For this episode, I interviewed Mr. David Hackbridge-Johnson,
one of the prolific British composers of our time,
whose piano works were recorded by Mr. Lowell Lieberman,
whom I got to interview last season.
I got a friendship request from Lowell,
and I thought, wow, because I'd heard of him
because he's a major American composer,
and I knew he was a fine pianist as well.
He did write to me, and he mentioned that during lockdown,
he was playing the piano a lot,
and he'd already produced an album, a double album, actually,
of some of his favourite rather demonic pieces,
including things like Liszt's Totentanz,
and he said he was planning another album,
which would include another bunch of favourite pieces.
He asked me whether I would like to write a piece.
I wrote a piece that very evening,
and I sent it in by following morning and said,
look, I want to dedicate this to you.
I concocted a nocturne for him,
which was based on a very weird dream I'd had
about this peculiar devil-like creature sitting on a rock
playing an instrument with very strange tunings,
and I thought, okay, I'm going to write this,
and I sent it to him the next day.
He seemed to like it, and then at that point,
he decided, you know what,
I'm going to do an album entirely of your music, David.
So I think probably within six months
of us having any kind of official communication,
he had an album out,
and Steinway had agreed to issue it,
but it was the fact that the way he played the pieces
just so impressed me.
For me as a composer, he got right inside the style,
right inside the marrow of the music
to produce these very, very intense, intimate performances,
which I was absolutely thrilled by.
If you're thinking in terms of improvising,
which of course I do all the time,
it's one of the things that...
Music to me can often hover into the strange.
It might start out perfectly straightforwardly and simply,
but it can then change,
and I think it's the process of change
that fascinates me, how you get...
["Piano Sonata in C major, Op.
Now you get from A to B,
where you've got an emotional trajectory
that's taking you away from an idealized form of expression.
It's just one of those strange things
that the music comes out,
you think you know what you're doing,
but sometimes it's a bit strange, the creative process.
Sometimes you're not thinking, you're listening.
Normally it's the listening that dictates the process.
Often the music is already there,
it's kind of up there somewhere,
so I can see it and hear it, an object,
and all I have to do is bring it down and write it out."
To hear the entire conversation
with Mr. David Huckridge-Johnson,
one of the most prolific British composers of our time,
please join the chat during the premiere
of this special episode tonight,
Tuesday, June 20th, 8 p.m. Eastern,
on the Piano Pod's YouTube channel.
The audio podcast will be split into two parts,
and part one will be dropped
on your favorite podcasting platform tonight at 8 p.m.
Don't forget to subscribe or follow the Piano Pod,
all the links are in the description.
See you tonight.