What do you fear the most and why? The commercialisation and dumbing-down of culture, because in the long-term it will kill the very culture it is trying to popularise.

Which mobile number do you call the most? My wife and daughter in equal measure.

What ­or where­ is perfection? It isn’t, but Bach’s Fugues and Mozart’s melodic lines come close, as does Brahms’ sense of form.

Who is your favourite hero from fiction (book/comic/film/opera) ­ and why? The Saint – nostalgia.

What’s your favourite ritual? Porridge  for breakfast.

What other talent or skill would you like to possess? To understand M-Theory (In theoretical physics, M-theory is an extension of string theory in which 11 dimensions are identified) and to be able to do simultaneous translation in Russian, French and Spanish.

Tell us about a special memory you have of Southbank Centre? After a performance with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1987, I raised the alarm and reported the theft of my car from the artist’s car park to the Metropolitan Police. I then discovered my train ticket in my pocket as I was being interviewed. The subsequent conversation with the police was something I will never forget, but I have nothing but praise for their understanding and humour over the situation.

If you could programme your ideal Southbank Centre show, which artists (living or dead) would you bring together? Sviatoslav Richter and Yevgeney Svetlanov. 

What is the most important lesson life has taught you? To be open to the possibility of totally changing my mind.

What is the most played piece of music on your MP3 player or in your CD collection? Dinu Lipatti playing Chopin Waltzes.

Peter Donohoe returns to Queen Elizabeth Hall on Thursday 28 February as part of the International Piano Series 2011/12

Charles Hazlewood and the Philharmonia Orchestra perform on Saturday 11 February & Saturday 18 February together with 250 Soutwark schoolchildren, the Southwark Youth Orchestra and the David Idowu Choir.

The Notos Quartet: Parkhouse Award Winners 2011 perform at Southbank Centre on 6 Feburary.

For more information and to book tickets see the webpage.

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Janine Jansen returns to play Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.2 in G minor with LPO on 1 February

For more information about the Bach Weekend, Friday 25 – Sunday 27 March, please see here.

Your interest in Baroque music seems to have begun at an early age – what is it about the music of Bach that particularly grabs you?
Well that’s not actually entirely true… I started as a jazz pianist and I didn’t even learn to read music until the age of fifteen! I absolute rejected this classical music lark because that’s what all my family did, but then I heard one of my father’s reel-to-reel tapes of a Bach cantata and was profoundly moved by it.
Then I took up the flute at sixteen and everything sped away from there really, to the Royal College of Music at eighteen and an obsession with Bach that has been with me ever since.
So do you think your grounding in jazz music, in improvisation and learning music without notation, has affected how you play even now?
Well once my music disappeared in the middle of a concert and luckily it wasn’t disastrous because I was able to carry on playing – everyone was terribly impressed that I’d ploughed on through and could play without the music!
I think it has made me more improvisatory in my performances, and it’s definitely part of who I am.
Is there a piece of music you would pick out as one of the ‘best’ works ever written?
Mozart’s G minor string quartet may be close to the most perfect work structurally. It is almost flawless.
And is there a work that is for you, emotionally, especially important?
A friend of mine, Richard Campbell, died recently and we had a memorial concert for him with lots of emotionally powerful music, including the Trauer Ode which we’re playing at the Bach Weekend, but the piece that particularly stood out for me was Dido’s Lament.
What is the most played piece of music on your mp3 player or in your CD collection?
An aria from cantata BWV 42, by Bach of course. 12 minutes of tear-jerkingly wonderful music. A piece so wonderful that if you were on your death-bed you would say ‘I want to hear that’ and it would make sense. A good way to judge a piece of music I think.
Do you have any strange rituals you carry out before or after you perform?
No, but I have an array of glittery waistcoats that I change according to my mood. At the moment I’ve been going for a zig-zag silver one as a way to motivate myself to be cheerful!
And I have very big black shoes. I started wearing these when I switched from modern flute to Baroque flute, which is a pretty tricky thing to do, perhaps especially for men – you move from this great honking, loud instrument to this rather feminine one, so I felt I had to assert my masculinity by wearing these enormous platform black shoes.
What – or where – is perfection?
Playing beautiful music with friends, and feeling that the audience get real pleasure from it and are moved by it. Because that is one of the things in life that ultimately makes it all worthwhile.

For the 2012-2013 season campaign they are trying something a little different with the OAE audience staring in photographs alongside the musicians.

They are on the look out for OAE fans with what might be called a ‘strong look’ and will be picking 4-5 people to be photographed alongside the Orchestra, to be featured in their new brochures and marketing material.

More info / Apply

Here is the video we created to launch the campaign to restore the Royal Festival Hall organ back in September 2010.

The Bach Choir and Chetham’s Symphony Orchestra give a special Leap Year performance of Rachmaninov at Southbank Centre on Wednesday 29 February. Click below to find out more:

What are you particularly looking forward to about playing The Bach Weekend at Southbank Centre next year?

The Bach Weekend is always very exciting for us, and at Queen Elizabeth Hall on Saturday 24 March we’re performing the Magnficat, the Easter Oratorio and the Trauer Ode. The Trauer Ode contains some of Bach’s most beautiful music – it uses orchestration of such exquisite beauty. It is truly sublime. So the Magnificat is a kind of antidote to that… The Trauer Ode is quite dark but the Magnificat is bright and sparkly with trumpets and timps – another kind of wonderful orchestration.

We’re forming a partnership with the London Bach Singers – they are our sister group and we really enjoy performing with them. Working together we feel very much like we’re a family. We try to make the Weekend as rich and varied as possible, and invite lots of soloists to join us. This is our fifth Bach Weekend, and we want eventually to leave no stone left unturned – we want to play everything in the end. So we’re very excited about moving a little further towards that goal this year!

And you are going to talk at the Bach Weekend about the piece that you think is the most important work in the flute repertoire, the Flute Sonata in B minor, BWV.1030. Why that piece?

This transcends almost anything else Bach wrote. The first movement is a monumental, symphonic, extraordinary thing, a thing so wonderful that other instruments keep wanting to steal it! Which is quite unusual for flute repertoire. So when we perform it at Southbank, hopefully we’ll be able to convey some of that magic…

Do you find it challenging to bring a new perspective to music as well-known as, say, the Brandenberg concertos?

Yes – I don’t intentionally try to be different but doing the Brandenbergs here at Southbank Centre was a particularly memorable concert for me because we played on instruments specially made for the concert, pitched at 392. This pitch is even lower than a normal Baroque pitch, and is the pitch Bach probably intended them to be played at – the sonorities are completely different and it was very exciting to hear that. The recorder at that pitch gives a real honking, juicy sound.

You’ve performed at Southbank Centre lots of times – has there been a particular performance here that was very special to you?

When you play in Queen Elizabeth Hall you feel as if every note can be heard, which is extremely exciting. A concert I remember with great fondness is our performance of the B minor mass in March this year, which is so stunning – it is a huge edifice of a work with not a spare bit of gristle on it. So I am very much looking forward to getting the same kind of thrill from the repertoire we’re performing at this year’s Bach Weekend.