Transcript: Why you’re never too old for a new hobby

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Why you’re never too old for a new hobby’

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
This is Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos. The journalist Nadia Beard did something a few years ago that upended her life. She was 31 and working at a magazine, and she quit her job and enrolled full-time as a piano student at a conservatory. She didn’t think she’d become a concert pianist, but she did think there was value in being an amateur in her thirties. Nadia wrote about it for the FT. And she’s been thinking about this since this joy of taking up challenges later in life. Recently, she wrote another piece for us on musicians debuting on major stages in their eighties and nineties. She calls them the “wunderalten” — which is the opposite of wunderkinder — and she thinks that in some ways, age made them better. She’s working on a book about the value of amateurism now. And she’s with us today. Nadia, hi. Welcome to the show.

Nadia Beard
Hi. Thank you for having me.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So to start, can you tell me a little bit about how this all began for you? Like, when did you decide to devote such serious time to being a pianist as an adult? And what made you decide to.

Nadia Beard
It was actually by accident, really. So I played the piano and cello quite seriously from the age of four until I went to university. When I studied Russian and decided during my undergrad that I really wanted to become a journalist, and music accidentally fell by the wayside. And it was just by chance, one evening in Berlin, I’d gone there with another friend to visit somebody, and I just came across a beautiful concert grand Bösendorfer piano in the lobby. And it reminded me that I used to play. So I just sat down and miraculously actually remembered a couple of things. And it was actually on the way to dinner that night that I voiced that to my friends, and I said how wonderful it would be if I could practice really hard and maybe get into conservatory to study for a year. And ever the cheerleaders, they both said you should absolutely do that.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK, so I find this very inspiring. So after this happens, you change your life pretty drastically and enrol in a conservatory and move to Georgia — the country of Georgia. What did it feel like to kind of just jump back in to piano after so long? Like, were you able to just get right in and start learning? Was your progress slow or was it smoother than you expected? What was it like?

Nadia Beard
Coming back to something like the piano, or something that requires, minute control over your body as an adult after a long break is very difficult because your body has readapted to life without it. And piano playing, I mean, like a lot of playing musical instruments or, I think a lot of sportsmen would feel the same, but it’s all about the details. It’s not just one big gesture, but it’s the difference between one action and a slightly different action. And so I realised that coming back to that at the age of around 30 was actually really difficult because I’d lost a lot of technique. And so a lot of the work was actually figuring out how to get that technique back, or if I couldn’t, how I could get around it.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Do you have any sort of examples, or can you kind of take us there with you? What were types of things that had become harder that you were sort of refaced with?

Nadia Beard
The way that I approached challenges with things that I couldn’t do was with a lot of tension. It was like I was trying to force myself to be able to produce the sound, or to reach the notes that I was trying to reach. And what ended up happening was a lot of tension. So my body just hurt. I wasn’t used to it, you know, sitting at the piano. It takes a lot of stamina. You have to be in pretty good shape to sit there for three hours and to use your body. You have to be quite careful about how you move and how you use every gesture in your body, your fingers, your hand, your back. And I wasn’t used to that at all. So I actually ended up kind of hurting myself.

Lilah Raptopoulos
As you say, that I’m sitting up straighter thinking about how little I think about my own body when I’m interviewing.

Nadia Beard
Of course, we all do that.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
You know, Nadia, I would love to ask you about these musicians that you wrote about. The ones that are the wunderalten, the ones that are performing in their seventies and eighties and nineties. It feels like an amazing example of the value of staying creative when you get older. What was your sense of what was driving them?

Nadia Beard
There was one composer who I spoke to, I think he’s 96, called Nicola LeFanu and she’s been composing her whole life. And I asked her how she feels her composing life has changed, or whether she has different creative ideas as she’s developed in life, whether things have got better or worse. And she said, basically, you’re asking the wrong question. It’s not that things get better or worse with creativity. Just like in life, things don’t get better and worse, but they do change, and you have to be alive to the change and try to find within it, an opportunity to create something. And I think that’s where a lot of that creativity comes in. I think with someone like Ruth Slenczynska, who, I think she’s nearly 100 now, and she was a child prodigy, and she’s been playing since she was five. I’ve noticed listening to a recent recording she made in 2022 when she was 97, how much she’s changed. And it does seem like she, at an older age, is facing limited technique. She can simply do less with her body, with her hands, but she’s managed to find within that a way to say something new with the music.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah. So it is, I like that framing, you know, journalists like to make things very simple, like, actually, they say you get worse as you age, but you get better as you age. It’s actually neither. It’s just different.

Nadia Beard
Exactly. And I think there’s also a creative element to limitations, whether that’s technical or otherwise. But technical limitation is something that, much older artists have to deal with. Because when technical facility comes very easily, as it often does to children or young people, you can sometimes miss the point of what you’re actually doing. You know, you can make the shapes of your hand or your body and execute, so to speak, the notes. But making music, of course, is not just reading notes on a page, but it’s seeing in those notes the expressive potential and having the facility or the artistry to make something of it. And this is actually what I find so soulless when I listen to kind of five-year-olds who can play brilliant concertos. You know, they can execute it. But I’m often left cold. I’m unmoved. And that is the worst thing to feel when listening to music or trying to experience a piece of art.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, actually, I imagine a five-year-old playing something too well sounds . . . 

Nadia Beard
It’s unnerving, you know.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Unnerving. Yeah. (Laughter) Maybe they’re not enjoying their childhood.

Nadia Beard
Exactly.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
I love when you wrote in your piece about how you can really hear the life experience in their music, and even hearing you talk about it now. And I wonder if we can listen to something that would help illustrate that. You sent us two recordings to compare. So let’s, before we listen to them, maybe you can tell listeners what we’re about to listen to.

Nadia Beard
So we’re gonna listen to Chopin: Fantaisie in F minor. It’s Opus 49. It’s a single-movement work rather than a sonata of three movements, for example, which was the form that came before Chopin in the classical era. So the fantasy form doesn’t really follow rules. So already we’re dealing with a much freer work. So in one recording, it’s performed by a French pianist called Alexandre Tharaud, who was 41 years old when he recorded this in 2009.

[ALEXANDRE THARAUD’S RENDITION OF ‘CHOPIN: FANTAISIE IN F MINOR, OP. 49’ PLAYING]

The section we’re listening to, it’s beautiful, it’s virtuosic on account of the speed he plays it at, but he also feels the build-up. As a build-up of intensity, he gets there faster. The intensity is maintained at quite a high level. The expressive intensity is overwhelming and very beautiful.

The other is Ruth Slenczynska, who was 97 when she recorded this in 2022.

[RUTH SLENCZYNSKA’S RENDITION OF ‘CHOPIN: FANTAISIE IN F MINOR, OP. 49’ PLAYING]

And so I think in Slenczynska, she doesn’t rush. The tempo is slower, yes, which means that you can hear a bit more clearly but also changes how the peak, how that intense passage lands. She places it. It’s like the opposite of rushing into it. She stretches out the suspense. I think that’s something that happens with age, like an awareness of what’s possible.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Wow, that one really feels like it pulls you.

Nadia Beard
Yeah. And just listening to that now, I find it actually more uplifting and fun than the first one that we listened to.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. And what did these two approaches tell you about these two people or musicians?

Nadia Beard
I think Tharaud’s is, I don’t want to say young, but it’s some being caught up in a moment. Of course, that can happen at any age, but it’s more that there’s a feeling of being pulled into something and letting that control you. I think Slenczynska’s is much more restrained. It’s held back. It feels like she’s holding the reins on something.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. She feels . . . Meanwhile, I don’t know anything about this other than what I’ve learned from you. But she seems sort of like, in charge of it versus it being, sort of in charge of her.

Nadia Beard
I think that’s right. And it’s important to mention, you know, she was 97. So I’m sure that part of the reasoning for playing it at that slower tempo is because, of course, she’s much older, her hands can’t do what they used to do. So part of it is having to slow down. But I think she’s actually found a creative and musical value within that.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
One of the things I love from your piece about coming back to the piano is you said that like it really takes time and dedication to get better at something, and there’s nothing other than it takes than time. And that can be seen as pressure and a bad thing. But actually, it can also be seen as a good thing. Like every little bit is still getting you there, as opposed to just thinking out of it like I’m not doing enough. And I feel like a lot of people, when they have a practice or a hobby that they wanna spend more time to it, it starts to feel like a burden to them, or it starts to feel like a thing that they’re failing at because they’re not committing as much time to it as they think they should. How do you think about that? What’s a good way to think about that?

Nadia Beard
Any amount of time spent doing something that you care about and you love is important, and it’s enough. So even if you spend 10 minutes or 15 minutes a day doing something, trying to commit to doing it, I think is a very rewarding thing. You know, hard things are hard. And I think the easiest thing to do is avoid hard things. And I think we get used to thinking: why do something hard when you don’t have to? We’re used to justifying hard things in the context of work or family or things that are obligations. When you have free time and you spend it doing something challenging, that’s not considered usual. At least it’s not conventionally relaxing. And I have to say, it’s not relaxing. You know, kind of practice, for example, is actually not relaxing, but it is extremely rewarding. It’s just another way of experiencing the world. And why wouldn’t you do that? For me, for playing the piano, you know, the experience of creation is completely exhilarating to me. And it’s one of the few things in life which I think is completely and perennially unpredictable. You know, creation is completely mysterious, and I think everyone should have access to that experience. And so if amateurism is a way to do that, then fantastic. And I think being a good amateur, it just widens the scope of what you can do and what you can spend time doing.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Cool. At its broadest, I guess, what do you think is the value of amateurism and what does it apply to? Is it mostly music, or could it also be hitting your forties and fifties and looking for a hobby and picking up carpentry or drawing or cooking?

Nadia Beard
This is what I’m writing about in my book, and it’s basically thinking about amateurism as a way of life. And remembering that the word amateur comes from the Latin verb amari, which means to love. And I can only speak for myself because in my case, it’s music. To me, music is just another way to experience the world. And having that, being able to play and knowing how to listen makes life feel larger. You just have access to more by having that. But I absolutely think the same goes for carpenters or artists or sportspeople or scientists. They’re all just ways of understanding and interacting with life. It’s just more life. It’s a valuable use of time, I think.

Lilah Raptopoulos
What would be a good way for somebody to start to get into that sort of thing or figure out what it is for them?

Nadia Beard
Yeah, I think that is actually one of the things that prevents people from getting into it. It’s just knowing how to actually do it.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I think so, too. Yeah.

Nadia Beard
So I think to decide what it is that you wanna do. If you want to learn how to cook or you wanna learn how to take photographs or play the violin, then find communities that are talking about that. Go online. Find people who are also experiencing the same thing. Find a teacher. And just by taking an interest, by thinking about those things, reading about it, engaging with that world, I think you’ll find your own way through.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah. I was actually, I had dinner with a woman who’s nearly 80 recently, and she was a documentarian but she had taken up painting. And she said that one thing that she’s found in her practice, in her hobby, is just to remind yourself that the trash can is always there. Like, it’s fine if it gets . . . if it’s bad. It really doesn’t matter if you mess up. There’s no pressure on this. If it’s a hobby, there’s no pressure on it at all.

Nadia Beard
I have to say that is the most liberating thing about deciding to become, OK, as good an amateur as I can become, but not a professional pianist. It’s just the fact that I can always not do it if I want to. But so far, that day hasn’t come.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Good. Nadia, thank you so much for your time. This was such a delight.

Nadia Beard
Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. Take a read through the show notes. We have linked to Nadia’s pieces in the FT. Those links get you past the paywall. And also we have Spotify links there to the recordings that we played in this episode. Also in the show notes, is a discount to a subscription to the Financial Times and ways to stay in touch with me on email and on Instagram. I love hearing from you.

I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and here is my talented team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Zach St Louis is our contributing producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a lovely week and we’ll find each other again on Friday.