Some years ago I was in Kilkenny to do a reading and had a few hours to look around. There was a medieval cathedral - St Canice's - so I went along. Outside was a poster advertising a piano recital that evening by a Russian pianist. It coincided with my reading so - sadly - I was going to miss it.

The cathedral was quiet and empty. A raised wooden platform at its centre had a grand piano on it. I could hear grit beneath my shoes as I walked around - a photo here, a photo there - the shutter clicking in the silence. A leaflet told me of the great acoustic. I had read somewhere myself of how the medieval builders knew a thing or two about sound - pipes under the floor, jugs in the walls. Somewhere a door slammed and footsteps approached. A heavily built man stepped up onto the platform. I thought, maybe he's a tuner. He raised the lid of the piano and propped it in the open position. Then he sat down at the keyboard and, having adjusted the seat to his liking, began to play. He stabbed out that great tune of stark single notes which begins Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. I sat down - an audience of one.

There was something about my mood that day - everything was strangely heightened. I was an exile returning home. In front of me was a Russian playing music which gave off a love of place, HIS place. And yet through the playing it became my place too. But it was not nationalist smush, not misty eyed; it was a land of mad bastards, a place of pain and play-acting, of beautiful landscapes, of vodka and its stupidities. There's a painting of Mussorgsky in a maroon dressing gown - his hair awry, his forked beard unkempt, his eyes wild and looking for the next drink. What mad-man sits for a portrait the morning after ? A Dostoyevskian drunk, that's who.

The movements unfolded - a ramshackle piece of musical genius - bizarre and intriguing, like Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights in sound. I was aware of the intimate triangle which was being formed. The composer, the performer and the listener. I was hearing as hard as the pianist was playing, as hard as Mussorksky was making it up. I didn't know the programme behind Pictures at an Exhibition, luckily. Much later, when I learned what it was supposed to be about I was deeply disappointed.

The piano was full of dark rumblings then later light glitterings and splashes. In the loudest sequences I have never heard piano strings warring and roaring in such a way. Yet it was not show off playing, just great music. At times the instrument seemed as if it was going to fall apart - vibrate itself out of existence. The Great Gate of Kiev which ends the piece reworks the opening theme but at such a pitch and intensity that the pianist had to jump, to pound the keyboard. The bells of Kiev, the tintinabulation, the ripple and glitter, the boom and thump of it all. At one of the loudest sections I tried to sneak a photograph but even in the midst of the ball breaking decibels the pianist heard the shutter click and turned to look at me. I was mortified. And I'm sure so was Mussorgsky. I had somehow broken the intimacy, the three way pact, for a visual reminder of what was an aural experience.

When the last sounds of the Great Gate of Kiev died away the pianist stood , ignored me, and walked off the way he'd come. Tonight would be fine, he seemed to say. In all modesty.

I sat on, the music still echoing in my head. It was a long time before I could collect myself emotionally and get out of there. At the front door I noticed the poster claimed the pianist was second only to the great Svyatoslav Richter.

I still can't remember his name.

Since writing this piece I have found out that the pianist I was hearing that day was Lazar Berman. I now have a CD of a recording he made of Pictures at an Exhibition to remind me of the day.