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Nils Frahm: ‘Using a chainsaw gave me strength in my fingers for piano’


The composer, 42, talks about his musical upbringing, passion for dish-washing, insistence on being modern and fear of not being loved

He was a classical master who escaped from Stalin and ended up living next door to me in our village near Hamburg, where I grew up. I listened to classical, established music, but I looked for composers who were unknown, to find something out of the ordinary. You’re supposed to play eight hours a day, but I decided in the last few years to work on a piece of property, repairing the stone walls, using a chainsaw.

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