Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 2001, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a pianist, an international soloist who's played with most of the world's leading orchestras,

he was brought up in a working class East London family who didn't own a piano.

He was largely self-taught until the age of 11. He earned pocket money playing in pubs and he studied at the Royal College of Music.

Age 18 he played the Emperor Concerto in the Royal Festival Hall at which point tuition stopped and the life of the concert

artist began.

Seven years later, he won the pianist's most coveted prize, the Chikovsky competition

in Moscow, continuing a career that's made him the most successful British

pianist of the 20th century. Since I was young, he says, I've had this conviction

that there were people taking me over when I was playing. My hands were working beyond my normal

control. He is John Lille. Those hands, of course, John, were most recently in the news

when they were slashed by muggers last summer.

Did you feel then that that was the end of this career of yours?

No, because life has many doors and playing the piano is one, me of course very important door but in this case I was aware

philosophically if you like that there was always teaching there are always other aspects in

music and even other subjects because I've always been quite careful to have

lots of hobbies, lots of interests in life. A lot of musicians are in danger of becoming

blinkered if they're not careful. So you were quite philosophical about it way?

I think you have to be, yes.

At the same time I realized somehow that because I could still move my fingers,

there was quite a big hope, so there was no real frantic worry

...