Viva Sergei

After reading this depressing tract from Norman re China and notably the rivalry of Yundi Li and Lang Lang, retreat into the pianistic past is all that's possible, especially when seeking evasion tactics from copy-edit of novel. Last night I fell in love with Rachmaninov all over again, thanks to Vladimir and the LPO playing the socks off the Symphonic Dances. So here, for the Dead Pianists Society, is the second movement of Rach's Suite No.2 for two pianos, played by Alexander Goldenweiser and Grigory Ginzburg. Welcome to another world...

by the way...

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Sarah Palin's new career: jazz singer

This is brilliant!! Thanks to a very wonderful pianist who sent it to me yesterday with the words "I wish I'd thought of it first..." The musician 'accompanying' La Sarah is New York jazzer Henry Hey. Enjoy. There's more where this comes from, too, so check it out on Youtube.

Meet Boris Giltburg

This is Boris Giltburg, the 24-year-old Russian-Israeli pianist who is making his Southbank Centre recital debut tomorrow night. He is rather wonderful. Listen to this Bach - the fugue from the Chromatic Fantasy And...: deep, well-modulated touch, terrific concentration, intelligent shaping and voicing, and finely paced build of intensity from start to finish.

Since winning the Santander competition in 2002 he's been enjoying high-profile debuts with top orchestras around the usual circuit (eg, the world) and tomorrow he kicks off an ambitious programme at the QEH with nothing less than Beethoven Op.111. You don't tend to do that unless you are going places. The rest of the programme involves Scriabin, Rachmaninov and Schumann.

I will be interviewing him in a pre-concert event at the QEH at 6.15pm, so do come along and meet him. But if you can't, I suspect that there will be many more opportunities to enjoy his playing in future!

Farewell, Miriam Makeba

"Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa and the people without even realising it."

Miriam Makeba, 'Mama Afrika', died this morning, apparently of a heart attack after an anti-Mafia concert in Italy. She was 76.

Her singing was some of the first I ever heard: my late parents, South African anti-apartheid emigres who left the place in the early 1950s, treasured, and frequently played, their LPs of her songs.

This video of her singing 'Under African Skies' with Paul Simon, is not just an excuse to hear one of my favourite numbers from the Graceland album, but also demonstrates how Makeba brought the sounds of South Africa to a universal public and, with them, the awareness of Mandela's imprisonment and the atrocities of life under that odious political system.

She will be much missed, but remembered forever.