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I have been playing the violin since I was three years old. I attended my first violin class in the womb, and I gave my first concert when I was four. As I lay on the sofa after my recent operation, my sister pointed out that I was due a sabbatical. People have asked me whether I am worried that I might forget how to play, while I’m in plaster, through lack of practice. Well, I don’t want to tempt fate, but the way I see it, I’m as likely to forget how to count, or how to speak English. The violin, I have to assume, is hard-wired into my brain. And my brain has been up to some tricks, during this injury.

If you will excuse the indulgence, I’d like to tell you about my dreams. The only other time I have been so thoroughly separated from my instrument is when I have been on holiday. When I am on holiday I do not dream about my violin. At least for a week. After about 10 days, the violin starts to appear in my dreams. No matter how nice a holiday I am having, once I start dreaming about it, I start to miss the violin. I long to play it, to hear it, to feel it. 

But now, during this break-of-breaks, the longest time away from the instrument in 3 decades, what do I find? I think, perhaps, my brain has done something extraordinary. After the accident, right from the first night, I dreamt about the violin. Every single night for a whole week, I dreamt I was performing - sometimes without and sometimes with the plaster cast! Then for a few nights the violin would just appear - abstract, and not necessarily in my hands. And since then? Nothing - the dreams stopped completely.

And so, when my friends and colleagues ask, ‘Isn’t it awful for you? So frustrating not to be able to play?’ Well my answer is, it’s not great, but it’s not like you imagine. I’m not fretting over the closed violin case. At some level, I have accepted that I am not a violinist at the moment - for two months or so. Just as my body knows and accepts instinctively that my left arm is not available for use - I do not find myself reaching out to do things with my left hand when I’m not concentrating - so my mind does not reach for the violin, not even in my dreams. That first week, I sweated out the fever of violin-playing as I slept. At a level of which I am only dimly aware, something else struggled with the shock of not playing for me - my subconscious seemed to confront my temporary but prolonged separation from my instrument. It has put the violin away somewhere, somewhere it won’t trouble me - for now.

I am just back from our fourth recording session of Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. Sir Richard Armstrong is doing a wonderful job of piecing together this glorious work with an amazing cast of singers. It is sublime music and I know we all feel very lucky to be playing it! I don't think the orchestra has played it for nearly twenty years! Though, the string section is much smaller than usual: only using six of our fourteen violins.

Sir Richard Armstrong talking to the 'box' © Su-a Lee

Recording a CD is an interesting exercise. Every single time that red light goes on, you are on full performance mode. But you've also got to get it exact! There's a very fine balance in achieving the spirit of performance and atmosphere at the same time as being secure each time! I suppose it's a little like the tennis serves at Wimbledon matches: you give it your best shot on the first serve and if it hits the net, your second serve may be just that bit more 'safe'. 

David, happy after a particularly good take! © Su-a Lee

Recording a CD when we haven't actually performed the piece before in concert, is even more of an interesting exercise! We are making discoveries about misprints and corrections at lightning speed. And however much we have all prepared our own individual parts, there are still a lot of fast adjustments that have to be made! We are very lucky to have Sir Richard, who knows the work intimately and is very efficient indeed. 

We will also be recording Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme this week. I am hoping that, despite its fiendish difficulty, it will feel like a homecoming after having performed it twice last week!

Our newest addition to the orchestra, Eric (left).And notice, I'm
not the only one taking photos! © Su-a Lee

While my colleagues are busy rehearsing Strauss with Sir Charles Mackerras today, I am painting my nails. Why? Well it’s this Siberian weather we have all been enduring - I’ve broken my wrist.

How did I manage it? Extreme mountaineering in the Highlands? Skiing in Verbier? At least at a party in some aptly named killer heels? I wish. I was just walking down the pavement in Barnes. Theoretically, it doesn’t get more genteel than that. But of course I slipped on a patch of ice.

The following 9 hours in A&E were not very genteel, or gentle, either. Sitting out in the choked corridors while the heroic staff coped with the six-fold increase in accidents, my mother and I did our best to escape to another world, she reading aloud to me from Patrick Leigh Fermor’s account of his walk to Constantinople in the 1930s. Nobody seemed to mind. And one manipulation, one re-setting, one general anaesthetic, 3 wires and 3 x-rays later, I’m sat in front of the fire, half way through the first part of the ordeal.

What I didn’t count, however, was the number of times in that hospital I whimpered to nurses, surgeons, consultants and anaesthetists, ‘I’m a violinist.’ Sometimes they responded with a nod, or ‘Right’ or ‘How nice’ while they carried on with their task. Making more chit chat, or perhaps filling out another form with my details, they would then say, ‘And do you work?’ ‘Yes. I’m a violinist.’ ‘What, a professional violinist? It’s your job?’ 'YES. IT’S MY JOB. IT’S MY LIFE. I’M A VIOLINIST. Please fix my wrist, and fix it well.'

Every musician fears injury. Mine, as they go, is a good one to have. Bones mend. Dancers and Doctors and Physiotherapists have told me it will be - eventually - as good as new. A lot of rehabilitation awaits me when I get out of plaster - perhaps 2 or 3 months. I will miss a lot of music in that time. The fact that I will miss recording the Strauss opera ‘Ariadne’ with my colleagues later this month caused a fresh rush of tears when it dawned on me, sitting in casualty. But Hospitals are a good place to remind yourself that things could be a lot worse.

And my hospital experience had it’s musical moments too. After my operation I was lying in bed and a volunteer appeared from the Hospital radio station, to ask me what song I would like to request. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony was my reply - the last movement. I didn’t insist on this occasion that it was the SCO’s recording. And although the nurses had tried Morphine, Co-Codamol and Tramadol on me, it wasn’t until I heard the Beethoven that the pain really went away.

On Tuesday evening, the SCO Winds (plus a rogue cello!) performed in the Orchestra's CL@SIX series with director and clarinettist Joan Enric Lluna. The programme featured Dvorák's Wind Serenade and Strauss' Suite in B-flat Op 4.

I have known Joan Enric Lluna for a long time. He was my teacher at the Escuela de Musica de Barcelona and later on in London as more or less my private teacher, complementing the education I had at the Royal College of Music. I have always been an admirer of him as a clarinettist, great communicator and fantastic teacher. His personal style of making music, and his love for the instrument made him a very important person in my career.

I have played together with him in many concerts around Europe; two clarinets and piano, chamber music with his group Moonwinds and at the Orquesta de Cadaques. With Moonwinds we recorded Mozart's Gran Partita for Harmonia Mundi. So, I could say I know him quite well!!

Working with him at the SCO has been an extreme pleasure for me and I speak for everybody involved in this fantastic programme. During rehearsals he was very inspirational and let us play with a good sense of freedom. He just goes beyond the music itself looking for that "expresivo" quality with a warm group sound and lot of character!

I hope we might see him back before too long in a full orchestra programme. I certainly will see him very soon in more projects together.

Maximiliano Martín - Principal Clarinet