The work closes with an outrageous bassoon solo, as free and jocular as anything in the repertoire.

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The saxophone is so flexible in its sound, it can sound like an oboe, a bassoon, a French horn, a flute.

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The plaintive, almost straining bassoon solo in the opening still sounds like some new breed of snake charmer to me, oozing with clarinets while cajoling various creatures from their hiding places.

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"We don't really know what he is going to do in the show -- it can vary enormously from the rehearsal, " says Rachel Gough, principal bassoon with the London Symphony Orchestra.

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Guests can hit the on-site Harrods for a shopping spree and sip cocktails in the David Collins-designed Bassoon Bar before retiring to one of the seven plush suites with literary, drama or world-exploration themes.

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Sometimes he knew that he was actively composing thinking about what a bassoon could do, how long a note could be sustained, how long dissonance could be tolerated before it had to resolve into something sweet.

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The musicologist says that the dropped bassoon line was the largest error he's ever discovered in a Ravel score, though he found numerous other discrepancies between the manuscript and the published score in terms of accent marks, dynamics and tempo changes.

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Keeping his musicians on their toes, LSO bassoon player Rachel Gough notes that "no two performances are ever the same with Gergiev, and from the rehearsal to the concert, the differences can be absolutely enormous...therein lies the reason why we love working for him and why the audience loves coming to the concerts" (CNN, 2008).

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