7. RachmaninoffPiano Concerto no. 3
It took me a long time to get into classical music and I’m not really that well versed in it to this day but I made friends with a guy in Copenhagen who is very much a peculiar but fantastic character. He’s had this crazy life, he’s 80-something-years-old, he came from a really bourgeois background and used to hang out with the French art elite in Paris. He was a sort of outsider random young boy, hanging out with Picasso and stuff. I would go to his apartment and he would put a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of absinthe and a bottle of something else on the table and embark on endless stories about being with the French Foreign Legion, travelling through the Sahara desert or meeting Russian ballet dancers. All these stories were incredible but didn’t necessarily seem like they were true. I chose to believe all of them. He got caught doing some corrupt and swindle business in Copenhagen and ended up in prison for some years and then got out but led an equally glamorous life. His stories would flow at you and as per the ritual he would take you to his large living room and he’d start playing piano and he mostly knew Chopin by heart, he didn’t use note sheets, so he would play medleys of everything he ever did. His other guy was Rachmaninoff and that was who really captivated me. Throughout these visits I would go home and start to listen to him and really become engaged with it in a way that I haven’t with classical music before. Particularly in the morning, there’s really nothing better you can do than blast Rachmaninoff at very loud volumes whilst you’re making coffee and getting shaken awake by it. It’s still one of those worlds [classical music] that I’m glad I have a lot more to educate myself in.
