At the Paris Conservatoire, Guy studied with Dominique Merlet and Christian Ivaldi, graduating with the PremierPrix. “I was fully committed to the piano,” he says, “but I wanted to know more about other music. I didn’t have much money to buy recordings. I rented them from the library instead, every week – I became very good friends with the librarian! After a while I was taking home 15 or 20 recordings a week. I recorded them at home and listened to them repeatedly. I listened to all the Mahler and Bruckner symphonies, the orchestral music of Richard Strauss... and I discovered it was exactly the music I wanted to listen to. I had been dreaming about this music without knowing it.

“Then came Wagner, but it took a lot of time to listen to this. [Guy remembers being shown the score of Götterdämmerung by Christian Ivaldi, and being shocked by his own lack of knowledge.] I was very strict with myself. I didn’t listen casually, I would buy the score and follow it. It was a thorough method of study.”