Page 232 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

30 May 2024
Meet Daniel Pioro, the violinist making classical

music cool – and who loves playing scales

One of Britain’s most exciting musicians talks his passion for new music and why students are
made to feel like fools by seasoned artists
Helen Brown30 May 2024 • 7:00am

'Classical musicians are cover artists': Daniel Pioro CREDIT: Rii Schroer

“Classical musicians are cover artists,” says Daniel Pioro with a cheeky shrug. “We play Other
People’s Music and we shouldn’t be ashamed of that.”

What the violinist – praised as one of the most “radical”, “bracing” and “intriguing” of his
generation – does feel some of his colleagues should be ashamed of is “playing this very old music
the way they’ve heard it a hundred times before”. He thinks performers who do that turn into
musical versions “of those street artists you see in Paris, drawing replicas of the Mona Lisa on the
pavements in chalk. It’s boring. It doesn’t interest me.”

Pioro’s solution is to approach all old music “as though it were written today, for me. I have
decided to pretend that some of it is even written by me.”

Thrilled by working with contemporary composers Jonny Greenwood and Cassandra Miller he’s
found that engaging with the human behind the score has helped him “remove that sense of awe
without losing any of the magic”. So when he steps onto the stage at the Aldeburgh Music Festival
next month to play the Brahms Violin Sonatas (one of seven featured performances), he tells me
he’ll be “taking a step out into the dark.”