The piano man

Michael Houstoun’s reputation as a notoriously private man precedes him. Much is written about him, seldom is he quoted. But his website, now that’s another matter entirely. His online personal journal is nothing if not frank.

You can almost hear him hissing in a long and scathing entry about scolding an audience member (and that’s putting it lightly) for taking a flash photograph of him at a concert. Houstoun marched off stage mid performance.

He doesn’t know who it was but it’s a wonder the scoundrel got out alive.

The concert promoter – probably the sweatiest man in the auditorium at that point – managed to get him back for the second half to rapturous applause from an understanding audience.

He has stopped posting reviews of his performances. His last post in that regard is his own withering review on reviewers – ‘‘A vehicle for exercising the various neuroses of disaffected, underpaid men …’’

He has no appetite for a manager nor a marketing department.

Because he works on a small circuit everybody knows who he is, he says unapologetically. ‘‘They communicate directly with me. I do the whole business, all the negotiations, myself. I have learned how to do that without being nauseated.’’

That said, here he is, sitting in the corner of a Wellington bistro, an elegant lunch before him, a glass of red wine to wash it down with, willingly discussing his forthcoming tour with Bulgarian-born violinist Bella Hristova. And he doesn’t appear to be nauseated, not yet anyway.

The pair will play the 10 Beethoven violin sonatas with Chamber Music New Zealand over the next few weeks.

Beethoven is such familiar territory to Houstoun, who has performed and recorded the complete Beethoven sonata cycle.

But the genesis for his affiliation with the composer goes way back to when he was a boy growing up in rural Timaru.

It all began with his mother playing Appassionata Sonata on her record player when he seven.

‘‘I had a powerful physical reaction. My stomach turned over. I was glued to the spot. I just knew something I hadn’t known 10 seconds earlier. I never lost touch with that.’’

He was already taking piano lessons, though his taming of that instrument didn’t really begin till he learned under Sister Mary Eulalie.

He always knew playing piano would be his life’s path.

He confesses he was lazy as a child, but successful, and that was the crucial factor. ‘‘People in the district would say ‘Michael’s talented’. So you grow up with the idea that your talent is just normal.

‘‘It could be resented. My reaction was to downplay it. That’s the Kiwi way – you just pretend you don’t have a talent if it’s going to get you into trouble.’’

His mother was pretty musical. But it was all a bit of a mystery to his father, Houstoun says. It also rubbed his nose in Houstoun’s ‘’strangeness’’.

‘‘All little boys who play the piano are strange. But it’s OK, you need to rub up against something. You need a bit of grit.

‘‘The soloist’s life is difficult because you have to be very independent. You have to have a mind that will start itself up and pursue things without external motivations. A bit of resistance when you’re young will help you build those things.’’

If Sister Mary Eulalie taught him how to play, it was his next teacher, Maurice Till, who made a musician out of him.

He stopped doing exams and started doing concerts. Houstoun loved performing. Still does.

‘‘One of the things about my gift that probably drove my father spare was that I always wanted to play to somebody. You saw a person and a piano and it was like some sort of Pavlovian reaction. I don’t think it was about being praised or thanked. It’s the nature of the performing gift.’’

By the time he left the country in 1973 to compete in the Van Cliburn piano competition in Texas, he had won every New Zealand piano competition. Still, he had no clue how he would fare on the fiercely competitive international scene.

Houstoun was more excited about going on an aeroplane for the first time.

Coming third was a career-making coup. It was certainly the start of a new epoch for the 21-year-old pianist. The beginning of the rest of his life, he says.

It launched him head first on to the international circuit.

After Van Cliburn he went on to study under Rudolf Serkin at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia for a year before settling in Texas. In 1975 he took fourth prize at the Leeds Competition.

The next few years were spent between London and Washington but he continued to play concerts at home every year and in the early 1980s he was wooed back to New Zealand after meeting his partner, journalist Mike Nicolaidi.

The couple live on a small farm a few minutes from Feilding. They keep the company of a herd of goats and a rather nice Steinway piano on which he practises three hours every day.

Throughout almost his entire career Houstoun has been able to do that rare thing for a musician – to live off his art.

But when in 1999 he developed focal hand dystonia, a potentially career-ending affliction, Houstoun found himself doing what most musicians do – teaching.

‘‘The logical thing to do for a piano player who loses the ability to play is teach and I was able to do a year of teaching at the University of Auckland. That determined for me absolutely beyond any shadow of any doubt that I couldn’t possibly have a future doing this. I had to get my hand back. I needed to play and I became extremely determined.’’

He remained out of action for five years but was philosophical about his predicament.

‘‘I thought ‘this is a test; Who am I? How am I going to deal with this? Is my life about to change in a way I had not anticipated? How am I going to go with that change?’ ‘‘

As well as medical treatment Houstoun focused on relaxation techniques. The condition, he says, seems to go with a certain type of personality – perfectionist, obsessive, someone unduly hard on oneself. Houstoun to a tee.

Those hands have been back in action since 2005. Holding them up for inspection, he says he is not precious about the tools of his trade. He happily climbs trees on his rural property wielding a chainsaw to lop off dead branches for firewood.

Houstoun, who was made a laureate of the Arts Foundation in 2007, is about to turn 65. For the first time he will get a wedge without playing an note. This will allow him to simplify things. Run the show completely on his own terms.

There are many demands made on artists that have nothing to do with their art – like interviews, he says. ‘‘It’s probably selfindulgent but if you’re a performer all you really want to do is play. You want to be able to practise then walk on stage, deliver what you are able to deliver, leave the stage and go home. To me that’s what my life should be.’’

A life, presumably, less nauseating.