Nicola Lisle talks to pianist Mark Viner ahead of his recital at SJE Arts

If things had worked out differently, Mark Viner could now be working as an archaeologist or scientist.

Instead, at just 25, the former West Oxfordshire schoolboy is emerging as one of the brightest young stars in the piano firmament, despite taking up the instrument at the relatively late age of 11. Even then, it was his interest in science rather than music that led him to the piano.

“I was interested in how things worked,” he recalls. “I liked taking things apart and putting them back together. Once I discovered the piano I knew how it worked immediately, and then sort of worked out how to play it. It wasn’t so much the music that interested me at first, it was the possibilities of the instrument itself.

“I’m not from a musical family, so a lot of what musical families give to their kids just wasn’t available. “All I had was what I heard on the radio. Then I started collecting second-hand music in charity shops, and recordings, and just devouring music. It’s quite strange compared to most stories!”

It certainly is. What is even stranger is the speed at which Mark made up for lost time. Within two years of discovering the piano, he won a scholarship to the Purcell School of Music. He then won another scholarship to the Royal College of Music, graduating last June with first class honours in Music and a distinction in Masters of Performance.

Since then he has been in constant demand – something he modestly attributes to the fact that he has become something of a champion for the music of little-known French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan. “He was an extraordinary composer,” he says. “He was a recluse and genius, and wrote some of the most terrifyingly difficult music. Liszt was rather in awe of him, and said in later life when he saw Alkan play it was the finest he’d seen anyone play. “His music is extraordinarily worthwhile. I suppose England is the place where we’ve had the greatest Alkan revival.

“France cares very little for him, unfortunately, and I’ve taken it upon myself to do as much as I can for him. I’ve been writing a book on him since I was 20, I’ve recorded a great deal of his music in the studio, although none of it has been released yet, and I won first prize in a competition dedicated to his memory last year.”

So, it is little surprise, then, that Mark will be playing some Alkan music in his forthcoming concert in Oxford, namely the Symphonie Opus 39, which is part of a set of 12 studies in all the minor keys, published in 1857.

He will also be playing a couple of pieces by another neglected composer, the Russian Nikolai Medtner, as well as music by Mozart and Brahms.

For Mark, the concert is very much a homecoming. “I grew up in the Witney area, and always used to go into Oxford,” he says. “They say home is where the heart is. Oxford is where my heart is, but my life is in London. My family are here, memories are here, so I’m looking forward to it.”

Mark Viner Piano Recital
St John the Evangelist Church, Iffley Road, Oxford
Tuesday, March 18, at 7.30pm
Tickets: www.sje-oxford.org