Piano fans all over the world beg him to to appear in their countries. Here in Toulouse we get him every year. He lives in Madrid, you see, and the trip here is easy and visa-free. He stopped playing in London when Bliar & Co. insisted he get a visa. He'd been appearing there for twenty years and decided the new hassle was not worth it.
Despite the incredible Chopin - lucid, limpid, transparent and imaginative - maybe the most remarkable part of the evening was the encore section. Sokolov treated us to not one, not two, but six encores (Schubert Impromptus, more Chopin Mazurkas and a ten-minute Mendelssohnian-type creation I'd really never heard before), adding a good thirty minutes of music to the advertised programme. No show, no fireworks, just brilliantly-performed music from one of the world's greatest artists. One of the world's most generous artists…
