You said that you were there when the innovation for Spirio was being created. You were playing, and they were sorting out some way to make it work.
Sir Simon Mulligan: True, and precisely. That led to playing the instrument’s farewell concert in London,
Singapore, and other locations, as well as small performances. After I played, they would press the magic button, and the piano would hopefully play back what I had just played, eliciting the exclamation “Gosh” from everyone. Rare are these brief presentations.
I adored it as well as the lessons I could impart to students and other pianists by sharing my poor musical habits [laughs]. In addition, I soon began recording piano supplements, piano parts for sonatas, other chamber works, and concertos, so that various instrumentalists and musicians, the artists, could practice with me at the piano despite my absence!
GEORGE: Oh, wow. That is fantastic.
SIMON: I know that at the Beijing Studio, they were using my recording of Rachmaninoff’s piano segment, a sort of giant piece of music. It’s also lovely to know that cellists are competing with me. And, of course, that is not the future of music in terms of performance. Live performance is unrivaled, but when it comes to maintaining one’s composure and grasping the music, it is exquisite.
It’s huge, correct? Also, it was established in my initial endeavors to learn piano concertos. My educator would play back the tape and play against it subsequent to recording the ensemble part with a metronome that clicked in time. As a consequence of this, this is in effect—it is a more refined audio version of that.
