Violinists

I’ve been gathering pictures of violinists as I cast around for a plot for my novel – I’m in that one-author-in-search-of-a-plot state of mind. The famous ones are almost all men. These two pictures are of Paganini. But many others come from Russia, in particular the area around the old Jewish Pale of Settlement where the heroine of my novel will also come from.

When I lived in Russia, I’d go to a lot of concerts in Moscow every December – the dekyabrskiye vechera. The same musicians always played. Yuri Bashmet (who’s actually a viola player, but looks so much the tormented musician part that I couldn’t not put his picture up here) was one.

And here are Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz, heroes from the past (along with Gidon Kremer, Yehudi Menuhin and many others).