Reader: Angela Hewitt, 49, Canadian classical concert pianist
Named Gramophone Artist Of The Year in 2006 and hailed by The Guardian as the 'pre-eminent Bach pianist of our time', she is in town to perform her repertoire from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (Books I and II) at the Victoria Concert Hall.

Tickets ($20 to $50) to her performance of Book II tonight at 8pm are available at Sistic (visit www.sistic.com.sg or call 6348-5555).

What are you reading now?

I'm actually too busy planning my annual Trasimeno Music Festival in Italy; editing the soon-to-be-published souvenir programme for my Bach world tour; writing CD liner notes for Beethoven Cello and Piano sonatas; not to mention practising and playing concerts, to read a book.

So one of the last books I read was Embers by Hungarian author Sandor Marai many months ago.

It turned out to be one of the most poignant novels I had ever read. I especially loved the way Marai talked about the effects of music on people, and how the world is divided into those people who are affected by it and those who are not.

It also deals with the importance of friendship and the demands it makes on people.

It is constructed almost entirely as a monologue, and I still re-read passages of it on occasion because I love it so much.

Friendship and music are two important themes in my own life, so I was happy to find a book that talked about them in such an intelligent and passionate manner.

If your house were burning down, which book would you save?

I would save my copy of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier with all its markings and fingerings on the score.

It is my life's work and I would feel horrible if I lost it. It is irreplaceable, and a document of hours and hours, in fact, years of work that I have done on those 260 pages.

I would not want to start that again, even though at the moment, of course, I know it all from memory. When I return to a piece after a few years of not playing it, all my thoughts are already there. That doesn't mean that I can't add new ones, but to have them is certainly important.

Embers ($17.16) and The Well-Tempered Clavier ($28.97) are available at Books Kinokuniya. Prices include GST.

This article was first published in The Sunday Times on Apr 27, 2008.