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Those who miss him, musically and otherwise, should be thankful for this DVD that immortalizes one of the famous Russian cellist's last public performances. It was a fine anniversary celebration at Verbier featuring, among others, ten top pianists taking turns to play eight Steinway grand pianos, in arrangements of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries (arrangement by Richard Blackford), Gould's Stars and Stripes Forever Suite (arrangement by Michael Rot), Gottschalk's L'Union: paraphrase de concert sur les airs nationaux (arrangement by Samuel Adler) and Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee (arrangement: first piano quartet). The ten pianists featured on the DVD are Leif Ove Andsnes, Nicolas Angelich, Martha Argerich, Emanuel Ax, Claude Frank, Evegeny Kissin, Lang Lang, James Levine, Mikhail Pletnev and Steffan Scheja.

[Watch and listen to an excerpt from Rossini's Semiramide overture, chapter 10. Needs an Apple Quicktime plugin.]

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