I was invited to dine today at the Tcherepnins, an invitation they have been extending to me for quite some time now, first Mama Tcherepnin and then repeated by their son. I was greatly embarrassed when I arrived on their doorstep at seven o'clock to find the family finishing their modest quotidian repast. I don't know whose mistake it was, theirs or mine, but may I lose my head if it was mine, because I distinctly remember the invitation. However, it turned out that this evening they were not having guests for dinner, but for later in the evening. I quickly recovered myself, saying that I had just had dinner myself and had come early so that I could listen to their son's compositions. He protested at length, but was eventually persuaded to play, and through a morass of blatantly modish padding and desultory fragments of melody could occasionally be glimpsed passages of real interest.