Like Rachmaninoff? Try Metallica...
Now and then we need a quick reminder that the world we're in now is - in a good way - something we couldn't have dreamed of back in 1987. Ahead of Boris Giltburg's recital at St John's Smith Square tonight , I'd like to tell you about one of my favourite things that has ever happened on Twitter. Some months ago I was listening to Boris's recording of the Rachmaninoff Etudes-Tableaux and Moments Musicaux, which I was writing about for Primephonic and had downloaded in high-resolution from their website onto my computer. Boris plays the piano as if it's a 120-piece orchestra, with a grand-scale emotional sweep that can leave you flat on the floor experiencing a kind of legal high, wanting to turn up the volume up as far as you possibly can without scaring the neighbours. Minutes after I put out a tweet about this, a friend made a quip about heavy metal - and then along came Boris himself, suggesting Prokofiev's War Sonatas next [yes indeed - highly recom...