Monday Music

Monday, which means a fast day for me, and is really something of a necessity after yesterday's apple crumble+trifle+ fresh cream fest. Which came after the roast dinner and before the Thonton's chocolates.... and yes, it WAS worth it. Anyway, this morning, in the pre nursery pickup window, I decided to go for a bracing three mile constitutional - I've completely ditched any pretense of running at this point- so I donned my hat and my headphones and off I went.

Scrolling through my music library, and unable to face  'Em's Country Hits' yet again, (note to self- get some new music downloaded ASAP ), I decided to opt for one of my Desert Island Discs podcasts instead. Which always makes me feel ever so slightly worthy, I'm not quite sure why.There were plenty of choices but no one I was particularly interested in (tranlation - no one I actually recognized, having already heard Ant and Dec and Claire Balding last week), so I took a chance and opted for Nicola Benedetti.

I'm utterly ashamed that I'd never even heard of this amazingly talented violinist who is still only twenty six years of age. What struck me most when I listened to her, apart from her maturity and intellect, was her almost spiritual love for music. One of two daughters of Italian immigrants, she grew up in Scotland where her dad owned a dry cleaners, and both herself and her older sister started learning the violin at the ages of 4 and 8. (I'm afraid that I couldn't help but wonder what her sister's doing now- it can't have been easy to have your wee sister go on to study with Yehudi Menuhin and become the Young Musiscian of the Year, especially, for the sake of argument, if you didn't make it past your Grade 2).

The truth is, her parents did a great job because she came across as a lovely, articulate, grounded girl who puts her outstanding achievements down to talent and a huge amount of work.
Here's a little taste of her in action and just in case you're interested, she's dating quite a dishy world famous cellist called Leonard Elschenbroich - I hadn't heard of him either obvs, but apparently they make beautiful music together, boom boom!

Hope this improves this dreary wet Monday for you- it certainly raises the bar around here. (If only you knew what little musical gem I HAD planned on putting on here today....but you'll have to wait for tomorrow for that little treat.)
Enjoy my lovelies xx
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