I was “visited upon" by a famous Russian musicologist, the author of important theoretical and critical volumes. I see myself sitting next to him on the piano bench while he relentlessly pursues his way through an interminable neo-Scriabinesque sonata he had composed, me squirming beside him on the bench as though it were the “hot seat”! The task of talking around the issue without hurting an obvious fanatic’s feelings! The impossibility of making clear to such a fantast the impracticability of his endless sonata! Such were the occasional purgatories which one simply had to accept as part of the bargain. << less