Stanislavski, Dostoevsky, Chekhov....and The Simpsons in Russian

Last night a really good family friend, John, was nice enough to take me to the Consort Club's annual Royal College of Music performance. This year it featured a truly exceptional concert pianist named Konstantin Lapshin, who is studying piano on a post graduate level and competing internationally on behalf of the college. He played Chopin's Polonaise-Fantaisie and Shumann's Carnaval and....it was beyond words. I'm clearly no where near a classical music connoisseur, but even I could tell this guy was genius. After the performance we had champagne in a drawing room (I know, how fancy) and made our way to our seats. As I got to the table I was shocked, thrilled, and terrified to learn that I was seated next to no other than Konstantin Lapshin and proceeded to short-term hyperventalate over a. the fact that there were a lot of forks, knives, and glasses and b. that I would need to keep up conversation with the performer everyone so admired though I was the person in the room with the least possible knowledge about classical music.

So I took a deep breath, got over the awkwardness, and talked to Konstantin about...well, everything. I pulled every Russian lit. figure I could think of (Dostoevsky and Chekhov, basically) and we somehow discussed what little I remembered of method acting. At one point a woman to his left asked him if he liked The Simpsons (it was relevant at the time) and I found it probably a little too funny that he watched it in Russian. He seemed to be enjoying himself and I actually found the night refreshing. I love that even though we were from totally different cultures and backgrounds we were able to bond over how weird it is adjusting to English accents and I found it especially entertaining that he asked, "do you have a facebook?"

So it was a surprisingly entertaining encounter. Watching experiences change drastically before your eyes and turn out differently than you could ever have predicted really never gets old and I'm happy to keep taking it in with little other than a smirk.