Conversational Concert in Bloomsbury

Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa

I've just returned from the intimate surroundings of Pushkin house in Bloomsbury, where I heard piano duets by the fabulous Karl Lutchmayer and David Alexander: performing Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, followed by Debussy's La Mer.

Karl sets the scene as always with his anecdotes and insights into the composers' lives and music - I want to find out more about them. Debussy was inspired by the Javanese gamelan music and Japanese art and architecture that he heard and saw at the first World Exhibition in Paris, 1889. He had the Japanese woodblock engraving on the front cover of an early recording of La Mer.