Channel 4<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n The presenter, however, is particularly skilled at the art of deflection. At one point, I ask if The Traitors was so wildly embraced by the public because of its unpredictable format. \u201cI hope so. I don\u2019t know. I hope people watch The Traitors because it\u2019s a good game. I hope people will watch The Piano, but you can never take anything for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n
I try again: is she ever tempted to reveal the winners of Strictly, The Traitors or The Piano? \u201cWell, I\u2019m 51 so I can\u2019t remember most things. That\u2019s very helpful.\u201d OK, then \u2013 is there a skill to hiding which contestants she has an affinity with? \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a skill,\u201d she says, with a Cheshire cat smile. \u201cI don\u2019t have favourites. Although I am winking.\u201d So she does have favourites? \u201cI know that professionally I should say, \u2018No, I love everybody.\u2019 But Mika and Lang Lang will tell you that in this show, I became slightly obsessed with a boy called Jared who plays the piano in St Pancras in the first episode.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jared is a 21-year-old truck mechanic who lives in Kent and taught himself to play in lockdown by watching YouTube. After performing some Jools Holland-esque boogie-woogie, Winkleman tells him he is \u201cridiculous\u201d, while Mika wonders how good Jared would be if he\u2019d started playing as a kid. During the episode, more contestants turn up \u2013 ranging in age from 11 to 92 \u2013 assuming they are performing for a documentary. Towards the end, the judges are revealed and the contestants told that one of them will play in a concert at London\u2019s Royal Festival Hall. Next week, a new train station and a new crop of contestants.<\/p>\n
The standard is indeed, to quote Winkleman, ridiculous \u2013 wait till you see 11-year-old Ilya rip through Prokofiev, or 24-year-old Jay mash up classical piano with rap \u2013 and reflective of the recent craze for playing public piano in train stations and airports across the world. The piano is, of course, an expressive instrument that can replicate an entire orchestra; its public presence simply expresses its enduring attraction. Lang Lang, who started studying the instrument when he was three, points out that he\u2019s made friends around the world through playing the piano. \u201cI see it as a kind of cultural ambassador; it\u2019s important for the future of education to include this magic power in our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mika and Lang Lang dancing and Claudia laughing as Harrison (contestant) plays piano.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nMika agrees. When he was a kid, he spent an entire year communicating only via the piano. \u201cI had issues. Real trauma. I was so poorly that I stopped talking, but I played piano the whole time. Too many of the people in the series had no access to a private piano. Access to music education is massively important; it\u2019s not a frilly extracurricular thing. It doesn\u2019t matter what kind of school you go to; it should be a fundamental part of education.\u201d<\/p>\n
What about Winkleman, who attended the City of London School for Girls before reading history of art at Cambridge \u2013 did she have music lessons as a kid? \u201cNo. I\u2019m not allowed to sing Happy Birthday to any member of my family, not even the tortoise,\u201d she says. \u201cI was just there, on The Piano, as a miniature orange cog. As a musical outsider, it was amazing for me to watch everyone rushing through the stations and then stopping as soon as someone started playing the piano. I was blown away by the power of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mika, who has been a judge on other talent shows concentrating on vocalists, says that The Piano is very relaxed in comparison. \u201cThe X Factor and The Voice have what they call a bible, which is probably longer than the Old Testament. I always tried to forget all that and just talk about music. The Piano, however, has no bible, no guide. Lang Lang and I had never met and we weren\u2019t forced into any kind of relationship or narrative. It was just, \u2018Nice to meet you\u2019, and then we talked about each contestant.\u201d<\/p>
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