Just seen this video in the Guardian, there's an article to follow tomorrow.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2013/jan/11/alan-rusbridger-chopin-video
I like the quote from Emanuel Ax, very diplomatic.

That was a good watch, thanks for sharing the link timmyab.

Wow- what an achievement! He has really inspired me not to be lazy and keep going! ( Not been practising much lately)

The full article is up now:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jan/12/play-it-again-chopin-ballade-no-1-alan-rusbridger

'I resolved to learn the piece and perform it. I would give myself a year. I'd carve out 20 minutes a day to practise. I was three months short of my 57th birthday – quite late for a Damascene conversion to a musical rigour that I had so far shunned. Were my brain and fingers still capable of learning new tricks? I would have to acquire lashings of technique I knew about, but had spent a lifetime avoiding. In short, I would have to learn to play the piano properly.

And I would be tackling the composition that the great Murray Perahia was soon to warn me is "one of the hardest pieces in the repertoire".'

Thanks for posting. Starting at 63, I know after playing for year I can move forward, but the article has so much information about playing the piano, and memory and explained
things that a beginner wouldn't know but now has insight of what lies ahead.

Thank u Timmy. I'm so inspired. I wouldn't bite into any Ballade this year because I would like finish a couple of more approacheable Études first (25 and then 3). But it's nice to know there are people doing this with such busy jobs. My practice hours fall into the wee hours of a day due to conference call with east (India etc) and UK. And it is often on those straneous days I crave for piano.

Thanks for that.