"I don't only dig holes and plant roses,'' Peter Carpenter smiles.

Indeed, he doesn't -- but then, since he is a man of many interests, including gardening, and has been absent from the concert platform for quite some time, it is perhaps unsurprising that not everyone realises he is, at heart and hand, a professional pianist and teacher who practises every day of his life.

Indeed, to be his neighbour must be a privilege these days, for Mr. Carpenter is spending long hours preparing for his May 27 solo recital at City Hall, and the sounds of the great romantic composers drifting through the open windows of his garden cottage are truly beguiling.

The road back to the concert platform has been long, but never dull, and Mr.

Carpenter, who is a Fellow of the London College of Music, holds both its Teacher and Associate diplomas, and also taught there after graduation, has no regrets about how he has spent the intervening years.

"When I was at the London College of Music I was a very active performer, but I became concerned about spending so much of my life isolated in a practice room,'' he explains. "I was in my early 20s, and because I was interested in so many other things, I decided it wasn't enough for me just to make a career as a concert pianist. I am very interested in gardening, natural foods, and human rights, so I decided to try and focus less on one thing and enjoy a greater variety of meaningful activities.'' Like many people of that age, the talented young man was also wrestling with a variety of personal issues, unresolved fears and anxieties, and he felt he needed to address them.

"I wanted to get to know myself better and feel comfortable about me before taking my concert career any further,'' he recalls. "By being comfortable with myself, I could then be comfortable with others.'' The pianist was also weary of the noise, hustle and bustle of big city life, and yearned for quieter pastures. And so it was that, having been born in Bermuda (but raised in the United States with his four siblings), he decided to return home.

"I love Bermuda, and I wanted to contribute something to the community,'' he explains of the move.

Soon after moving back to the Island, the pianist gave a recital at City Hall, and from that success launched his career as a music teacher.

Over the years, Mr. Carpenter has resolved the issues which troubled him in his 20s, expanded his horizons, and embraced life on many fronts.

Well known for his gardening columns in Bermuda Homes & Gardens and Bermuda magazines, he has also co-authored local books on gardening, and currently has a book of his own at the publisher's.

An active campaigner for human rights, Mr. Carpenter publicly supported the Stubbs bill of 1994 and participated in some of the Beyond Barriers activities at the Bermuda College. At the same institute of learning he also took night courses in psychology and sociology.

A caring and compassionate man, he continues to volunteer at Agape House three evenings a week -- an association which started with gardening and progressed to assisting the nursing staff -- and is also on the board of Friends of Hospice.

"The staff are all very special, and not only have I made many wonderful friends, but also I have learned a great deal about myself and what really matters between people,'' he says. "People often remark that working with the terminally ill must be depressing or draining, but you learn how little it takes to make a big difference in someone's life.'' In spite of all of the other activities he pursues, Mr. Carpenter remains, first and foremost, a musician who is somewhat bemused that this is not generally known.

"It is kind of ironic that people here know me through a variety of interests, while in fact my greatest passion is and always has been the piano,'' he says. "I started playing when I was six years old, and I would describe the piano as my oldest and best friend.'' What, then, drew him back to sharing the fruits of this friendship with a wider audience than the neighbours? "Having explored and addressed a number of unresolved issues in my life I am now feeling inclined to focus more specifically on the piano again,'' he explains. "This will be my first performance in several years, and it is curious to me how my perspective has changed.'' Mr. Carpenter's programme will include works by Schubert, Chopin and Liszt, whose works are notoriously challenging, as even a cursory glance at their scores confirms. Inevitably, the question arises: how does a concert pianist master their complexity, and commit so many thousands of notes to memory? He explains that the process begins with sight reading, following which the piece is broken down into segments, which are then memorised.

"When I seriously study a piece it is like taking apart a very fine garment and getting to know the material -- learning about the shape of each segment, coming to appreciate the texture, and from a technical viewpoint, determining which fingers to use to execute various combinations of notes.

"It is partly a matter of what feels best to you, but more importantly which fingers best serve the composer's intentions, which I am particularly devoted to doing.'' As for retaining such a prodigious amount of material in his memory, Mr.

Carpenter says that comes through repetition.

"While it may seem extraordinary that a pianist can memorise many pieces of music, you need to realise that an enormous number of hours are spent repeating and listening and feeling so that they become as much second nature as hopping into a car.'' Explaining that "there is a relationship between a sound and the feeling of that sound in one's arms and fingers'', Mr. Carpenter adds: "When you are learning a piece you are not only learning what it sounds like also but also what it feels like, so a series of sounds corresponds to a series of physical movements. Once you know the piece you cannot separate one from the other.'' But the basis of all progress is technique -- something to which the pianist pays very close attention.

"The art of piano playing is, in fact, the study of muscular control, and the goal is to become part of the instrument,'' he explains. "When you have a good technique, it means you have an ability to anticipate what you need to do physically in order to get the result which the music demands.'' Which is where practising scales and arpeggios -- anathema to many amateur piano students -- comes in.

"A lot of people think they are purely mechanical and boring, but you can't move from one note to another without playing a fragment of either one or the other, so they are critical to one's technique. I personally love to practice scales and arpeggios.'' Asked why it is important for him to practice every day, Mr. Carpenter says: " Because it strengthens my musical palette, and improvising on some of the exercises develops my musical imagination.'' Peter Carpenter's recital takes place at City Hall theatre on May 27, beginning at 8 p.m. Tickets ($30) are available from the Visitors' Service Bureau box office from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 22-27.