But the evening of the 27th turned out to be a horrible occasion. The only good thing about it was the beautiful hall, the walls covered with canvases by our artists. In the first place, instead of there being two singers to sing my complete voice and piano oeuvre there was only one, Davydova, from the Musical Drama Theatre, who performed, badly, three Akhmati. The bassoonists did the Scherzo rather well (it was encored), and everything else was left to me to play. The audience reaction was moderate, verging on cool. At theend I was presented with a drawing by Grigoriev, but not one of his best, and there was no mention of the 370 francs the journey had cost me.