to the heart of their music and personally these experiences left me with a very strong sense of purpose and determination to bring their music, and other new music, to people’s attention. I have since always enjoyed collaborating with composers and making their music ‘happen’.

A decade or so on, sadly Michael Tippett is no longer with us, but to celebrate the centenary of his birth (2nd January 1905), I will be offering my own celebratory recital programmes throughout 2005 to mark this occasion, in which I will play his Third Piano Sonata. A highlight for me in the first half of 2005 will be a recital at the Purcell Room at London’s South Bank Centre on March 22nd in which I will couple the Tippett Third Sonata with the last Schubert Piano Sonata, the B flat, D960.

To open this programme I will play a work written for me by Stephen Goss in 2002. Steve’s work is a set of four short pieces entitled An Ideal Insomnia, which I premiered at the Guildford International Festival in 2003. His piece explores the ways in which objects, sounds and thoughts are distorted by the night and by half-awake dreams. All four movements use samples from pre-existing pieces that undergo a variety of transformations. The final piece, Alter Klang, takes its title from a painting by Paul Klee. The canvas comprises blocks of colour that seem to obscure an image, rather like the large pixels of a low-grade digital photograph. In Alter Klang, he takes sections from the Adagietta of Mahler’s 5th Symphony, removes much of the detail and generates a new piece from this distillation. The Hatter refers to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and is loosely based on Satie’s setting of Rene Chalupt’s poem Le Chapelier.

Two other works written for me, which will feature regularly in my programmes in 2005, are by British composers Matthew King and Christian Alexander. Matthew’s work, A Suite for Molly was written in response to a private commission from friends of Matthew, whose granddaughter had died. They wanted Matthew to compose something as a tribute to Molly, celebrating her short life. In response he wrote a piece that reflected different memories of Molly with all their private resonances. The ten pieces vary greatly in character. Some are subdued or meditative, but three of the pieces, (different responses to Molly’s ‘wild and wonderful hair’!), are extremely ebullient and very difficult to play – especially a frenzied jig which bounces along between left and right hands. I premiered A Suite for Molly at the Royal Academy of Music in 2001.

Christian Alexander’s Sonata op.44 was also premiered at the Royal Academy of Music in 1998. Christian and I first met at Radley College, where we were both teaching, and he wrote the Piano Sonata for me in 1996. It is subtitled ‘unto forgetful waters’ and is rather like a tone poem, (after Plato’s Myth of Er and the forgetful waters of Lethe). Christian writes: ‘I’ve tried to capture something of the story’s sense of intoxication; of magical stasis followed by a sudden awareness of an enchanted new dimension – of rebirth and its implicit cycles and revisited places’.