A grand adventure

In 2015, I spent a few happy weeks staying with friends in Mongolia’s Orkhon Valley near Karakorum, the site of the historic capital of Genghis Khan’s colossal former empire, not far from the border with Siberia. My friends – a German filmmaker, Christopher Giercke, his Mongolian wife, Enke, and their three children – live in the valley during the warmer months in a tented camp on the fenceless steppe. The landscape is empty, but by no means barren. In the velvet folds of the grasslands, you become totally present. You can hear every sound: the yaks grazing, the river running, the crackle of thousands of insects in the dry summer grass.

My family and I were not the only guests that year. Our friends also had a musician staying, a Mongolian pianist called Odgerel Sampilnorov. She had worked as a music teacher to Giercke’s children and others in the local community. Recognising her talent, Giercke had helped Sampilnorov secure nine years of study at a conservatory in Perugia in Italy. She was now one of Mongolia’s foremost pianists, whose talent I witnessed in the evenings when she, and play. It was magical to watch this intimate gathering – including a local shaman, champion archer and herder children – fall silent as they listened to Busoni’s transcription of Bach’s Chaconne floating up with the woodsmoke through an opening in the roof. But Giercke wasn’t satisfied: the instrument’s sound wasn’t what it should have been. During a recital one evening, he leaned over and whispered his frustration in my ear: ‘We must find her one of the lost pianos of Siberia!’