Very reasonably, doubts are often expressed in this group about the realism of digital pianos. Last week, for a charity concert in our church, I faced the dilemma of whether to hire a piano or to lend my own Clavinova 860 (the church's own piano is, as so often in the UK, really unusable for serious music-making). There wasn't room for a grand, and tin any case the cost of hiring a decent upright was hard to justify when we were concerned to raise as much money as possible. So,with some anxiety about the musical outcome, I had my Clavinova taken to the church in the back of a churchwarden's large car. The work for which the piano was needed was Vaughan Williams' substantial baritone song cycle Songs of Travel - nine songs of great subtlety, some with a very demanding piano part. The church is not enormous (the nave seats only about 120) but lofty and with a largely wooden interior like a 15th century pillared hall. Well, my forebodings were quite unjustified. The pianist (very happy to play the digital, by the way) was able to create all sorts of delicate as well as massive effects, and the balance (with no additional amplification and the volume not turned to maximum) was excellent - literally every word was audible without loss of pianistic grandeur. I seriously doubt whether any hired acoustic piano could have been better, or indeed as good, for this purpose and in this acoustic. Certainly the illusion of a real piano was complete, more convincing in fact than in my own sitting room, where there is a slight sense that loudspeakers are involved. Once before, some years ago now, for Peter Cornelius' soprano song cycle Weihnachtslieder , I had heard a Kawai digital in another church (very different acoustic) and that, too, was convincing, though with a slightly rounder tone. These experiences persuade me that, for relatively small-scale public performances, a good digital will do very well indeed and is not just a convenient substitute for the real thing. Alan Jones