By strange twists of fortune to relief for the soul

There are times when we just need to let the stress out. Little does that as well as music. Especially music in good company. Especially when part of the good company is provided by the musicians.

My family’s going through a stressful time. Well, the worst stress is for my mother. At 93, things can go wrong quickly, and they’ve been going pretty badly wrong for her just recently, as she bounces between a hospital and an intermediate care facility, a step down from acute care but still a medical establishment, not home.

She’d done well to get to 93 still able to live in her own flat. There was a part-time manager in her building but no medical care. Until a few weeks ago, my mother has coped with her own cooking, shopping and washing, only drawing on the help of friends when it was offered. Now, though, the pain she has suffered for some years has become worse and a series of other problems have led to her transferring in and out of different forms of medical care, and the sight is a sad one to see.

It’s the harrowing paradox of human existence: none of us wants to die young, but reaching advanced old age is no fun either.

The stress is worst for my mother, but the rest of the family has suffered from it too. So it was wonderful to find relief from it at another concert in the museum in Luton. These take place, as I’ve mentioned before, in the lovely surroundings of Wardown House. On this occasion, the concert involved two violinists playing a series of pieces; an unusual, and attractive, aspect of the event was that they stopped regularly to talk about the music they were playing or their composers. That was fun and it established a friendly rapport between the players and the audience.

Let me quickly indulge in what will feel like a digression, though it isn’t really.

Back the late 90s, a scandal hit the papers. It was a financial matter but not confined to the financial pages. Nicola Horlick was that rare creature, a woman who was a highly successful player in the financial services market. She was managing director of UK investments for Morgan Grenfell Asset Management, until she was suspended in January 1997 and resigned two days later. She was accused of preparing to move to another company, which was the excuse for her suspension; there was, however, widespread suspicion that she had irritated her employers by being far more successful than any woman was expected to be in that profession (or, it was felt, had any right to be).

In 2005, she set up Bramdean Asset Management. One of the partners there was Enrico Alvares. Now, he had a most unusual background to be a financial manager. The son of a professional violinist in Nairobi, he had been more or less obliged to take up the instrument at the age of three. He studied music at prestigious schools in London and eventually joined (by invitation) the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, where he played for ten years.

But then he decided that he wanted to make a little money. So he joined Nicola Horlick and made, in his own words, hundreds of times more than he ever could from music. Hs initial passion, however, never deserted him and in time he decided that money could only go so far. He returned to the violin.

Meanwhile, Stephanie Waite had done something not dissimilar. She had played the violin from the age of two. At eighteen, she went to Cambridge to study English literature and moved into teaching after graduating, including several years teaching English and Music at Pentonville prison.

One night, however, she attended a string quartet concert at London’s Wigmore Hall. She remembers neither who was playing nor what they played. Her principal recollection of that evening was the overwhelming feeling that this was what she wanted to be doing. She had to get back into music.

By different routes, both Enrico and Stephanie found themselves playing in one of the major orchestras, she with the violins, he as first viola. The orchestra was too big for them to meet but, by what turned out to be a happy coincidence, they got to know each other on the homebound train. Soon after, they were married and since then they have frequently given violin duo concerts together.

Stephanie and Enrico: wonderfully performing glorious music
in the beautiful setting of Wardown House

One of those concerts was in Wardown House, which is where we met them.

Two odd and serendipitous paths to that place. Where, by further serendipity, we listened to them at just a time when we most needed the balm they provided.

Life, as my mother’s experience shows, often gets things badly wrong. Sometimes it does them exactly right. And this was one of those occasions.

For that, at least, I’m grateful.