It was in April 2014, I think, when I
first exchanged the comforts of the Bodleian Library (Oxford) for the Baltic, and
that razor-sharp wind on St Petersburg’s river Neva (accent on VA, if you
please).
My modest hotel room, in Pushkin-esque décor, was in the poet’s former residence on the
Angliskaya Naberezhnaya, the English Embankment. Convenient, therefore, for the daily walk past the Stravinsky apartment to the Conservatoire, through the snow. Stravinsky’s snow, as I regarded it. At least, this would be an easy non-musical topic of conversation I might share with the great man at our first encounter, on his doorstep. Or so I imagined.