The slipperiness of letter writing

In this morning's Point of View on R4 Lisa Jardine contrasted the instant art of email with the more considered practice of letter writing, citing Virginia Woolf's correspondence with Ben Nicholson as evidence. But what struck me that letters allow more time for consideration than email, although they almost certainly do. Rather, I was taken with the slippery and imperfect nature of the epistolary conversation: if even an acknowledged master of language like Woolf can fail to get her point across, can dash off an offensive missive that causes (possibly) unintended upset to the recipient, well, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Death and Rachmaninov

I'm currently embroiled in Ngaio Marsh's Overture to Death, a novel in which the central murder is triggered by the third bar of Rachmaninov's prelude in C# minor. So here, then, is Emil Gilels essaying the mighty piece in all its Romantic glory:

ETA: On finishing the book, I'm pleased to say that my theory about the murder was almost entirely correct. However, on the negative side, I've had the prelude stuck in my head all day and I'm starting to get slightly sick of it.