Pianist at Work

Paul Wee talks to about where to go after conquering Alkan, and how to get there while satisfying the demands of a legal career

Lawyer by day, pianist by night: Paul Wee explains how he balances two highly demanding jobs

Most of us have been there: ‘It’s essentially a heave-ho job and your heart is in your mouth.’ Paul Wee has just moved house, and with him have gone the Steinway grand and Yamaha AvantGrand which occupy his waking hours when he isn’t attending to the small matter of his day job as a barrister in commercial law.

Like litigation, piano moving is best left to the experts, so he engaged Piano Logistics, on the basis that ‘if they’re good enough for Steinway, they’re good enough for me.’ The Yamaha is there to solve ‘a classic London pianist problem’: no one likes a noisy neighbour, whether they’re playing Alkan or Ariana Grande. For Wee, the convenience of quiet or silent practice on an instrument with a grand piano action has been ‘a game changer’. ‘You can’t do detailed sound work,’ he says, ‘which extends to everything from touch to pedals. But when it comes to dealing with technical problems or memorising, it’s absolutely brilliant.’

What’s a barrister doing with a BIS contract and a fastgrowing reputation for hyper-virtuoso repertoire? With his 2019 debut album of the fearsome solo Concerto and Symphony, Wee had stern pianistic judges reaching for precedents of storied Alkan interpreters from Ronald Smith to Marc-André Hamelin. He enjoys no shortage of invitations to give up the day job.

However, piano playing was never just a sideline. Wee took a pre-college course at the Manhattan School of Music under the renowned tutelage of Nina Svetlanova, and he credits her with a rare awareness among pedagogues of the central paradox facing pianists: cultivating legato technique on a percussion instrument. ‘We’re all familiar with drilling in certain aspects of technique, but making the piano sing is less reducible to recipe-based teaching.’

Over a century and a half ago, pianist-composer Sigismond Thalberg wrestled with the same conundrum when he gathered four volumes of operatic and song transcriptions under the umbrella of L’art du chant appliqué au piano. Thalberg has a reputation as the only pianist who made Liszt feel nervous, but he also won praise from Mendelssohn for the fidelity of his approach to the letter and the spirit of a score. In his preface – reprinted by BIS in the 70-page booklet for Wee’s new recording – Thalberg lays out the required techniques: syncopated pedalling, spreading arpeggiation of chords, shifting bass notes from chords. ‘After I tracked down a copy of the score with this preface,’ says Wee, ‘I felt that it was crying out to be done.’

Not all gymnastics

‘I’m fully aware I only have a foot in the door through the novelty factor of “barrister plays Alkan”’

Thalberg’s handspan brought intervals of a tenth and more within easy reach, but he wasn’t only writing for himself and fellow virtuosos. ‘Parts of L’art du chant are readily within the grasp of keen amateurs,’ says Wee: ‘the transcription of Schubert’s Der Müller und der Bach is certainly more accessible than Liszt’s version and I would argue no less beautiful. Or “Voi che sapete” – it can look difficult on the page because of how much is going on in both hands, but some creative redistribution

of the accompanying figuration turns it into a much more manageable work: one of Mozart’s most beautiful melodies, in a glowing transcription, is something that many Pianist readers would enjoy.’

There are some quintessentially Romantic-era walls of sound in the collection, such as Thalberg’s version of the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem, but in fact the limpid textures and uncluttered singing lines of L’art du chant mark a salutary contrast with the cascades and thunderbolts of the hyper-virtuoso repertoire. There is more to Wee than a circus act. ‘There are two spheres to my music making,’ he says. ‘The first is whatever I choose to play for myself. Then there is the more public-facing sphere. I’m fully aware I only have a foot in the door of that sphere through the novelty factor of “barrister plays Alkan” and there wouldn’t be anything else but for that.

‘I’m also aware that the record industry is a difficult industry,’ he continues, ‘and how the industry wants to see you is very often not the way you would like to be seen. But I accepted a long time ago that people will make of me what they will. When it comes to music-making in the first sphere, I don’t see myself as specialising in that repertoire. My personal great loves are the music of Bach and Schubert. And should it reach the stage where no one is interested any longer because it isn’t “barrister plays Alkan”, then so be it: I’ve already come much further in this direction than I ever thought I’d go.’

Night shifts

Careers at the Bar and in music both demand long hours of private study irregularly broken by short bursts of intense public scrutiny. They are also essentially freelance occupations. ‘We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I worked for a big law firm in the City,’ he remarks. ‘If my cases are at a nice stage I can trot off for a few weeks at the piano, fielding emails and the odd call. But every barrister has nightmares about cancelled holidays and plans that get foiled at the last minute. If I’m flat out on a case, I may go for weeks without touching the piano.’

Like writers, barristers and musicians are accustomed to the 2am shift. ‘Once I was learning a new recital programme,’ recalls Wee, ‘but in the months leading up to the concert date I was submerged with a case. I had to change the programme, and play repertoire I was familiar with to the standard I expected of myself. It isn’t so straightforward with recording sessions, because they’re planned so far in advance. So then you have to suck it up. But those 2am moments remind me of what Leonard Bernstein said: “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.”’ On that count, Wee is eminently qualified for success. ■

L’art du chant is out now on BIS Records (BIS-2515).

‘I’ve already come much further than I ever thought I’d go’