This six-volume series is one part of the story of a musician’s life, which ended in the high mountains of Nepal.

The second part will be published in a few volumes, titled Pianist Down. This will be an excursion through the elegant arcades and nocturnal souks of the musician’s somewhat Gothic march through life.

The third part is available in abbreviated form as photographs of the Himalayas taken by the pianist, some of which are on the SACD and the BD. More photographs can be seen in book form in the book, Monstrous Moraines: A Companion to The Himalaya Sessions, in the bookstore on Blurb.com. An expanded volume of higher-quality photographs is forthcoming.

A similar concert, in a different performance and with additional text, is available on DVD (see “Further Reading and Listening”). That album was performed on an American Steinway, whereas this version is played on a Hamburg Steinway. Each piano was moved into a similar place in the center of its momentary monastic sanctuary and recorded similarly, so that the assiduous listener will be able to switch between discs and discover the much-bruited difference between pianos fashioned by sweating Americans or rival sweating Germans. In fact, both pianos sound surprisingly similar, imitating Nabokov’s remark that there is no difference between art and science, only between second-rate art and third-rate science—or something to that effect. There are no books in this brothel.