Where were you born, and how old are you?
"I was born in Melbourne, Australia, on 29th April, 1948, and I am both a British and an Australian citizen. I have lived in London since 1972."

If you weren't a musician, what would you be?
"A professor of English literature, perhaps."

Who are your favourite writers?
"Dickens, Tennyson, P. G. Wodehouse, Jerome K. Jerome, John Donne, Patrick Gale, Oscar Wilde and Simon Raven (amongst many)."

Who are your favourite artists?
"Rembrandt, Van Gogh, John Martin, Salvador Dali, Renoir, Norman Lindsay and many more."

Who are your favourite composers?
"Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Bruckner, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Rakhmaninov, Shostakovich, Ravel, Janáček, Glazunov, Rubinstein, Reger, Smetana, Saint-Saëns and several hundred more besides."

Who are your favourite performing musicians, past and present?
"Rakhmaninov, Grainger, Moiseiwitsch, Gieseking, Richter, Brendel, Cortot, Shostakovich, Geoffrey Parsons, Michael Flanders & Donald Swann, Kreisler, Heifetz, Elgar, Mravinsky, Furtwängler, Rozhdestvensky, Beecham, Björling, Flagstad, Nilsson, Callas, Sutherland, Wunderlich, Fischer-Dieskau, Clara Butt, Peter Dawson, Salvatore Accardo, Piet Kee, Wanda Landowska, Thomas Allen and Art Tatum, to name but a few…"

Who is your greatest inspiration?
"Outside music, not one person in particular, but the writers known and unknown of the Four Gospels, the writers, translators and compilers of the Book of Common Prayer, and the “matter of Britain” in the hands of all writers from Mallory to T. H. White."

What is your greatest indulgence?
"Good red wine from whatsoever country, champagne and single malt Scotch."

What food could you not live without?
"Twining’s Earl Grey Tea, Red Meat properly cooked in the English manner, Tagliatelle alla bolognese, Peking Duck, Cod and Chips (no cheese, no fungus, no raw veg.)"

What is your most treasured possession?
"Friends and family first, then my library – literary and musical, and my Steinway “D”."

What do you do just before you go on stage to perform?
"I go back to the dressing-room for yet another nervous urination, and wonder if there wouldn’t be some easier line of work, like sweeping streets for the London Borough of Croydon!"

How did you decide to record the complete piano works by Liszt? Was it your
idea, or Hyperion's?
"I had previously made a number of recordings for Hyperion: the four Rubinstein Sonatas and a disc of Rare Piano Encores among them. The late and much missed founder of Hyperion – Ted Perry – had heard me play Liszt in London, and was interested in a programme of the Waltzes. We made this record at the end of 1985. I spent 1986 playing 10 different all-Liszt recital programmes around the world (his original piano music, no fantasies or transcriptions – even of his own music), and Hyperion asked for two more CDs, which were recorded in early 1987. Then we were away!"

How did you decide the programme of each Liszt record? Did you have a reliable Liszt catalogue?
"Like most people of my generation, I found that the best source catalogue of Liszt's music was Humphrey Searle's, and that was the basis for my first attempt to draw up a programme for the series. Gradually, with the collaboration of my friend Michael Short, we put a new catalogue together [F. Liszt: List of Works – Rugginenti, Milan, 2004] using the Searle numbers, but correcting them and adding new ones where necessary."

What about your concert career, during the period of making the Liszt recordings? Did you play other composers?
"During those years, I was at great pains to play music by other composers. I tried to restrict all-Liszt recitals to very special occasions. I maintained much of my normal solo repertoire, which includes all the works of Beethoven, much Russian music, and many rare works large and small alongside the standard literature. My concerto repertoire during this period was rather smaller than the 80-odd works I had carried before, but included Mozart KV449 & 459, Beethoven 4, 5 & Triple, the Dvořák, the Schumann, Tchaikovsky 1 & 2, Shostakovich 2, Rakhmaninov 3, 4 & Rapsodie, Brahms 2, Mendelssohn Capriccio brillante, Rubinstein 4 and the 17 Liszt pieces with orchestra. Now I’m assuring everyone that, although I continue to play a lot of Liszt, there is indeed a much broader musical palette beyond!"

Presumably you are the only person on earth who has played all of the Liszt piano works. What sort of man/musician was he?
"The most obvious thing one can say about Liszt the man and composer, having spent so much time with so much of his work, is that, whatever his shortcomings, he cannot be faulted on his sincerity, and his desire constantly to be a better man, a better musician. You have to ignore most of the legends about him, which were more full of hype and journalistic invention than even stories about modern pop-stars and actors/actresses, and start with his own words as revealed in his letters, and his real life story as found in the best biographies. Then the music itself shows the rest – a man whose composing life lasted over sixty years, and who spent something like six hours every day at his music desk – a man who could have rested on his laurels, or who could have found an easy and conservative way to compose, but instead found virtually a new form for every single composition, a man who never ceased to strive for the new at the same time as he strove for the good. The worst Liszt playing always comes from performers who regard his music as a vehicle to promote themselves. I wish that anyone who thinks that Liszt’s texts require tinkering would never play him at all. The works come off best if his texts are approached with exactly the same spirit which one would bring to a Beethoven Sonata."

Some music lovers are not yet Liszt devotees. What is the best way into the Liszt world?
"The trouble with Liszt is that he never wrote two pieces in the same structure, so the listener always has a new experience with every work, and therefore has to pay particular attention. I think that the easiest introduction is with his own arrangements of his songs – the two collections called Buch der Lieder, the famous Liebesträume and the other separate song transcriptions. People should also be aware that Liszt wrote more slow music than fast, more quiet music than loud, and in general actually very little in the way of piano acrobatics which do not serve a deeper musical purpose. The last thing that a non-Lisztian ever needs to hear is a young piano-delinquent playing loud, fast and ugly. People always mistakenly blame Liszt the composer for the unpleasant experience, whereas if you play Beethoven badly, they properly blame the player! As Alfred Brendel has rightly said: “Anyone who does not play Liszt with nobility passes sentence upon himself.”"

Are you going to begin to record all Bach, or Scarlatti, or something similar?
"No! Nor yet the whole Czerny, Alkan, Godowsky or Gottschalk – even though these are the names that I'm always asked about. I want to play a lot of Beethoven, and to record it if possible – there is quite a bit that has still not been recorded, amazingly."

How can I find rare pieces of Liszt’s music?
"Go first to the website of the Liszt Society: www.lisztsoc.org.uk – members have access to the Society’s archive, which contains almost everything that Liszt wrote – if the work is in print, then the Liszt Society can also direct you to a current good edition"