A key player

Pianist Susan Tomes talks to HEATH LEES about the challenges and the joy of touring and performing as a member of the Florestan Trio.

Susan Tomes speaks in a voice that the half-approving folks of her home town, Edinburgh, would call "refined". Years of living in London and more than two decades on the international concert circuit have smoothed her consonants and rounded her vowels. But they haven't stopped the press from referring to her as a "rising young pianist", which she finds embarrassing and inexplicable.

"It's not true," she says with a laugh, "they just copy each other."

Tomes provides the middle term of the Florestan Piano Trio, with violinist Anthony Marwood and cellist Richard Lester. They toured New Zealand three years ago amidst glowing reviews, most of them homing in on her glittering contribution from the keyboard.

Tomes is modest about that. "I know that some pianists get a name for hijacking piano trios on account of the bigger, more active instrument, but I never think of myself as anything more than one of three. It's like a tripod - three parts joined firmly together, equal and stable; yet each member with their own space."

When pressed, she admits that touring is hard, what with the travel delays, difficulties with venues, and unpredictable pianos.

But she remembers her previous visit to New Zealand with fondness. "Auckland and the other larger cities were as we expected, but we remember going into an unpromising hotel venue in New Plymouth, and finding a rapt audience who were so nice; everyone came up and spoke to us with great interest and enjoyment."

Although she tries not to stand out in the group, Tomes admits that in her piano-playing she aims for clarity and elegance.

"Clarity is one of my biggest motivations," she says. "It's probably because I used to be a percussionist that I relate completely to the way a piano sounds. But then I was once a violinist too, so I can easily identify with the singing style of the string instruments. I think you must accept that the piano is quite different in the way it makes its sound, and try to find the most musical compromise that suits the three of you. It's part of the challenge."

Offstage, there are other challenges. Like keeping her own professional career going apart from the trio. When she's not performing in solo recitals - there are still plenty of those - Tomes is head of one of the piano departments at London's Guildhall School of Music, and a visiting professor for the European Mozart Foundation, based in Poland.

She also writes articles on music for the British national daily the Guardian and has an eager, well-focused style that throws the spotlight on what goes on at rehearsals, how interpretation happens, the problems and pleasures of performing.

"People love feeling that they're on the inside when the music's being put together instead of just receiving the finished product as part of the audience."

Tomes has a gift for making music real to people through words as well as through her pianism, and is also a regular broadcaster for the BBC.

Her partners, she says, have equally busy lives. Marwood has recently won an industry award for his recording of a Stanford Violin Concerto, and collaborates in Indian-dance interpretations of traditional and new repertoire with dancer Mayuri Boonham.

Cellist Lester plays with the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, and with a busy group called Hausmusik but still manages to be co-principal cellist with the European Chamber Orchestra.

How do they find the time to practise as a trio? Susan Tomes admits it's difficult.

"We have an agreement that the trio comes first," she explains "and we're good at organising little, stable blocks of time around which we fit everything else. The other work is good for us actually. It means that when we come together to practise we're really pleased to meet up with each other again. Quite simply, being the Florestan Trio is the most satisfying chamber music thing that we do."

* Florestan Trio plays this Saturday, September 29, Auckland Town Hall.