Some dreams come true, others don’t. I spent my childhood in a picturesque village in Germany, and all I wanted was to own a beautiful violin. My earliest memories of music are from my first day of school – we had a teacher who had just come from college who loved and understood music. He gathered us all in a circle in front of the classroom and we started to sing. From then on, every day throughout my primary school years, we sang. But he also wanted me to play the violin and ended up convincing my parents to buy one so that I could take lessons.

I had some wonderful violin teachers who introduced me to the depths of music, but my father was very afraid that I might drift and that I couldn’t sustain a livelihood in the world of music and art. I too was afraid that I wouldn’t be good enough. Eventually I realised that even with practise, I could never satisfy my ears, and so I stopped playing. In the end, my life ended up taking a very different path, and so I supppose I never got the violin I really wanted.