The Piano puts cities under the spotlight
The concept behind the hugely successful first season of Channel 4 show The Piano was simple: amateur pianists played in major train stations, without knowing they were being secretly watched by singer-songwriter Mika and Chinese piano virtuoso Lang Lang.
The secret is out now – anyone who spotted presenter Claudia Winkleman in a train station would surely know what was going on. So how could the second season work and keep that magic alive?
“We were a little worried, weren’t we – all three of us,” Winkleman, 52, admits.
“Because what was so beautiful about the show was [this concept of] what happens if people are playing and they don’t know anyone’s watching? That is so unbelievably poetic, I had never heard of anything like it.”
This time round, Winkleman says she expected people to “come in ballgowns, walk in and say under their breath ‘Hello, Mika’.”
Luckily, that wasn’t the case – which The Traitors presenter credits to the subtlety of the camera crew who managed to disappear “into the walls”, meaning the amateurs would forget what was going on and just play.
“We were worried something would change, in terms of the people – their intention, their ambitions from season one to season two, because they know we’re hidden away somewhere and we’re listening to them,” agrees Grace Kelly singer Mika, who co-presented the Eurovision Song Contest in 2022 – but the show managed to keep a love of music at its core.
He tells the story of an NHS nurse who recently retired and spent a big chunk of her pension buying a grand piano, knocking out walls to fit it into her house. She comes on the show and Mika remembers: “She sits down – she’s so nervous that her piece lasts about 42 seconds. Super short and it wasn’t very good. And yet, that just shows the passion she has – the fact that she goes and buys that, she dreamt her whole life of having a piano.
Winkleman recounts a moment in an Edinburgh train station when a teenager came out who was “young and cool, he’s like 17, good looking, and all like ‘whatever'”.
He “banged out” a Chopin piece, then Mika appeared and Winkleman says: “I’ll never know what you said to him, but Mika whispered something to him and he did it again – and it was like a totally different piece of music.”
The Piano returns to Channel 4 tomorrow, 9pm