I KNEW VALERY GERGIEV as a creature of the night. While others crashed out, he talked until dawn. Once, in Rotterdam, we listened to a pair of young pianists he had flown over to play the four-hand version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Afterwards, with window panes still rattling, he visited the two kids in their green room, then sat down and played the whole thing again, two-handed from memory on a backstage upright.
We went on to dinner with a bottle of vodka, then for a walk around town while he tried to
