James Rhodes: Hardcore Classical

With his provocatively titled debut CD Razor Blades, Little Pills and Big Pianos - complete with punk-inspired cover art courtesy of Sex Pistols’ photographer Dennis Morris – you might be forgiven for wondering where ‘classical’ fits into James Rhodes’s musical life.

The answer lies as far away as your sound system, and the news is good: the guy can play the piano. ‘Clean, brisk and joyous’, says Time Out Chicago, while Ivan Hewett writing in the Daily Telegraph calls Rhodes ‘a genuinely subtle artist’. Offering up a menu of ‘hardcore classical’ ranging from Bach to Moritz Moszkowski, the post-Romantic pianist and composer, Rhodes’s take on the genre is downright old-fashioned. ‘I don’t think in 100 years people are going to be listening to Coldplay, but they’re going to be listening to Beethoven,’ says the chain-smoking 33 year-old.

For Rhodes, then, the question isn’t what gimmickry will convince people it’s not ‘really’ classical music. It’s how to get new audiences through the doors, and how to keep their bums on seats.

First, you choose your doors. Although he’s played the Southbank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and entertained journos at the launch of the Classical Brits, on May 13 Rhodes plays the first-ever classical gig at London’s Roundhouse, which reopened in 2006 after a major refurbishment. That’s the iconic venue where Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd gave groundbreaking performances, alongside plays by Arnold Wesker and Peter Brook.

Next, Rhodes dispenses with programme notes since ‘music tells you so much more than words.’ The words he does offer are spoken, not written, and they’re designed to bring to life both the work and the person who composed it. ‘Look at Beethoven, for instance,’ says Rhodes, his enthusiasm almost spilling over. ‘He was bipolar, he had IBS – a real tortured genius. He sweated over every note.’

Finally, it’s up to Rhodes to keep them entertained. ‘Coldplay just have to grab people for three-and-a-half minutes. My job is to grab them and hold them through a 10-15 minute piece.’

Rhodes acknowledges the PR risk in being touted as a troubled genius, but he’s convinced that by rejecting the orthodoxies of the classical establishment while revering the music itself he ‘gives [new audiences] the opportunity to come’.

Nowadays, Rhodes says, music study has become so regimented ‘everyone is forced to play a certain way’. As a result, ‘it’s become really hard to tell who’s playing on a recording,’ he says. ‘There’s no scope for originality.’

While he studied piano at Harrow, a boys’ school, Rhodes’s formal music training consisted of one year at Edinburgh University. Instead, he studied psychology at University College London, and then took high-flying job in the City of London. And that’s made him ‘unquestionably’ better off than if he’d followed the well-worn path through conservatoires and competitions.

Indeed, it was years after he stopped studying at all that Rhodes headed to Verona to see the manager of Grigory Sokolov, a favourite pianist. While he was there, Rhodes took a turn at the piano, prompting the manager to suggest he ought to forget about promoting Sokolov and perform professionally himself. And so it began.

He accepts a vaguely New Age interpretation of that trip – namely, that it didn’t take him where he intended to go, but it nonetheless took him where he was meant to be.

‘I’d always wanted to be a pianist but I’d never had the balls to follow through. I don’t have a choice now’, says Rhodes. ‘Finally, it’s like all of that shit disappears and you’re left with the truth.’

James Rhodes plays Camden's Proud Galleries on 13 July.