W
hen I was about 16 years old, I played the slow movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in E minor op.59 no.2 in in ‘I want to do this for the rest of my
a chamber concert. Feeling totally awe of this music, I kept thinking:
life.’ But it was also more than this. It felt like a rare moment of total clarity: after the rewarding process of rehearsals and coaching, in the performance I felt, ‘This is what I love and where I want to be.’
I will be absolutely honest: I did not love practising as a child, but as soon as I could play with other people, I was hooked. I discovered how much fun it was to share ideas about music, and the satisfaction of unpicking the tricky bits and stitching them back together again. Then there was the music itself – the delight of delving into that slow Beethoven quartet movement, or the excitement and emotion of playing a deeply personal work like Shostakovich’s String Quartet no.8 for the first time.