Volume 25 Issue 6 - March 2020

Q & A
“Inhaling Music for All of My Life”
JAMES RHODES
PAUL ENNIS
RICHARD ANSETT
JOSE GUTIÉRREZ
Since the 2008/2009
season when his
star began its rise,
celebrated pianist, author
and media personality
James Rhodes has released
seven chart-topping classical
albums, written four books
James Rhodes
and appeared in and made
several television programs for British broadcasting.
According to his website, Bach, Beethoven and Chopin
offered comfort for the “suffering that dogged his
childhood and early adult life.” Classical music offered
“solace” and was key to his survival.
Now in his mid-40s, Rhodes’ unfettered passion for classical music
is at the core of his approach to concertizing; he communicates
directly with audiences, interweaving anecdotes of composers’ lives
with his own experiences as they relate to the music being performed.
March 5, 2020, in Koerner Hall, the Glenn Gould Foundation is
presenting Rhodes’ Canadian debut, in an all-Beethoven recital, as
part of the Foundation’s “continuing commitment to celebrating
excellence and exploring the indelible impact of the arts on the
human condition.”
The following Q & A took place via email in early February.
WN: Your love of Glenn Gould is well known so it’s appropriate
that the Glenn Gould Foundation is presenting your March 5 Toronto
debut. You said in Geeking Glenn Gould, your 2017 BBC documentary,
that when you were “a kid,” Gould was really your best friend,
“during a time that was very bleak and he made things feel so much
better and so much more exciting.” Please elaborate on that friendship
and on how classical music saved your life then.
JR: There were a lot of bad things happening when I was a kid. Things
that shouldn’t happen to any child but, sadly, happen to far too many.
When a child is raped it shatters their idea of trust. By some miracle
(and I don’t use the word lightly), I discovered classical music at around
that time and it was the only thing I could trust. It is that weird, schizophrenic
thing of living most of my life in a dull monochrome, barely
sleeping, bleeding from weird places, twitching all the time and unable
to talk properly, and then listening to this incredible music and having a
multicoloured, transcendental escape at my disposal. And of course you
cannot experience classical music without Gould. He was such a revolutionary,
the very opposite of the safe, academic performers that were
so commonplace. He embodied the thrill of music for me. He did things
with a piano that I would literally dream about doing.
How does Glenn Gould inspire you?
He reminds me of Beethoven, who wrote that immortal line, ‘There
will be many emperors and princes. There will only ever be one
Beethoven.’ He [Gould] just didn’t give a fuck. He was the closest thing
classical music had to a rock star. He believed in playing music in a
way that no one had the bravery or insight to play it. I mean listen to
his cadenza to the last movement of Beethoven’s first piano concerto.
Or the prelude of the fifth partita. Or the Meistersinger Overture. Man
alive, the guy just punched you in the face and didn’t even apologize.
This is what music-making should be about.
10 | March 2020 thewholenote.com