Damian Thompson has narrated this article for you to listen to.

From time to time, I’ve given some famous pianists a bit of a kicking in the arts pages of this magazine. You may be a Bach specialist, but that’s no excuse for sleepwalking through all six keyboard partitas in a marathon recital. Your Beethoven Diabelli Variations may be renowned, but don’t expect a rave review if you trap me in an intimate concert venue while you pound the keys like a pneumatic drill.

You’d think, though, that a journalist who snipes at world-class soloists would have the sense to keep his own amateur playing to himself. And if he’s idiot enough to post a recording on social media, he should learn to take what he dishes out. Alas, I never learn.

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The older I get, the more addicted I become to playing an instrument that I have no hope of mastering. I didn’t have a single piano lesson between 1981 and 2025. My technique atrophied during long years of boozing and has only recently picked up; even so, it’s put to shame by millions of Chinese........

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