Pianist Barry Douglas is bringing his passion to the podium to conductthe Beethoven symphonies in all their vulnerable, self-confident glory. He explains himself to Arminta Wallace

A complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies is a thrilling prospect at any time: but a cycle of Beethoven symphonies conducted by one of our most dynamic and highly regarded, um, pianists? Explain yourself, Barry Douglas, if you please.

"Well, growing up in Belfast I was in a school where I had opportunities to do all sorts of different things - I was conducting my first choir when I was 11 years old - so I was always in and around groups of musicians. I played the cello in the school baroque orchestra, and I played the clarinet in the youth orchestra - and also in a jazz band. So it wasn't that when I was born I said: 'I want to be a pianist.' I was always very fluid about what I did. And I think it's good in any artistic endeavour to be as broad-ranging as possible." Circumstances, Douglas insists, conspired to turn him into a pianist - among them the fact that he carried off the gold medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, kick-starting a high-profile international career.

His interest in conducting has never waned, however, and in 1998 he founded a chamber group, Camerata Ireland, with which he has toured in the US and Europe. He has also conducted Bach, Mozart and Schubert with the Orchestra of St Cecilia in Dublin, with which he will also be doing the Beethoven series. From piano to podium may seem like the ultimate example of poacher turning gamekeeper, but Douglas says his solo work feeds into his conducting - and vice versa. "A lot of conductor friends have given me help and support, and the one who has helped most in the last six or seven years has been Marek Janowski. I see him regularly, and we discuss scores, and his experiences of different problems within orchestras and that sort of thing."

Have there been moments, though, when he realised just how big a leap he was making? "Well, you know, every concert is an eye-opener because if you're open to influences and possibilities you learn something every time you play. But recently I was on tour with the Swedish chamber orchestra; I played two piano concertos and I also took part in a Strauss piece called Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme which has a piano part in the orchestra. And that was very interesting.

"I couldn't play the clarinet or the cello in an orchestra - I wouldn't be good enough - but I can play the piano inside an orchestra, and I learned a hell of a lot from that about the dynamics between musicians, and what the real role of a conductor is, and how you can sometimes do too much and sometimes too little. But the one important thing for me as a musician - as a pianist, conductor, anything - is that you must be totally committed to, energised by, and passionate about the music. Because the audience will know immediately if you're not."

For any conductor, of course, Beethoven is the big one. Big emotions, big musical vistas - and great expectations, too, on the part of audiences, who know the nine symphonies very well. Does that bother him? "I'm planning to get nervous when it's all over," he says, with a chuckle. "But - well, everybody sort of knows things from the symphonies. And that's fine. I don't have a problem with that, because if you're serious about what you do as a performer you have to recreate it every time anyway. The best compliment anybody can pay to a musician is to come backstage afterwards and say: 'I really heard that again through fresh ears'.

"I mean, I play Tchaikovsky One about four times a year - but people still come up and say to me: 'God, it's great, I haven't heard that piece for 20 years.' Of course you can buy a CD and listen to whatever you want - but to hear it live in the concert hall is completely different. The problem, often, is that through records we get sort of mid-Atlantic ideas about interpretations. I think we should be more shocking. We shouldn't be afraid to completely overwhelm people with a different slant on things.

People can hate it, they can love it - but at least it means the music is alive, and it's thriving." Douglas says he'll be eternally grateful to the orchestra of St Cecilia for giving him the opportunity to conduct this series of concerts, and for assembling an excellent selection of voices - Franzita Whelan, soprano, Deirdre Cooling-Nolan, contralto, John Elwes, tenor and Nigel Williams, bass, along with Carlow Choral Society directed by Blanaid Murphy - to join forces with the orchestra for the ninth symphony.

Above all, though, it has been an excuse to carry on a sort of clandestine relationship with Beethoven's music.

"It has been a wonderful love affair. For the past 12 months, in my spare time in hotel rooms and suchlike, I've had the score of the symphonies beside me. The music has been a constant companion. And to be able to do all the symphonies together - well, I get such a kick out of this, I really do. I've done all 32 of Beethoven's piano sonatas in one go - on a two-week tour once, in the US - and this is comparable. There may be only nine symphonies, but there's so much music in there that there might as well be 32."

Studying Beethoven's mammoth masterpieces has, says Douglas, been "a fascinating and frightening voyage of discovery". Does he, now, have a favourite among the symphonies? "You know, they're touching in different ways," he says. "Some of them seem so frail and so fleeting and so vulnerable; and then others seem totally self-confident. I mean, when you're in the middle of the slow movement of the ninth symphony you think, 'this has gotta be the greatest music ever written'.

"But then the scherzo of the first symphony is an amazing rush of adrenalin. They're all marvellous."