INTERVIEW BY TOM STEWART
‘I’ve had to reset my technique three times. First, when I started at music college in London aged 18 and went right back to open strings. Then when I went to study at the Moscow Conservatoire – where a completely different approach was required – and again aged 40 after a skiing accident forced me to build things up from scratch once again. The Russian school is all about making sure the hands are set in the correct position right from the start so that your technique is established while you’re still a child. Unfortunately, growing up in Sheffield I didn’t develop those good habits and so all the shifting patterns that my wife, Viktoria Mullova, had under her fingers from childhood had to be drilled into me as an adult.
It was only after my accident that I finally consolidated all of this. I’d been held back by the idea that it’s incredibly dificult to play well but suddenly I was forced to practise in a very carefully structured and thought-out way. Twenty years ago, Viktoria said to me that it was easier to play well than to play badly. As the relearning process made me more and more comfortable with my cello, I finally understood what she meant.