Success is sweeter this time around

Artur Pizarro was hugely successful after winning the Leeds International Piano Competition, but things fell apart. Now he has rebuilt his career and has a new set of ambitions, writes MICHAEL DERVAN

IT’S COMING UP to 21 years since Portuguese pianist Artur Pizarro won one of the most coveted trophies in the world of music, by taking the top prize at the 1990 Leeds International Piano Competition. Winning such a major competition is a life- and career-changing event. “Right before and right after Leeds, I hadn’t changed. But everything else did. It’s the common misconception that somehow after you’ve won a competition you’re playing better and you can do more. For the first four or five years after Leeds, I could certainly have done everything I did before I won it.

“It’s a very bizarre circumstance to be in, because I was very much aware that the main difference was people didn’t know who I was before, but they did afterwards. Within my own skin I didn’t feel I had changed or my playing ability had changed. But I quickly began to, because of what was happening afterwards.

“No matter how well you think you’re prepared, no matter how well your teachers thinks they’ve prepared you, no matter how well parents think they’re going to protect you from what’s going to happen, nobody has an idea.” The only solution, he says, is “to get tough very quickly, on your own, and pray that the mistakes you make – because you will make them – leave you an escape hatch so that you can try it a second time around. There’s no way you can get it right. I made more than my fair share of mistakes. I am very grateful that I was given a second chance, and I’m enjoying that second chance to the full.”

And the mistakes he made? “The mistakes about self-perception, the mistakes about how the business worked, the mistakes about how much the business is aware of you as a person, as an artist, or as a service provider, the coldness of it all, which at the time shocked me and made me depressed.”

The whirlwind of success is disorienting. “You’re caught in the middle of a hurricane, you’re just trying to stay afloat.” And most perplexing of all is finding yourself sinking, when you’re no longer “the latest, greatest competition winner”, because another one has come along.

“You’re put off to gather dust and you’re completely forgotten, and then you start to be put through all the tests of longevity to see if it’s worth investing in you again. That’s the right time to figure all of this out. And, literally, when I had nothing else to do, I started to figure it out.”

Pizarro believes that there was a shift in the music business, initially in the US but later also in Europe, which changed the ground rules of the business. “People that were in the arts stopped running the show, and people that were in administration started running it. If you have something important to say, and you can convince them [the administrators] of it according to your own standards and theirs, there’s no reason why it won’t happen. You’re going to have to meet their criteria because they hold the cheque book. You’re going to have to meet your criteria because if you don’t you’re going to be one of those that makes a splash for a year or two and then disappears. There is no reason why all those things can’t happen. The more difficult it is to get to where you need to be, the more imagination you need to use.”

He doesn’t cite imagination as the first quality that helped single him out as the winner to the Leeds jury. “I was more desperate than the rest of them. That’s the god’s honest truth. It was make or break. I was going to do what it took to get it.” His dilemma was that he could no longer afford to sustain his studies, and he couldn’t live off the concert career that he had. And he didn’t want to give up performing to go into academia, even though he actually loves teaching.

“I hope what the jury saw was that I really had to make the music. It wasn’t about the concerts, about the career, I had to be making music. I hope they saw that I had something to say, which might not have been what they wanted to hear. I didn’t want to come across as generic. I like breaking boundaries. I like to stretch the rubber band to see how far it can go before it snaps.”

He laughs, “I’m now getting better at not stretching it to the point at where it actually snaps.”

Pizarro is grateful to the jury members, not only because they gave him the prize, but because they also helped him later when he was at a low ebb. Some years after his Leeds success things fell apart in his personal and professional lives. He moved from being able to pay in cash for a new BMW 7 Series, to having an empty diary. His phone stopped ringing, and people stopped taking his calls. He got some teaching hours in London, and found himself resenting the cost of rail travel from his home in Brighton.

He credits the rebuilding of his career to his manager, Tom Croxon, who helped him come to an understanding of how the world really works, where he should pitch his expectations, and what he needed to do and why. He’s sanguine and insightful about it all, and says that success tastes much sweeter the second time around.

His Dublin concerts find him playing the Gershwin Piano Concerto with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under John Wilson and the Brahms Piano Quintet with the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet. “I’ve been a big fan of John Wilson for a long, long time. This will be the first time we actually get to work together. I think I’m finally going to get my first proper Gershwin Piano Concerto the way I’ve always wanted to play it and haven’t had the chance. Then I’ll be back with my old friends, the Vanbrugh Quartet, a couple of weeks later doing something entirely different in a place I really enjoy and with an audience I really enjoy.”

Happy as he is, Pizarro still has unfulfilled ambitions. He jokes about a world tour with the Berlin Philharmonic, about playing a piano duet with Martha Argerich (“I would seriously kill for that!”), a two-piano concerto with Maria João Pires (“after all, we’re from the same country and I’m a huge fan of hers”), and finding time to learn Prokofiev’s Fifth Concerto (“I love that piece”).

“But I’m glad I haven’t done all of them, I’m glad I will never do all of them. Because, hopefully, there will always be a little something, a little carrot in front of the horse cart to keep me going. Something to look forward to.”

Artur Pizarro plays the NCH on Wednesday, February 1st (with the RTÉCO) and Thursday, February 16th (with the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet)

Pizarro: Competition advice

"To anyone entering a music competition, I would say, whenever you think you're doing enough, do double. And if you think you're going to fool anybody, you're not. So go in there with cards on the table. Go in there at least twice as prepared as you think you need to be. And, for Pete's sake, say something. Playing fast and playing loud doesn't win competitions. Have something to say, something to share."

LISTEN HERE: PIZARRO ON FORM

Recordings: Granados's Goyescas and Albéniz's Iberia. Linn Records CKD 355 (2 CDs)

Beethoven's Piano Concertos 3, 4 5 with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Charles Mackerras. Linn Records CKD 336 (2 CDs)

Chopin's Sonatas 2 3. Linn Records CKD 250

On YouTube in a promo for Yamaha's hybrid pianos (electronic sound, but with the action of a real piano) iti.ms/wl89Z7

Radio 3 audio interview about his complete performance of the Beethoven piano sonatas

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Live performance from a complete Chopin cycle in Lisbon

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