I'm watching Evgeni Kissin and Martha Argerich play a Mozart piano duet on the television. It certainly adds something to one's appreciation of the music to see them playing it. I think part of the reason it is so revealing is that they need to communcate with each other to make the performance work, and thus they communicate also with the rest of us.

Listening to the same performance on the radio would be to listen to what they actually played. Watching them play as well as hearing it means being told how they wanted to play it also. And we all know how profoundly the human nervous system is influenced by what it expects to see, or in this case what it expects to hear.

When you google: "Kissin" and "Argerich", you get a mass of references to solo piano pieces which they have both recorded. You get them as rivals. But now Argerich refuses to play on her own, which I won't complain about again. (Argerich is overrated, basically because a lot of people think she's God, but she is still very good. Except in Mozart piano concertos.)

Now there's a bunch of famous string virtuosi – Sarah Chang, Gidon Kremer, Nobuko Imai, Vadim Repin, Christian Tetzlaff, Yuri Bashmet, Mischa Maisky – playing a joke piece by a German guy, which is a pastiche set of variations on Happy Birthday to You. I don't know whose or what's birthday it is. They all seem to be enjoying themselves greatly. Why can't real compositions be more like this? It seems that this is not allowed. Sooner or later these people – not these particularly people, but their massed pupils – are going to have to play entertaining music not all that unlike this joke piece, but for real. Or starve or get jobs as computer operatives. It won't be long before these are their real choices. Maybe this joke piece, which is only one up from something by Gerard Hoffnung, is these people sensing what their future is going to be about.

Now they're playing the Bach concerto for four pianos and orchestra. Fatty conductor James Levine has joined them, to play piano. And there's Michael Pletnev as well. This must be one of the most expensive performances of this piece ever. But it's also very good. Plenty of bounce and dance about it. I love Bach keyboard concertos played on the piano, as well as on the harpsichord. Now the slow movement. Delicious. They're all sitting absolutely still while they play, and that's also how they're playing it of course. Now the finale. I'm just going to listen.

Finished. Wonderful. And it's the Verbier Birthday Festival Orchestra, so I guess it's the Verbier Festival that is having its birthday.

Now they're going to play Rossini's overture to Semiramide, arranged for eight pianos. They started with a joke tuning session. No much they can do about that, with pianos, so ha ha.

Sarah Chang is a real looker, and she's on the cover the latest BBC Music Magazine. Meanwhile, Gramophone has the equally gorgeous Helene Grimaud. I wonder if that also is a sign of things to come. Answer: it's probably a sign of things that have already arrived. Chang is a terrific musician, no doubt about it. Grimaud, recently signed by DGG bothers me, after what I thought was a decidedly average Bartok Third Piano Concerto at last summer's Proms.

Now the eight pianists are doing the Ride of the Valkyries. It sounds great.

I have never witnessed anything at all like this before. I am musing about how many of them have recorded Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto. I have CDs of Argerich, Kissin, Lang Lang, Pletnev, and Andsnes. Now they're doing mad Americana on all those pianos, like arrangements of Stars and Stripes For Ever. The hour and a half went by in a flash.