Guy kept the first movement flowing enhancing its character as a prelude

Guy kept the first movement flowing, enhancing its character as a prelude. But he opened fire in the second movement, while distancing its quieter sections with a sense of the transcendent beyond. He introduced a lot of shading in the theme of the final variations, gilding the lily rather, though the contrasts among the variations themselves were impressive and ranged from furious energy to serenity. It’s not easy to give the profoundly positive quality of this music its due value – it’s played so often that it has become over familiar. Francois Frederic Guy is a 26-year-old French pianist who introduced himself to a very small audience at St John’s Smith Square on Tuesday evening. Nothing daunted, he played as if the place were full, like one inspired.

Apparently, Guy is known for his transcriptions, and he gave Liszt’s Vallee d’Obermann the grandeur and richness of an orchestral tone poem, which in a sense it is. His legato was seamless, each note melting into its neighbour, and he brought to this fulsome music, which can sometimes sound hectoring and clamorous, the fervour of blind faith, making you believe it was sublime. Hold tight.n `Appassionata’ is published by Bantam Press, pounds 16.99; an accompanying CD and tape is available on Warner Classics, pounds 9.99 and pounds 5.99. The author has also used her journalistic skills to assemble a quite exceptional collection of viola jokes, including one featuring Princess Diana and a frog which is almost worth the price of the book on its own And she says her next one is to be about opera. And she neatly captures the sense that the anarchy of an orchestra’s Moulin Rouge element, while dedicated, is essentially benign.

There’s little if any of the ingrained yobbishness that (say) travelling rugby teams can be known to pride themselves on getting up to.She has been careful, too, to conceal any clues to the characters’ real- life counterparts, Yes, I do know who was observed, in the small hours of that legendary party in Barcelona, drinking Famous Grouse whisky out of an ashtray, and he/ she doesn’t remotely resemble Dmitri, the Rutminster SO’s “lyrical and lachrymose” principal cellist. The book’s affectionate dedication “to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra because they make great music and I love them all” rings endearingly true.What about the contents? Well, the Rutminster SO’s antics may be gorgeously over the top, but as Jilly Cooper reminds us in her introduction, she writes fiction, not documentary. It’s a bit like being David Attenborough in a colony of pandas.”) Her unerring ability to remember everyone’s name was just one symptom of a real interest in other people – a quality that must be even rarer among the rich and famous than the rest of us (let alone among most conductors). Or the trick of how to avoid bringing more than one pair of shoes with you. During the concert you wear black socks over them.”Throughout the tour she filled up one notepad after another as she talked to virtually every member of the orchestra. (“I think they noticed me a bit to begin with, and then they went on with what they were doing anyway. She and I got to talking about her impressions of orchestral players compared to the casts of characters in her other books so far.”They’re very different,” she told me.