Back home… (Suzanne)

Sometimes I’m a little bit sad that I can’t stay home for longer. I picked up the Hong Kong Philharmonic’s concert programme for the next season, and, while I’m in Melbourne, they’re putting on concerts from Yundi Li, Yo-yo Ma, Sumi Jo, Viktoria Mullova, and Stephen Hough, among many, many other rather famous and distinguished people. Tickets for tonight’s concert by Midori sold out two weeks ago. It’s a pity, I really wanted to see that – I mean, how often do you get to see a player, who debuted in Carnegie Hall at age 7, and at a concert at Tanglewood at age 14 broke both the strings of her violin and the extra one she borrowed from the concertmaster, had to borrow a third instrument to finish the concert, and ends up on the front page of the New York Times the next day with the headline: “Girl, 14, Conquers Tanglewood with 3 Violins”?

Anyhow, my holiday is going quite nicely, it’s basically just been lots of nothing, some light reading for pleasure, and the four hours a day of practice that every music student is bonded by oath to do until the day they die. Nothing too strenuous, really. Some friends are coming over to bake cookies next week 🙂