Claudia Winkleman, Lang Lang and Mika on The Piano's success (2024)

Claudia Winklemanhas spent much of this year crossing her fingers. ‘Or double-crossing fingers, if that’s a thing?’ she muses.

However you describe it, she was doing it in January ahead of the return of the BBC1 cult reality showThe Traitors, and she’s doing it again as she awaits series two of Channel 4’s music competition show The Piano, on which she also plays host (albeit minus her signature cloak).

Hence the endless double-crossing of fingers. ‘Obviously the first time something goes out you really want people to like it,’ says the 52-year-old presenter. ‘Then when they do and it goes out again you don’t want to let them down.’

What’s more – as with The Traitors – she had no expectation that The Piano, which scoured the UK to find our best amateur pianists, would be anything more than what she calls a ‘charming, lovely one-off’, something confirmed by her colleague, singer-songwriter Mika, who is a judge on the show.

‘She said it 37 times or so when we were filming first time round,’ he laughs. ‘But to be fair we all said it.’

The show, which featured amateur musicians publicly performing on street pianos on the concourses of major UK railway stations, blissfully unaware that their performances were being secretly judged by Mika and the virtuoso concert pianist Lang Lang, was certainly a surprise hit, pulling in an average of 2.7 million viewers per episode.

The judges then selected one performer from each location to play at an end-of-series concert at the Royal Festival Hall, where 13-year-old pianist Lucy, who is blind and autistic, was anointed overall winner.

In a nutshell, that’s it: no record deals, no tour dates and none of the razzmatazz that accompanies other big talent show contests.

And that, says 40-year-old Mika (he was born Michael Holbrook Penniman Jr, but is known by his mother’s nickname for him), is precisely the point.

‘It isn’t a traditional talent show. If anything it’s the anti-talent show. People don’t come on to seek fame and fortune, it’s not about becoming a star for 15 minutes or, “We’ll get you a record deal.”

'And that opens the door to a whole other world of stories, people like Lucy who’d never dare present themselves on a conventional talent show. That’s what makes it so wonderful.’

It’s little surprise that Lucy’s original audition has been nominated for the Memorable Moment Award at this year’s TV BAFTAs. But there is no getting away from the fact that second time around the element of mystery has gone.

While in the first series participants were unaware that two world-class musicians were watching and judging from a nearby booth, anyone strolling up to the piano this time will know. Doesn’t that mean a whole new raft of people just there to mug for the cameras?

Not so, the host and judges insist. ‘It hasn’t lost anything,’ says Lang Lang, 41, who has carved out time in his frenetic global touring timetable for our Weekend photoshoot: he was performing at the Colosseum in Rome the previous evening, and at Edinburgh Castle the night before that.

‘The only change is that sometimes we pop out and say hi, or, “The left hand is not good, play it again.” But the people giving it a try are doing just that. They’re not there for the cameras.’

Claudia agrees. ‘It has kept that lovely sweetness about it,’ she says. ‘It’s not showbizzy.’ And who can argue with her, given that whether the team are in Glasgow or Godalming, the backdrop is a railway concourse and a sandwich bar chain.

‘We’re usually between an Upper Crust and a Costa, people are running to get a train, a baby’s crying,’ says Claudia, adding that she often has to hold someone’s shopping and coat when they spontaneously decide to tickle the ivories.

‘And the Tannoy doesn’t stop. That’s the main challenge actually, especially when there are an awful lot of station stops.’

‘The Tannoy is the bane of Claudia’s life,’ laughs Mika. ‘That’s one incredible pleasure that Lang Lang and I have sitting in our booth: we get to watch Claudia Winkleman having screaming arguments with a woman on a Tannoy. She doesn’t like being spoken over. Oh, and she sneezes like a whoopee cushion on steroids.’

‘I do,’ acknowledges Claudia.

They all hoot with laughter, a reminder of the easy chemistry between a trio who, prior to the previous series, had never met and were basically put together on day one of filming by producers hoping for the best. It’s a gamble that clearly paid off.

‘We fell in love, thank goodness,’ says Claudia, recalling how the trio bonded over baguettes from a station sandwich bar after the first morning filming. ‘She loves a tuna baguette,’ says Mika of Claudia, who says he’s more of a ‘Pret salad or soup’ man.

‘We blended from the very beginning, it’s a real friendship,’ says Lang Lang, who blew the other two away when he played for them for the first time – post baguettes.

‘You never forget, once you’ve heard him play,’ says Claudia. ‘It will always stay with me.’

Lang Lang, in turn, testifies to Claudia’s ‘extraordinary ease’ with people, and to Mika’s cleverness. ‘He knows everything,’ he confides.

The musicians certainly bring different experiences to the table. One’s a Chinese virtuoso who gave his first public recital aged five, the other’s a Lebanese-born, self-taught, platinum-album-selling artist whose family had to flee their war-torn homeland.

‘I’ve been playing piano my whole life, but I don’t read music,’ says Mika, whose hit single Grace Kelly was the third best-selling in the UK in 2007, and sat at No 1 for five weeks.

‘I play by ear, so I’m an example that you can play really simply, and it can change your life. I always say that the piano gave me my voice.’

Mika wrote his first song aged seven when living in Paris. When the family relocated to London for his father’s work, the chipboard piano they had rented from a local Parisian company, and which the company gave to them when it went bankrupt, was one of the few things they brought.

Now homed at his cottage on the south coast, it is still his working piano. ‘My mother thought I was out of my mind, but I painted it white when we arrived in London, and I still have it. It’s in a cottage outside of Hastings.’

Lang Lang, by contrast, was given a piano at the age of two by his father, who played the erhu (a Chinese fiddle), and started lessons at three, leading to that recital aged five.

‘I loved being on stage, the lighting, the focusing of the moment and of course the tension,’ he says. ‘When you sense everyone is listening to you it creates some kind of magic. It’s like the world stops, but they’re breathing with you.’

His talent was prodigious – at 13 he was performing as a soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra – but it also went hand in hand with phenomenal amounts of work.

‘We all need to sacrifice at a certain level; as a kid I probably suffered more than the regular kid because they don’t need to concentrate six hours a day,’ he says. ‘But the reward is good; once you’re successful you’re travelling around the world.’

Even today, Lang Lang never goes longer than two days without playing as his fingers start to seize up. ‘It’s OK if I don’t play one or two days, but after that the hands feel very wrong,’ he says.

Of course, Lang Lang’s mastery is some way from people strolling up to a station piano, but as Mika says, that’s the point. Calling it ‘the ultimate democratic instrument’, he says the piano’s beauty is it is for all-comers.

‘We easily forget the impact the piano has had on our culture,’ he says. ‘It’s as appropriate in a church as it is in a pub, and it revolutionised music. It was so common to see pianos in people’s living rooms, and almost every pub in the UK had a piano, but most have disappeared.’

Yet the public’s love for the instrument remains robust, if the numbers who want to display their skills on the show is anything to go by. ‘What I love is that nobody knows what’s going to come next,’ says Lang Lang.

‘You might have a pianist who looks like some urban hip-hop guy, but he starts playing Ravel. And then there might be a lady who looks so classical, and she’s doing Alicia Keys. You can’t judge by their look.’

Nor can you fault their ambition: no Elton or Billy Joel crowd-pleasers here, with many playing their own compositions.

‘It’s bold – you’re not tapping into something people know,’ says Claudia, who admits she can’t play a note. ‘But they see it as their one shot, and they want to play something that means something to them.’

Many are self-taught. ‘I remember a guy called Jared who was a truck mechanic, and he just came in his lunch break,’ recalls Claudia. ‘His hands still had oil on them, and he put down his toolbox and he was a bit unsure. But then, oh my goodness!’

There are similar ‘goosebump’ moments in the new series, according to the trio – including one contender in Glasgow who caught everyone by surprise, although more than that they won’t say.

Now the judges have been ‘outed’, they are not beyond intervening if they think someone isn’t doing themselves any favours.

‘Someone played ABBA’s The Winner Takes It All in the most astonishingly depressing, sad version. I had to ask her to play something else,’ says Mika. ‘I said, “Honestly, you’re going to regret this for the rest of your life.”’

Is there something specific they’re looking for? ‘Pure talent,’ says Lang Lang. ‘It doesn’t need to be technically perfect, but no matter how amateur or professional they are, we want to see the real talent shine.’

Mika points out that Lang Lang can be quite strict about certain technicalities. ‘But that’s normal,’ he says. ‘I mean, he’s been world class since he was ten.’ There are gaps in his knowledge, however.

‘We’re trying to teach him lyrics to songs he doesn’t know,’ says Mika. That includes Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s hit Murder On The Dance Floor, which popped up during filming.

‘They enjoyed that,’ testifies Lang Lang. ‘I’ll admit there were a lot of songs I didn’t know. So it’s been a fun education.’

• The Piano starts on Sunday 28 April. Stream or watch live on Channel 4.