NIRANJAN SHRESTHA

It's not every day in Kathmandu you catch a virtuoso in flight Last Tuesday I felt more spoilt for choice than I usually do mid-week, which is not at all. Despite our annual jazz and blues festivals, not to mention the film festivals, there's still a tendency to see the capital of Nepal as something of a backwater. Case in point: five years ago, the front pages were splashed with news of the impending arrival of international pop star and DJ �Dr Alban? Who penned one awful hit in the 1990s and promptly vanished, never to surface again, except in places awfully short on celebrity.

Indeed, things have changed. But how did the American Embassy manage to convince Roman Rudnytsky, the internationally renowned concert pianist, to drop into Nepal for a recital? I cared not; here was a rare opportunity to witness genius at work. It didn't matter that the grand piano laid out for Rudnytsky looked and sounded a little worn, that the seats in the Russian Cultural Center were creaky, or even that the photographers from the dailies didn't seem to realise how loud their clacking cameras were. For two hours, the American pianist had us in a trance. Some members of the audience, of course, must have been bored stiff; for the rest, it was a guided tour through the best of the west, an amalgam of the familiar, the exotic, and the downright thrilling.

Rudnytsky introduced each piece with a few words on its provenance and place in the canon of classical music, choosing, intriguingly, to begin with the folk-influenced Tres Danzas from Guatemalan composer Manuel Herrarte. Following on with two stalwarts of the Romantic era, Beethoven (Sonata in F, op.10 no.2) and Chopin (Nocturne in C sharp minor), Rudnytsky quickly moved into the sublime. He then changed gears effortlessly with the jaunty and occasionally thunderous 'El Salon Mexico' by American Aaron Copland (left hand flat-batting the bass keys to great effect).

Following the intermission, Rudnytsky launched into Schumann's varied masterpiece Carnaval, op.9. He then eased into the gentle tones of 'Venus' from Holst's The Planets. And how better to end a recital than with two pieces from that demon of the piano, Hungarian Franz Liszt? Anyone unconvinced by the intricate dynamic and harmonic fluctuations of Schumann would have had to submit to the showmanship of Liszt, the Paganini of the piano.

When Rudnytsky obliged with a rousing encore from American Louis Moreau Gottschalk, The Banjo (yes, the piano sounded just like that), I expected him to get up, sweep up the keys and dump them into the pockets of his jacket, so completely did he possess the piano. Suffice it to say I was happy to walk out with a head full of tinkling.

Nepali Kukur