Nigerian Pianist Sodi Braide Interviewed by 'Nouveaux Virtuoses'

[Sodi Braide: Franck, œuvres pour piano; Lyrinx\Talents LYR 249 (2006)]

Yesterday we posted: “Nigerian Pianist Sodi Braide Plays Chopin at 'Piano et Patrimoine' Festival in Arras September 16.” The message we quoted also referred to a recent interview Sodi gave to Nouveaux Virtuoses [New Virtuosos]: “You might also like to read an interview I gave recently for the association Nouveaux Virtuoses. It's on my blog, http://sodibraide.com/blog. I'm afraid I haven't yet translated it into English, though...”

Today we present our unofficial translation of some of the questions and answers from the interview:

Could you briefly tell us about yourself and your career?

As a musician I consider myself a little like a “citizen of the world.” I have been living in France for a very long time, but I was born in England to parents who were Nigerian. I have lived mainly in Nigeria and in France, which I consider to be my adoptive country, but also in Ireland, Spain and Italy. I have had the chance to travel a great deal, at first for my studies and later for my concerts.

Having come to study music in France on a scholarship from the French government, I was strongly influenced by the French school of piano through my teachers Françoise Thinat, Jacques Rouvier and Gérard Frémy. But I have also been influenced by the Russian school through Dmitri Bashkirov at the Reina Sofia School of Madrid, and by masters as diverse as Léon Fleisher, Alicia de Larrocha, Andréas Staier, and Fou T'song, with whom I have also had occasion to study.

What was your first contact with classical music?

My parents liking classical music very much, I feel I have always listened. My father played the piano, and I “plunked away” very early on the old upright piano in the house. Later I took my first lessons at three years of age. But my first strong musical impressions date from a little later, the age of eight or nine years, when I had heard one of my teachers in Nigeria, a Polish woman, playing Chopin. I remember saying to myself that I had never heard anything as beautiful.

What are you working on for 2010? What about the next three years?

In 2010 I am playing a lot of Chopin, for the Bicentennial of his birth. In particular I have played the Concerto No. 1 several times, in the version with string quartet, with the Tercea Quartet. It is the version which Chopin himself had performed in concert several times. I also play the Préludes, which are, in my opinion his most extraordinary works.

It is a little early to talk of the next three years! I am working on the works of Liszt for next year because 2011 will be the Bicentennial of his birth...But it takes time for these ideas to mature and develop.