Goodbye Russia

Reeling from the trauma of a life in upheaval, he wrote almost no music and quickly had to reinvent himself as a fêted virtuoso pianist, building up untold wealth and meeting the stars, from Walt Disney and Charlie Chaplin to his Russian contemporaries and polar opposites, Prokofiev and Stravinsky.

Fiona Maddocks is the Classical Music critic of the Observer . She was founding editor of BBC Music Magazine and chief arts feature writer for the London Evening Standard , and has written for numerous other publications. She is the author of Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age , Harrison Birtwistle: Wild Tracks - A Conversation Diary with Fiona Maddocks and Music for Life .