Yes, that is I. No, I am definitely not up there with the greats! I was a high school student when that photo was taken - coloured sepia by me to age it suitably! The violin was handed down to me from my father and he was given it by an Australian passenger on board ship en route from Southampton (England) to Melbourne in the early 1960s. The Australian owner had taken it to Europe to have it valued, the maker’s name being Giovanni Paolo Maggini (1580 - 1630), but was told it was not an original - instead, just an excellant copy. He was so disillusioned that he wanted to give it away to someone who could play one. My father happened to be in the right place at the right time.

My musical dabblings began as a small child when I went to the piano and picked out the tune my mother was singing as she was doing her housework. It happened to be “The Happy Wanderer“. I found the right notes with my right hand, then as I experimented, found some pleasant sounding other notes that went with them with my left hand. I put them together and my father was delighted. He also played the piano “by ear” and we entered on a journey together where we often played duo - two pianos, one each - all the old favourites that my Dad loved. We played together for hours on end, often forgetting the time. The fun was to challenge each other by changing key, slowly working our way up the octave, one semitone at a time, one leading and the other quickly following, both with different styles but the one same shared love. Before long I was packed off to music lessons and discovered how to read a manuscript. The violin came a few years later, after my mother suggested that my father take me, instead of her reluctant self, to an NZSO concert with the visiting virtuoso violinist Alfredo Campoli (1906 - 1991). I must have been about 10 years old, and I was rapt.

A number of years later Signor Campoli, on another concert tour to NZ, decided he would like to play a little competitive Bridge one evening. It was on this occasion that my mother, herself a very good Bridge player, happened to meet him when they played at the same table. She told him about the young girl whose love of classical music, especially the great concerti of the Romantic Period, was awakened by one of his earlier visits. I have always been quite chuffed that through my mother he sent me his personal best wishes.

These days I am a listener, a staunch attender of the NZSO concerts, rather than a player. Besides the Maggini copy, I have my father’s piano and still amuse myself on that a little, but it is being transported to Elsewhere by the beauty and exhilaration of the sound of real talent that does far more for me now. Is there really an Elsewhere? My experience says that there is - a place where there is perfection, wonder, majesty, awe, beauty, and a savouring of all that resonates with the depths of our being. I hear it in this kind of music. I hear and see it again in Nature with the evening birdsong, the rainbow after the sudden downpour, the flowers in my garden glistening with dew, the majesty of my Southern Alps… and I touch it in prayer when I reach out to my Heavenly Father. This Elsewhere is His place where the wisdom of His righteousness has allowed no evil. We have a reflection of it in this life, a taste of that for which my soul yearns as He draws me ever closer to Him.