Claudia Winkleman: 'We're expecting people wearing ballgowns on new series of The Piano'

So the secret is very much out now – anyone who spotted presenter Claudia Winkleman in a train station would surely know what was going on. So how could the second season work and keep that magic alive?

“We were a little worried, weren’t we – all three of us,” Winkleman, 52, admits.

“Because what was so beautiful about the show was [this concept of] what happens if people are playing and they don’t know anyone’s watching? That is so unbelievably poetic, I had never heard of anything like it.”

This time round, Winkleman says she expected people to “come in ballgowns, walk in and say under their breath ‘Hello, Mika’.”

Luckily, that wasn’t the case – which The Traitors presenter credits to the subtlety of the camera crew who managed to disappear “into the walls”, meaning the amateurs would forget what was going on and just play.

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“We were worried something would change, in terms of the people – their intention, their ambitions from season one to season two, because they know we’re hidden away somewhere and we’re listening to them,” agrees Grace Kelly singer Mika, who co-presented the Eurovision Song Contest in 2022 – but the show managed to keep a love of music at its core.

He tells the story of an NHS nurse who recently retired and spent a big chunk of her pension buying a grand piano, knocking out walls to fit it into her house.

She comes on the show and Mika, 40, remembers: “She sits down – she’s so nervous that her piece lasts about 42 seconds. Super short and it wasn’t very good. And yet, that just shows the passion she has – the fact that she goes and buys that, she dreamt her whole life of having a piano.

“She’s not a prodigy, but the power of telling that story in itself, for me is magic.”

One positive thing about the second season is it’s not a secret that Mika and Lang Lang are waiting in the wings, so they don’t have to stay hidden.

“I see this as a good advantage, because if there’s somebody we feel is special, we actually go out and see them, to encourage them to do better,” Lang Lang, 41, explains.

Winkleman recounts a moment in an Edinburgh train station when a teenager came out who was “young and cool, he’s like 17, good looking, and all like ‘whatever'”.

He “banged out” a Chopin piece, then Mika appeared and Winkleman says: “I’ll never know what you said to him, but Mika whispered something to him and he did it again – and it was like a totally different piece of music.”

All three can agree on one thing in this show: you never know what you’re going to get.

Lucy actually won the first season with her rendition of Debussy’s Arabesque – but it’s not always about advanced classical music.

“We never know what’s going to move you,” Mika notes.

“Sometimes someone can come and play something really, really complicated – a piece by, let’s say Chopin or something. And technically, it’s all there. But it doesn’t provoke emotion, neither in me nor in him [Lang Lang].

“And then someone comes in, plays something with the most simple triadic chords and really simple arpeggios, and sing something very simple – and for some reason, it clicks, everything aligns and it makes people cry.

“Figuring out or finding out why that is, is endless. It’s just so complicated and so simple at the same time.”

Mika describes it as “magic that you can’t quite put your finger on” – but even the audience can feel it, as they gather to listen in train stations all over the UK.

When one girl played, Winkleman remembers seeing a man “in floods of tears”, adding: “I assumed it was her dad, so I went up to him and I went, ‘You must be incredible proud’, when in fact, he didn’t know her at all, and was just moved by her performance.

Lang Lang says: “You’ll never know what they are going to play – what type of music. [The way] they look, very often that doesn’t mean [that’s] their style” – and the show puts the spotlight on a diverse array of people in a range of cities.

“For me, for all of us, probably one of the most amazing things about this project is that it’s all over the UK,” Mika says.

“So often shows that have music in them are very London-centric, right? What’s so beautiful about this is you realise there is a different musical cultural soul which is very distinct in each region and niche city – and you really feel it.”

All three are visibly thrilled at the prospect of returning for another series, with a Christmas special also in the works – particularly as they didn’t quite predict the success of the first season, which became Channel 4’s best-rating new format since 2017, with each episode averaging 2.7 million viewers.

Mika says he was “quite amazed” by the reception it got. “Heartwarming, more than anything, with this little beautiful project shot as a documentary. We had no idea, we knew nothing – the freedom we were given was amazing.”

The Piano returns to Channel 4 on Sunday, April 28 at 9pm.