'I think my piano might eat me'

I am due to meet the reclusive Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski at his apartment in Paris. It is in the swankiest bit of town in the 16th arrondissement.

Not bad, I am thinking, for a pianist who almost 20 years ago walked away from the prestigious Leeds Piano Competition, now does few concerts and doesn't teach.

But when Anderszewski lets me in, the apartment turns out to be tiny, more like student digs than the home of one of the world's most eminent pianists. Up close he seems broader-shouldered and heftier than in his photographs, with a smile that creases his entire face.

“Some tea? And something maybe to eat?'' he says but his voice trails off and he looks worried, I suspect because he has just remembered the cupboard is bare. Then his face lights up. “Have you ever tried Polish jam?''

As he spoons a dollop on to a tiny delicate plate, he tells me about his childhood that was divided between Warsaw and summers spent at his grandmother's house in Budapest.

“My background is mixed in every way. My family in Warsaw was old-fashioned royalist but on my grandmother's side they were intellectual Jews and really convinced communists.''

Was there music played in the household? “My father played guitar in a band but my biggest memory is of the Chopin competition, which in Poland is bigger than football.''

At age 7 the young Anderszewski went to Paris, where he acquired his third language. He showed enough talent to get a place at the Warsaw high school for music at the age of 14 but even so it wasn't until later that he took the piano seriously.

“I suddenly realised that practice was a way of building something that was truly your own. It was like building a store of capital you could spend later.''

Anderszewski has a ruthless perfectionism that even now might drive him to repeat an entire recital piece as an encore, if he wasn't happy the first time round.

Such an attitude leaves room only for one “significant other'' in Anderszewski's life — the Steinway piano down the corridor in his workroom. And yet on the new documentary of his life directed by Bruno Monsaingeon he is often shown singing as he plays, as if the piano can't give him what he wants.

“Well, yes, there is an element of frustration that sometimes the piano won't sing enough. But that is also the secret of this instrument, which for me is the most musical of all instruments.

It doesn't give you things; it suggests things. It is the supreme instrument of persuasion and suggestion.''

When he talks about his family, Anderszewski is affectionate but only half engaged.

But as he talks about the piano, he seems stirred to his depths. “You know the piano often seems to me like a machine that has to be warmed up. As I play, it comes alive like an organism. It is really strange. Sometimes when I am practising it feels as if the piano might actually eat me!''

He is an endearing man in his rumpled sweatshirt, radiating warmth. But there is also an aura of separateness about him, symbolised by his stubbornly old-fashioned tastes.

Contemporary music? “I haven't time really; you have to know what your limits are. Maybe Ligeti one day.''

Pop music? “I like the Beatles. I don't know anything else.'' What about Liszt? “Awful. The worst of the 19th century.''

Busoni's arrangements of Bach? He pulls a face. “What is the point when there is so much real Bach?''

But if his fierce purism makes Anderszewski lonely, it certainly hasn't made him austere or humourless. When I ask him why he doesn't play much chamber music, he says: “Well, I am a solitary person.

But also I like to lie down and you can't do that if you are rehearsing with another person. I really love to lie down; it is the natural position. Standing up is horrible — look!''

He leaps up and sways theatrically, reducing me and the PR person from his record company to fits of laughter. “It is so insecure and so high! No, lying down is best.

I wish someone would invent a piano I could play lying down.'' He adds, “I would be so happy!''

Piotr Anderszewski plays at the Festival Hall, London, on June 9.