I'm sure you probably listen to some of the recordings that you've made ten or fifteen years ago, and you say, "Well, I'm surprised I did it that way."

Well, not only fifteen years ago. I am just checking and I hear certain mistakes on my present recordings and things which didn't come in the best way. But also, you know, I accept these small mistakes, because a man is only a man, and cannot be God.

I find one thing very dangerous for myself, and this is the competition of my recordings to my public concerts, because in a session I can pick up the best piano in the city, and I have time enough.

But for a public concert, very often I come and I don't play just the right piano, and so it's a bad competition. I wish that for this recital, which I will be playing this Saturday, I will find a nice piano.

Which you're still looking for, I understand. If anyone has an excellent piano, why don't you give us a call.

I'd like to hear a little bit about your youth and the musical influences on your life as a young man growing up - in Prague, I assume.

Well, my father used to be a lawyer, but he was an amateur pianist, a good one. He had not a tremendous technique but he could read, from the music, anything. And he was a good singer, and his biggest love was opera. Those were my first impressions - that I have been standing near to my father who was playing the entire Madame Butterfly, and I was just turning pages and listening to him.

Did he bring you to the opera house?

Yes. I went really only to opera when I was ten, twelve years old, and the interest in piano and chamber concerts and so forth came much later.

Would you say that, having gone to the opera house and hearing so much singing, this definitely had an effect on your eventual style?

I think so, because I am really looking for a long tone, and long sound. And I'm aware of the limitation of our instrument, which is piano. Because the tone drops, and so the whole mastery - I mean in the sense of sound and of legato - should help to simulate the tremendous legato, or even the possibility of a crescendo, which a viola or violin player has, or a singer has. This is my biggest sadness, that I can't do, holding a nice F on the piano, a nice crescendo.

...What about later on when you began formal study?

Well, I began my lessons with an old teacher at the age of seven, then I changed my teachers two or three times, then I went in the class of Erna Grünfeld, who was the niece of the famous Alfred Grünfeld. And then I entered in the age of fifteen the conservatoire, which I ended by the age of twenty, and then I studied on the Academy of Arts, which is the university level.

I went there when I was twenty-one. And that's it. And further, the only thing in terms of studies, I went to Italy to study a little bit with Michelangeli. He held his summer courses in Arezzo. But I think that - with all the gratitude to my teachers - I think my greatest teachers were great pianists from records. And I really, having today many students, I really recommend that each student just gets as much information about the art of piano playing as is available - and there is a tremendous amount available.

And there is one more thing which I found out later, and that is that a player should, occasionally, check what he is really doing..., record himself. And listening to himself. Because since a player is involved - and even passionately involved - while he's playing, he really cannot say what this is the right style.

It's hard to step outside one's self and look back.

Absolutely. And better with a cool ear.

If that's possible.

It is possible. Well, sometimes it takes some courage to listen to your own mistakes, but it's the only way to improve the style.

Who are the pianists that you listened to? You mentioned Josef Hofmann earlier; who are some of the others?

Well, Rachmaninoff. And Lipati. And Gieseking. Quite naturally, young Horowitz from the old 78 recordings, which are the best, I think.

Were they easily available to you at home?

Yes. I have many loves. I like many things which Cortot did. And I like many things which Barenboim does today. And I like Vladimir Ashkenazy, and I like Michelangeli, and... I have many loves. And I think this is really a tremendous help of, as you said, of the technical achievements, that technique can help in the sense of self control, self checking.

[Missing part of interview here. The rest is Moravec speaking:]

[Debussy] ... was really my first great love, through Children's Corner, which was one of the first pieces which I studied very carefully. And I remember hours which I have given the part which is called "Snow is Dancing," which is a fascinating piece. And also it shows some very strange and beautiful characteristics of Debussy's music, you know.

There is a sort of very steady, rhythmical pulsation of the snow falling, you know. And yet when you play it, you try to play it absolutely evenly, in a long, beautiful sound. But it's a paradox: that through exact rhythm, you have finally the feeling that time does not exist. This was something which amazed me in some of Debussy's music. Which amazed me also in Ravel's music later when I have known the Daphnis et Chloe...

This is of course sometimes the hardest task for interpreter - to be rhythmically correct, and yet not to lose the melody and the space.

And space in Debussy's music is again another phenomenon, you know. As you said, it's very hard to speak about very subtle things in terms of words. But I always perceived two strange new things in Debussy's music, and that was something which has happened with the time while listening to Debussy's music, and with the space.

For example, even such a small piece of music like Clair de lune evokes an imagination of a tremendous space. And of time which is like to be stopped. No time! If you give to the long notes enough time, then the perception of the piece is really something quite exceptional. And this caught me as a child. At that time I wouldn't be able to put it even in those poor words as I did now.