Intimate pleasures, shared

The Saturday evening concert was a violin-piano recital of two Beethoven Violin Sonatas (op. 12, no.1 and op. 30, no. 2) and the César Franck Violin Sonata in A during which I have to bite my lip to stop myself singing along, I know it so well. The early queueing paid off; we had the best possible seats—right in the middle of the front row so that we didn't miss one nuance of the performance by Mayumi Seiler, who knew the Franck sonata so well that she hardly once looked at the notes, and Tuende Kurucz, from Hungary, a Professor of Piano and Chamber Music at the Mozarteum in Salzburg who first accompanied Mayumi Seiler in 1991. She must be the most expressive pianist we've ever watched, every muscle in her body responding to the subtle changes of the music from phrase to phrase and as the keys changed giving secret smiles; it was a revelatory experience, almost too intimate for a public place.