His first recordings, made in the late 1980s with Roger Norrington and the London Classical Players, were, to Melvyn, a symbol of his first proper success, helping to make the early piano accessible to a very wide audience. 'People started to take the early piano more seriously and, after the recordings' excellent reception, my career snowballed.'

After about ten years as an internationally-acclaimed exponent of Classical and early Romantic music, Melvyn's career as a performer began to take new directions. It began with an exploration of more modern repertoire, in particular Schumann. 'I got to the stage of feeling very frustrated technically - I couldn't understand why I found it difficult to do certain things and I never knew if it was my fault or the piano's. When you perform on the early piano and something goes wrong, you never know for sure why.' Eventually, he thought it might be interesting to play the modern piano again: 'People were quite surprised to find that I only played the fortepiano, and I began to realise that my repertory had, in fact, been very restrictive, all of it written within a period of eighty or so years. My school days had been so steeped in French nineteenth- and twentieth-century repertory, and I found myself wondering what it would be like to do all that again, so I did!'

Describing the process of returning to the modern piano as like trying to drive a huge car that can't be controlled, Melvyn admits that it took a considerable time to re-learn a lot of the techniques he learned as a teenager. 'Everything seemed much heavier, but in a way, it's a lot easier: it is also a lot safer, especially in performance. After a few concerts, it dawned on me that I was enjoying what I was doing - before, all I could do was worry about the instrument: would it be alright or would it stay in tune? With the modern piano, you don't have that problem at all. You might have thoughts about what an awful piano it is, but you can be sure that it is going to work in a certain way and if a passage doesn't work, you also know that it's ninety per cent your fault.' Nevertheless, the early piano provided him with a battery of techniques that he could apply to modern-instrument performances, especially in terms of Classical and early Romantic music, or being able to cope with early grand pianos. 'If you don't have any experience of, for example, early Bösendorfers, they can be an absolute nightmare - they're incredibly heavy and, because they have different actions, do very little that the modern instruments can.'

With his repertory becoming more up-to-date, Melvyn's horizons are also widening. Recently he returned from Salzburg, where he rekindled his working relationship with Sir Roger Norrington in a performance of a contemporary work by Helmut Eder. 'It was quite a Bartókian piece, a sort of cross between a piano obbligato work and a concerto. Its texture is very articulated and that suits my style of playing well.' Always on the lookout for other contemporary music, he performed a fortepiano concerto, written for him by Jonathan Dove, in the early 90s, which toured America. 'The use of the fortepiano in that context was quite unusual and very interesting. I would like to explore its capabilities in modern music more, perhaps in a work for both early and modern pianos - one could compare the differing textures of both instruments within the same piece. At the moment, I am doing a lot of Debussy and am also preparing a duo concert with Ronald Brautigam of Rachmaninov's suites for two pianos in Amsterdam in June 2001. We are also planning to put the Sonata for two pianos and percussion by Bartók into our repertory.'

As far as recording is concerned, Melvyn is quite open that there is little available. There is a new CD of Meyerbeer, Beethoven and Spohr songs with Anne Sophie von Otter from Deutsche Gramophone, but he feels that, one the whole, the recording industry is more interested in making money from the so-called child prodigy and wet-t-shirt contingent.

As a performing musician, Melvyn feels that he has the best of both worlds since he is still partially committed to the early piano: 'I don't play it as much as I used to, and nowadays I rarely perform fortepiano with orchestras, but for me, the chances of playing Debussy or Schumann make it all worth while.'

MT.co.uk