How did you first come to the piano?

I come from a family whose common language is music. My grandparents were pianists, my mom is a piano teacher, my sister Karin is a pianist, my niece Natasha is a pianist and now my own children are starting to play the piano. At home my mother taught scores of children and I was used to listening to the piano all day long, so when I was almost three years old, I asked her why I was the only one who wasn’t playing, and that’s how she started teaching me.

Why did you become a concert pianist, rather than someone who plays the piano?

I was always a musician. And for as long as I can remember, always a pianist. Taking the decision to actually devote my life to this was not easy, and I was interested in a myriad other things when I went to school. Playing music was vital, but it was not vocational. Almost without noticing, I had been playing professionally for a number of years by the time I graduated, and whilst my peers were deciding what university to go to, I was...