Interview by Claire Jackson
Music that changed me
Born in London, Nicolas Hodges sang in the choir of Christ Church, Oxford, before later studying at Cambridge University. He has forged a career as a pianist specialising in contemporary music and has commissioned concertos by composers including Thomas Adès, Elliott Carter, Gerald Barry and Harrison Birtwistle, who once described him as ‘like my Peter Pears’. He is currently based in Germany, where he is a professor of piano at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart.
Like most pianists, I began with Mozart, Clementi and Bach. Music changed dramatically for me when I first played DEBUSSY. I was encouraged to listen to Claudio Arrau’s recordings by my teacher, who was himself a pupil of Arrau. It had a dramatic effect on me. I knew the Walter Gieseking recordings and I never really liked them. The Arrau, on the other hand, has a fatness of sound that might be considered ‘unDebussyian’ by some, but touches things in the music that go beyond the usual ideas of Impressionism. When you have a diet of Viennese classics, Debussy feels incredibly modern. It opened my ears to a different use of harmony.
I was played STOCKHAUSEN’s Kontakte in a classroom music lesson when I was about 11. Stockhausen has always been very important to me and I think it’s because I heard his music so early. My father – who was a BBC studio manager and had heard him working with the BBC Symphony Orchestra – had the scores, so having heard the piece at school I immediately went to try it at the piano. The use of raw sound was so foreign to me. As a child I was struck by the form – at the time I thought that Beethoven was the greatest composer that had ever lived, but Stockhausen showed me the importance of contemporary music. I’ve played Kontakte a lot since, and it’s a piece that remains a vital part of my life. I even had percussion lessons for it, and can now do a cymbal roll.
I heard MESSIAEN all through the early part of my life without really noticing. I was a choirboy in Christ Church Cathedral Choir and at Exeter College, Oxford, and the organists often played Messiaen. I can still hear the sound now. I never thought of it as contemporary music. When I played the organ it was all Buxtehude and Bach – I didn’t associate the instrument with new music, which obviously sounds a bit silly. It was only later that I fully appreciated sacred music such as Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur. I stopped playing the organ and the oboe in my mid-teens and focused on the piano. I don’t think I ever really sang properly.
When I was 16, I went to the
