Tune in every day at 1:00 PM when host Chris Wolf will feature a different performance by the Portuguese pianist.

 

Maria João Pires: 10 Facts About the Great Pianist

 

Pianist Maria João Pires is not a fan of giving concerts and recitals, and does not wear the usual performer's evening dress. But her Chopin is unbeatable. These are just some of the facts out friends at Classic FM put together.

 

Not a Fan of Concerts

Pires has never enjoyed performing on stage. She believes the form concerts take should change to be more informal and relaxed. The time when she learned the wrong Mozart piano concerto, but went on to play the right one from memory, is one of classical music's most amazing moments.

 

 

How Chopin Makes Her Suffer

In 1989 Pires signed an exclusive record deal with Deutsche Grammophon. Her recording of Chopin's nocturnes has been named the best version available by Gramophone magazine. "It's very inner music and very deep," Pires has said. "Chopin is the deep poet of music. But he also invented this terrible thing called piano recitals. That made me suffer all my life."

When asked why she hates recitals so much, she says they make her feel alone. "It's one person doing the whole thing. Not sharing a stage is very difficult for me. You are apart from the group, apart from community, apart from everything. You become different and special. And if you become different and special, you're alone."

 

                                        

 

Chamber Musician

Pires is a keen performer of chamber music. She has particularly worked all around the world with violinist Augustin Dumay. They were partners for a few years, but have remained friends and continued playing music together. Here is a video featuring Maria Joao Pires performing with the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia---a Belgian chamber orchestra based in Mons. Augustin Dumay is the Music Director there. They are performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9

 

                                                                                       

Unusual Dress Sense

Pires never wears traditional evening gowns for concerts. She prefers easy-to-wear fabrics, such as hemp or cotton. "I don't wear makeup and my hair is always cut short," she has said. "I only wear flat shoes. That way my mind is at ease."

 

 

An Admirer of Radu Lupu

Pires is a particular fan of the Romanian pianist Rada Lupu. "He is not simply a great pianist, but a great musician as well. He creates perfect music," she has said. Here is Radu Lupu performing Mozart's Piano Concerto in F major K459.

 

 

Playing With the World's Best Orchestras

Pires has regularly performed with the world's major orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw, the London Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Vienna Philharmonic. Here she is playing with the Berlin Philharmonic in a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor K. 466.

 

 

Major Heart Surgery

In 2006, Maria João Pires had major heart surgery. She subsequently dedicated one of her recordings to her medical team.

 

A Study of Buddhism

Pires's grandfather was a Buddhist and her father lived in China and Japan. The pianist has studied Buddhism which - she has said - has in some ways influenced her playing, "the breathing, the space and the quietness of the space."

 

                                   

 

Music Makes the World a Better Place

Pires believes music should make the world a better place. "We have so many emergencies to deal with in our society now, things like the breakdown of the family, environmental disasters," she has said. "We have to ask, 'How can the way we make music be changed, to help people to face these things?'"

Here is Ms. Pires with her take on Classical music.

 

 

And finally . . . a wonderful documentary about the music school she ran in her home country of Portugal. Unfortunately it ended in 2006. It still isn't clear what  happened between Pires and the Portuguese government, but things got so messy that Pires left Portugal and moved to Brazil where she renounced her Portuguese citizinship and became Brazilian. She was also left with a huge debt from the closure of the school and took quite a few years to pay it off.

In an interview she did in May 2012 with David Patrick Stearns she spoke a little about this. "Oh yes. My life totally changed. I'm very lucky that I've always been very relaxed about material things. So I don't really suffer inside. But it was a violent thing. And I can cope with it much better than many people would."