A piano-player's life begins at forte

The rest of the world woke up to the possibilities of the modern pianoforte almost two centuries ago. So why has it taken Melvyn Tan so long to catch up? As the noted fortepianist marks his 40th birthday by moving over to the modern concert grand, Edward Seckerson suggests that fear was only partly the key

A copy of Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata lies open on the shiny new Bosendorfer. And for a moment or two you wonder what it's doing there - the Bosendorfer, that is, not the Beethoven. For this is Melvyn Tan's west London studio and for the past 15 or so years Tan has been famously estranged from the modern piano. Too much Liszt at college - that's one theory. Or too little Mozart. At any rate, every man's pianoforte became this man's fortepiano. In his own words, he became "lost in the historical perspective" of these temperamental, deceptively soft-spoken instruments. He collected them, learnt to love them, understand them, master them - so far as one could ever master them. His elegant physique and countenance became almost an extension of them. It was hard to imagine that Melvyn Tan could ever again grace anything quite so vulgar as a Steinway grand.

Yet here he was hiding away a modern Bosendorfer like some illicit lover. Well, not exactly. Tan is 40 in a fortnight's time - on 13 October, to be exact - and will be celebrating "with friends" (the mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and cellist Steven Isserlis) at a Wigmore Hall concert the day before, when he'll discreetly make public his intention henceforth to divide himself between fortepiano and pianoforte - by playing both. Quite a moment: Melvyn Tan and the modern piano effectively "outed" in London society. Given his reputation, his seemingly unshakeable allegiance to the fortepiano, it's tantamount to a Pauline conversion. But Tan is playing it down. "I prefer to think of it as more of a natural progression," he says. "I've made my statement about these early instruments. I've explored them in their historical context, discovered to what extent they fashioned the music of their time ... so maybe I can just get on now and play the piano..."

Well, that is where he first came in. At the Menuhin School, the piano, the modern piano, was Tan's primary study. But his playing wasn't progressing. Or rather, his playing was, but he wasn't. Melvyn Tan, the musician, needed to grow, grow into and through the repertoire he played. Feel a part of it, spiritually, historically. Acres of Liszt and Szymanowski weren't about to do that for him. Aspirations to conduct (now ancient history, he assures me) were subsequently thwarted by the Royal College of Music's refusal to accept conducting as a subsidiary study to piano. So the harpsichord became his second instrument. And something connected. The instrument, the period, the sound and style. Something. It was as if he'd been spirited back in time and met himself coming the other way. Now the fortepiano caught his ear, lightened his touch, "contained" his playing in a way that all that Liszt and Szymanowski had not. He played Mozart for the first time, from Mozart's perspective, and he loved the feel of it. The lighter construction of the older instrument (wood as opposed to iron frame, thinner strings, lower tensions), the clear, bright, immediate, singing tone, the absence of resonance encouraging, coaxing, teasing subtler articulations. A whole new vocabulary of them. Mozart began here. So, in a sense, did Tan. But what happens when you move on, and the instruments don't ...?

Watch Tan in action, and you see a dancer, a lithe, physical player whose body moves freely, gracefully, with every contour of the music. What you hear is a desire to express more than the instrument will allow. So you ask the inevitable question. Over the past 15 years, has he not felt increasingly confined, frustrated? Why has it taken so long for him to boldly go where no fortepiano has ever gone before? The answer is an honest one. Fear (better the devil you know), intimidation (Tan's deference to his peers knows no bounds). But something else, too. It was Nadia Boulanger, his teacher in Paris, who repeatedly impressed upon him that only through discipline do we ultimately achieve freedom. He didn't understand what she meant at the time (he was barely into his teens), but in forsaking the modern piano for the fortepiano, the realisation began to dawn. It wasn't a question of choice but of necessity. The instrument compelled him to rein in, to internalise his playing, to do less but make more happen, and in so doing to understand how it felt for these composers to transcend the limitations of the instruments through the imagination. Stravinsky once described Beethoven's last sonata, Op 111, as "all acoustics. Everything is vibrating. The low notes vibrating with the top notes." A deaf man's study in resonance. But it took another composer to hear it.

Which brings us back to that shiny new Bosendorfer. A year ago, while visiting the 17th-century palazzo of his friend Feranda Giulini in Milan, Tan encountered a modern Bosendorfer ("an Imperial, but very light") among her extensive collection of fortepianos. He sat down and began doodling. A little Chopin... just for fun, you understand... "I remember thinking, well, this is really rather nice..." - which is a fortepianist's way of saying that he was hopelessly smitten, that he hadn't experienced a thrill like it since laying hands on Beethoven's own 1817 Broadwood. A phone call to Bosendorfer secured him a two-month rental on an instrument of his own. Just a rental, you understand...

Still, I imagine that royalties from the BBC's Pride and Prejudice have helped square the purchase (a quick canter through Carl Davis's main title theme is probably the easiest money Tan has ever made). It might well have changed his life. An impromptu demonstration - a snatch or two of the Hammerklavier - satisfies my curiosity. Andras Schiff, the Hungarian pianist, once told me that if he were to play the opening of that piece on Beethoven's own piano - and play it exactly as Beethoven had imagined it - then that would be the end of it. The piano, that is. Broken strings, broken hammer shanks, heaven knows what else. But Tan should know - he toured Europe with that particular piano just a few years ago.

Right now he's striking out on his 1838 Streicher: dry and immediate, rhythms cut to the bone. No depth, no resonance. Over to the Bosendorfer. His whole countenance changes. He looks more expansive. "You see, I hear so many more inner voices, so much more resonance in the middle! The notes sustain longer, so you hear the overtones better, with all the harmonic implications. It really brings to life the fantasy-like nature of the music, doesn't it?" He is preaching to the converted.

Only last month, in San Francisco, Tan played Mozart Concertos on the modern concert grand. In his words, he felt "almost embarrassed" at the freedom it afforded him. So you can see, there are psychological barriers to be crossed here. No question, the modern piano can actively encourage indulgence. But, by the same token, the fortepiano can create tensions, inhibitions, of its own. Tan himself is rediscovering what it is to relax into a piece, to open up phrasings, explore colour and dynamics, relate spirit to sound once more.

"You have no idea what it is like to sit at a modern instrument and know that it will sound exactly as it did in rehearsal, that what you play will come out exactly as you play it, and that, if anything goes wrong, then it's your fault. On the fortepiano, you really never can tell what it is going to do. And if a single note doesn't repeat as you remembered it last time, it can ruin your concentration, it can throw your whole performance out of alignment. You learn to compensate - maybe play a phrase less quickly to ensure that the note does speak, and so on - but always at the back of your mind is the question: is this going to work?"

So the born-again Melvyn Tan is going to have two distinct playing personalities - the one informing the other. He has no intention of phasing out the instrument he loves to hate - not after all that perseverance. Besides, playing Clementi or Mozart on a tiny keyboard is still his idea of heaven. But make no mistake, the shiny Bosendorfer has opened up a second childhood for him. He looks forward to playing it each day; he looks forward to all that new repertoire. Chopin, of course. And Schumann. His Wigmore Hall recital in July 1997 - his first on the modern piano - will feature both the Chopin Preludes and Schumann's Kreisleriana. Then there's the concerto repertoire, the prospect of working with conductors who aren't period specialists, whose broader horizons will hopefully enrich his own work. Bookings for the Schumann concerto are already looking good, then there are the Chopins, the Saint-Saens, the Mendelssohn G minor and the Ravel G major (I can hear - and see - Tan cutting a dash with that piece).

But then it's hardly surprising that he should feel such affinity with the French repertoire. To be nurtured at such a tender age by the likes of Vlado Perlemuter (a pupil of Ravel) and Nadia Boulanger (who studied with Faure). None of his teachers was German - which is probably why he has to work that much harder at Brahms. Or is it simply a matter of temperament and taste? The fine-spun, delicate, but highly coloured French sound that Boulanger favoured came naturally to him. It wasn't something he learnt. He remembers feeling frustrated that Perlemuter said so little to him during his lessons. He'd just point him in the right direction and let him play. But now he realises that everything that really matters about music cannot be taught, only discovered. "Having had the experience of the last 15 or 16 years of growing as a musician, albeit in a particular field of learning, I feel like I can now apply that learning to my new adventures...

Life begins at 40? Could be.

Melvyn Tan's 40th Birthday Concert is on Saturday 12 October at the Wigmore Hall, London W1 (booking: 0171-935 2141)