Interview: Nathalia Milstein, Pianist

Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and pursue a career in music? I was born into a musical family – my mother is a violist, my father is a pianist – and I always heard music at home while my parents were practicing or teaching pupils. I don’t remember choosing the piano consciously, I just played the keyboard whenever I could and my father finally started to give me lessons. I am often asked when I knew that I wanted to make it my profession, but I am unable to answer because it was somehow always obvious to me that I would play the piano. No other choice has ever occurred to me! Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career? Most of all are my teachers – my father, with whom I studied until I was eighteen and who still advises me, and Nelson Goerner. What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far? The greatest challenge, which will probably last all my life, is trying to understand how to be completely myself on stage, how to convey my own ideas without getting distracted by anything else and be 100% into the music. (via)]]>