“I could easily have become a ‘pianistic’ pianist, having heard so little orchestral music in my early years,” says Guy. “But in a paradoxical way the opposite has happened. At a certain point after my graduation from the Paris Conservatoire I could even have said that I was not enough of a pianist! I was not really interested in piano technique. Then, later, especially thanks to Leon Fleisher, I learnt that if you have something to express, you have to find the best way to do it. If you can’t control the keyboard you can have the best ideas in the world, but no one will notice.

“In some ways I regretted not having had something like the traditional Russian training, where you just go at six in the morning to play your Chopin study, without even asking yourself why. All this might explain why it took me a little bit longer than some colleagues to begin my career. It’s frustrating at first, but after a while you realise it can be an advantage. When you arrive on the market, if I can put it like that, you are more mature. You play in a more meaningful way, and people can hear that.”

His extensive study of orchestral music – including playing two-hand and four-hand transcriptions – has made Guy a more complete musician than many a mere virtuoso. “After a while, you develop a precise idea of the kind of sound you like. You try to adjust your piano sound to achieve it, and you understand that the piano is not just 88 notes, black and white, Too many pianists, especially nowadays, seem to regard it as no more than that. But you realise that you can be a conductor, with an infinity of possibilities and combinations of sound from just 10 fingers. That’s very exciting.

“You imagine sound first; then you try to find it on the keyboard. The sounds you imagine have an enormous influence on the repertoire you choose, and the way you play it. The main part of my repertoire is German Romantic music. And strangely enough my favourite composers never composed for the piano. Mahler, Bruckner, Strauss, Wagner – almost nothing. But my experience of them has had a large influence on the music I choose to play: big pieces like the Liszt Piano Sonata, Brahms, Beethoven.”