‘Like sex and religion, we don’t like to talk about memory’: pianist Angela Hewitt on how she keeps hers in shape

It happens to all pianists at some point: that terrifying moment when you’re on stage and can’t remember what comes next. My former teacher, Jean-Paul Sévilla, was once playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations when, at the end of Variation 7, he couldn’t remember how Variation 8 began. By the time he got off stage to find his score it came to him, but his evening was ruined. Then there was Vlado Perlemuter who, upon leaving home to go to the concert hall, was asked by his wife if he had forgotten anything. A friend in attendance jokingly said: “The beginning of the concerto!” When, a few hours later, Vlado walked on stage in Paris to perform Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto (which famously begins with a quiet piano solo), he couldn’t find the notes. My own turn came when I was 50 years old, playing Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (all four and a half hours of it) from memory in Stuttgart. It was part of a world tour in which I played that mammoth work 56 times in 26 countries. That night, however, I went wrong in the big A minor fugue from Book 1 and couldn’t find my way out. I had to go and get the score. You feel so ashamed – but we’re only human, and sometimes it happens.

On the whole, I’ve been blessed with an excellent memory – I suppose some would even say prodigious as I’ve performed the complete solo keyboard works of Bach (the exception being The Art of Fugue), the 32 sonatas of Beethoven, and who knows how many millions of other notes from memory over the years. I always thought it would have been a good idea to measure my brain before I memorised all that Bach and then again after to see how it had developed and changed. Too late now. At the age of 64, it’s definitely shrinking, and memorising has become a very conscious, frustrating and time-consuming activity. But I stick at it because memory is a muscle that needs to be constantly used to stay in any sort of shape.

When you’re a young pianist, memory almost comes without thinking. A huge part of it is reflex memory; add to that aural memory (especially if, like me, you had perfect pitch), visual memory (some pianists, like Yvonne Loriod, who was married to Olivier Messiaen, had a piece memorised after looking at it only once) and memory of association, and you have a relatively quick process.

I say I “had” perfect pitch because that has slipped with age. As a kid, I could instantly name all the notes in even the most complicated chords. Now I need time to think about it. Perfect pitch is related to memory: if one declines, the other does too. Everyone of a certain age who has had it seems to encounter this problem. It makes memorising a much more complicated task.

Memory is a subject we don’t like to talk about – like sex, love and religious beliefs – most likely because we are afraid of losing it. It takes courage to admit even to yourself that your memory is failing. Often friends or family notice it first. We shouldn’t feel ashamed, but rather embrace this normal sign of ageing and then do all we can to keep our brains alive. It upsets me when I can’t remember where I’ve put my boarding pass, as happened this morning at Heathrow (only to find it in the outside compartment of my bag, where I must have put it five minutes previously); when I can’t remember if I’ve taken my daily HRT lozenge (now there’s something that helps older women with memory!); and when I make the same mistake over and over again when learning a new piece.

This past summer, I was chair of the jury of the Bach competition in Leipzig, in which the contestants were allowed to choose whether to play from memory or with the score. (From a score these days means mostly “from an iPad” with a foot pedal to turn the pages on the screen, although one competitor used the app that allows you to make a facial grimace to turn the page – something I found deeply disconcerting). At their age, I would never have dreamed of using the score, even for complicated contemporary pieces. Yet quite a few of them did. Could they not have spent the extra time needed to memorise the music? I know the trend these days is to say it doesn’t matter, but I know myself that when I can get up and perform something securely from memory, it gives me a wonderful sense of freedom and accomplishment.

One of the most common faults of pianists is that we spend too much time playing the notes and not enough time thinking about what we’re doing. “Think 10 times and then play once” said the wise Franz Liszt, who could rattle off more notes a minute than anybody else (and who, along with Clara Schumann, was the first pianist to perform from memory – an act considered arrogant by the public of the time). In fact, the best memory work is done away from the keyboard – just looking at the score, memorising your fingering, the harmonies, the places where it’s easy to go wrong, the intervals, how many notes there are in a chord, the dynamics, phrasing; nothing is too simple or evident to go unnoticed. You must visualise yourself playing the piece without being at a keyboard. Then go and play and you will be amazed by the progress you have made.

Even when you are concentrating very hard, the brain is constantly assailed by extraneous and often silly thoughts. As a pianist playing from memory, you train yourself to deal with this. I call it double concentration mode. Coughing from the audience (do people realise that just one cough in the wrong place can easily upset the whole apple cart?); the inevitable mobile phone (I go on as though nothing has happened, otherwise it makes things worse); even once I had a beetle slowly climbing up my bare arm during a Bach fugue. You have to be able to count on your concentration to get you through, no matter what happens.

You must also train yourself to think ahead – even if just by a split second. As the brain ages, this becomes even more difficult but necessary. I think that’s why older pianists on the whole (Martha Argerich being the exception) tend to play slower than the young ones, to whom speed often seems the ultimate goal. It’s also why, as an audience member, we are more disturbed by fast playing as we age. It’s just too much for our slower brains to process.

In my 20s, I lived in an artist’s studio above a branch of the Banque Nationale de Paris for two years. The staff knew I was the one playing above, practising away, and they professed not to mind except when I “played the same thing over and over again”. To steal an observation from the actor Roger Allam, the French word for rehearsal is “répétition”, and that’s what you need to do. Get yourself a silent piano if it drives your family or neighbours crazy; I often have one in hotel rooms when I’m on tour.

Another thing you can train the brain to do is to think of several things at once. You can practise this by being in a crowded restaurant and listening to two or more conversations simultaneously. You’ll need that if you’re playing a Bach fugue, which can have up to five voices, each one as important as the other. When I walk out on stage, I remind myself to “sing” every note; indeed, when I practise I am constantly singing away, trying to imitate the human voice on an instrument whose sounds are produced by hammers hitting strings. By singing, I engage my concentration and my emotions, as well as my memory. Unlike my compatriot Glenn Gould, once I am on stage or in a recording studio I do this silently.

If this all sounds very tiring then, believe me, it is. Take breaks when you feel your brain has had it and make sure it gets all the nutrients it needs. Alcohol and sleeping pills don’t help – which is why I mostly avoid the former and refuse to use the latter. Backstage in concert halls I have my brain foods at the ready: tinned sardines, avocados, peanut butter, rye crackers, blueberries, bananas and lots of water.

So often I hear people say they can’t memorise anything any more. Yes, but have you really tried? If you’re not a musician, take a poem, a recipe or the phone numbers of your best friends. Above all, don’t just give up. Get to know your brain and work on it.

I always say I couldn’t have memorised the complete works of Bach and had four kids. That would have been impossible; I don’t even have one. But I’ve had a wonderful life in the company of some of the greatest minds that have ever existed, and to them, and to my musician parents who put me in front of a toy piano at the age of two, I am for ever grateful.