In 2010, Alan Rusbridger, the editor of theGuardian, set himself an almost impossible task: to learn, in the space of a year, Chopins Ballade No. 1 a piece that inspires dread in many professional pianists.

His timing could have been better.

The next twelve months were to witness the Arab Spring, the Japanese tsunami, the English riots, and theGuardians breaking of both WikiLeaks and the News of the World hacking scandal.

In the midst of this he carved out twenty minutes practice a day even if that meant practising in a Libyan hotel in the middle of a revolution as well as gaining insights and advice from an array of legendary pianists, theorists, historians and neuroscientists, and even occasionally from secretaries of state.

But was he able to play the piece in time?

Alan Rusbridger is Editor in Chief of theGuardianand a keen amateur musician. After reading English at Cambridge he started on a local newspaper and tried his hand at a range of journalistic jobs including reporter, columnist, critic, foreign correspondent, magazine editor, features editor and, from 1995, editor. During his time editing theGuardianthe paper has won numerous awards and has grown to be one of the three largest online newspapers in the world. He led the paper's coverage of the secret WikiLeaks cables and theGuardian's campaign to get at the truth about phone hacking, which led to numerous resignations, the closure of theNews of the Worldand the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the British press.

As a boy, he was a cathedral chorister, a reasonable orchestral clarinetist and a very mediocre pianist. He failed to be a world-class conductor, abandoned the organ and put his clarinets in the attic. In his mid 40s he restarted piano lessons and tried to make up for more than 30 years of missing technique. Since then, he has moved from very mediocre to mediocre.

Find out more about Alan and the Ballade atwww.alanrusbridger.com