A symphony for Tskhinvali

Eduard Kokoity looked like a happy man last night in Tskhinvali. The ex-wrestler and self-proclaimed president of South Ossetia was welcoming one of the world's most famous conductors to town for a victory concert disguised as a requiem.

Candles burned on the makeshift stage and Russian soldiers stood atop armoured personnel carriers waving Russian and Ossetian flags, as Valery Gergiev conducted a patriotic programme of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich in front of the charred shell that once housed the South Ossetian government.

Gergiev has a reputation for a punishing schedule of nightly concerts, often on several different continents in any given week. The night before he had been conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, of which he is principal conductor, at London's Albert Hall.

But Gergiev is an ethnic Ossetian - perhaps the world's only famous Ossetian - and he broke his international commitments to play in Tskhinvali, and stand together with his ethnic kin after the short but vicious war that left the South Ossetian capital devastated.

The Kremlin was quick to cash in on the PR value of the event, broadcasting the concert live on state television and bussing in foreign journalists to cover it.

Hundreds of locals turned out in their evening best - ­ borrowed from friends if their own wardrobes had been destroyed along with their houses by the Georgian assault - ­ to welcome Gergiev and the Maryinsky Orchestra of St Petersburg to town.

But this was not a case of letting the music do the talking. Addressing the crowd in Russian and English, Gergiev had plenty of words to say as well, condemning the Georgian