Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1997, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My costway this week is a pianist. Her parents were seventh-day

Adventists and educated her at home until she was 11, laying the foundations of

breadth of interest and originality of approach which are the essence of her work. At both Cambridge and the

Royal Academy she refused to be pushed down too narrow a path, emerging as a

champion of contemporary composers such as Bertwistle, Messian and Berio. She sees fewer divisions

between jazz, classical and pop music than most and her innovative concerts in which

she appears dressed less conventionally than most concert pianists are designed concert difficult if it's exciting if you do it with energy she says she is

Joanna McGregor and you achieve that not least Joanna by talking to your

audience you're a concert pianist who speaks yes unfortunately but I first discovered this when I was playing Barsock years ago and I arrived

at a venue and there was no program notes and I thought well this is terrible.

I can't go out and play some very loud obscure piece of Baroc which it was and that's the first time I ever spoke in public and I realize that you do get then a tremendous feedback from the audience if you can just show that you're human and you've got a sense of humour and you just give the slightest inkling about you know what's about to happen.

I suppose traditionists would say that good music speaks for itself and you shouldn't come between it and its audience.

I think good music does absolutely speak for itself and I also think new music

is often rather intimidating and I think it's sort of the role of a performer to do

everything in their power to just take all that preconception away.

Of course, new music, modern, serious music often has titles these days as well which of course it never did.

We all know the classical pieces by numbers and so on I'm thinking of

Jango Bates piano concerto which you premiered last year I think it's called

what it's like to be alive yeah you know this is blurring the distinction the edges isn't it between popular music and serious music

It certainly is but even that piece I remember saying to the audience beforehand that the way he composed it was by

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