Having no concerts to worry about this month, time and opportunity were aplenty to enjoy freedom and do anything that took my fancy or go anywhere, whenever I felt like it!

Last month, I had been to the “Versailles de Marie-Antoinette”, at the cosy Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Bordeaux, where my dear friend Valérie de Raignac was a faultless guide through the impressive display of items belonging to the Queen in her golden days. Back in London, an invitation awaited me for the Private View of “The Three Emperors”, at the Royal Academy: those fabulous Chinese! I was left speechless at so much unimaginable beauty!

At the start of December, a trip to Paris where Frédéric, who had hosted last year’s closing concert of my Workshop, had a vernissage for his collection of pictures of French musicians taken in the 50s, by a relative; that was followed by a jolly dinner: it felt as if the Sud-Ouest had moved up north!

Next day a trip to the Louvre was in order: there was an exhibit of landscapes by Frans Post, the Flemish artist who in the 1650s went along to Brazil with the Dutch expedition. For this occasion I had the best of guides in Ivan my PA, who’s a most enthusiastic and potential historian of art; to this fact add the fun of riding through Paris in the back of his moped… helmet and all!

For sometime I had planned to visit a fabulous – mainly private – collection on display in Tübingen, Germany. On display, works by Corot, Rubens, Friedrich, Daumier, Monet, Sisley, Roault, Rembrambt, Toulouse-Lautrec, Dufy, Van Gogh, Géricault, Manet, Picasso, Menzel, to cite but a few, all belonging to the family of Arturo’s wife (v. October): simply mind-blowing! Then to end this weeklong cultural orgy, a relaxed Sunday visit (here I was joined by Janice, another great guide!) to the stunning Rubens’ collection at the National Gallery in London!

By watching beauty portrayed in Art, one can better sense it!

Reflections. The issue of giving as opposed to receiving.
One night I found myself half-dreaming or“sleepless in … Bordeaux” -- too much cheese or wine?; just as in that virtual display of the Sistine Chapel I told you about, endless images kept flying … but here back into … me: I was the recipient of all…what? How could I analyse this? Maybe it had to do with my complaint about how the life of a solo pianist can be so lonely or how draining is the constant giving which goes with performing, without much in retribution… But.. I’m in the receiving end of… endless appreciation and kindness! I should be only too glad that some people even bother to make constructive criticism although at times difficult to take; but one must suffer, get angry, desperate or disparate, feel discouraged or lonely; for better portraying emotions, one needs ideally to have lived them!

Why?
Why did I cry my eyes out that day, long ago, standing in front of Monet’s profusion of Lilies, my heart and lungs seeming filled to the brim? When the power of emotion coming from The Secret and other sculptures by Rodin, like a hand out of the rock, gripped at my throat?

What about the goose-bumps, looking at the tragic power of The Beheading of St John the Baptist, by Caravaggio; or recognising the ecstasy in Leda’s face when Zeus rapes her in the guise of a swan, as depicted by Rubens or in front of the portrait of his little daughter, imagining his pain when she died two years later? The humanity on Christ’s face, caught by Delacroix; the seeming dissolution into thin air of Mother-and-Child, by Daumier? What explains the nostalgia which grabbed me at the familiarity of lights on one of Frans Post’s Brazilian landscapes? Absorbing that purest of abandons ‘The Kiss’, by Canova; or sensing the plight of the burning Amazonian forest, in an installation by Frans Krajcberg; and enjoying the illness-stricken Menzel’s portrait of his handsome brother.

And on and on: intangible and inexplicable Art’s need to create or interpret beauty, death, desperation, bliss, ephemeral suffering! All there for the benefit of anyone who’s capable of ‘receiving’! Ours is a world of beauty and terror, fighting and peace. Confrontation will forever teach us to feel, to give, to suffer or to love. To me, contrast, communication, feelings are key-words!

The perennial child in me refuses to comply with the strange habit of making New Year’s resolutions, something I had never heard of until my arrival in England…

Is it due to the fact that things uncharacteristically slow down and people have to function out of their comfortable routine?

In an ideal world, trying to better conditions of life around oneself should be the norm. One last bonus just before the year was over: I heard a radio program on the lavish voice of Jessye Norman, going from Purcell, through Poulenc, Les parapluies de Cherbourg (!), Strauss’ September, Wagner (the yummiest of Isoldes), Berg and ending with a favourite negro spiritual, all of which brought tears to my eyes.

For a musician, being able to feel is the greatest of gifts!

And as I lay in the last blissfully-hot bath of 2005, I found myself in a rare ‘thanksgiving’- mood.

-- Thus, I thank my parents for the gift of life.
-- I thank God for giving me talent.
-- And I thank my husband for the daughters to whom I have given Life: they are my pride and joy!