Last night I was lulled by the most thrilling music I've ever heard, or that I ever remember hearing.

For Christmas my mother made me a copy of a CD by Tasmin Little, a violinist, hoping I would like it. I must admit I very strongly doubted if I would indeed appreciate it; if my mother would prove to finally have developed a sense for what I might take to... so it took me a long while before I had gathered enough courage to actually listen to the CD.

The first thing I heard was the vastness of warmth Tasmin Little's violin contains. It is the very first violin I've heard being played of which I can truly observe and desire its sound, its body, its character.

The first track is beautiful. Its urgent gravity almost made me cry, and I wasn't even in a sad mood. It started off with harmonious chords bowed over the violin's strings, and later the accompanying piano took them over while the violin impressionably vibrated the unrecognisable theme. Its melody is so sentimental and altogether impossible to remember, it sounds new to me every time I listen to it.

The second track took my entire body captive, as if it was absorbed into the music. I was intensely listening to the soul-arresting harmonies, the different chords the string orchestra held for what seemed like hours, while they slowly transformed into new dramatic chord-constructions. I was permanently longing for the final chord but its arrival was continuously prolonged and its actual occurrence postponed. This is music, I heard myself moan inwardly, after which I suddenly remembered one of the definitions of music an old musician once gave me: "True music is reached only by making your audience crave for the ending in agony, helplessly imprisoned by what you play."

Every time the string orchestra had moved the harmonies in such a way that I was expecting the final chord to be next, it held the current, heartfelt chord a fraction longer and made a new line of harmonies tail instead. I was in total anguish. At a certain point I even cried out loud, nooo!, only to instantly relax once more, enchanted by the sound of the following chords. And then, suddenly, I realised that everything was silent.

It had ended, slowly, quietly, and despite my intense concentration, I had not even noticed. It was not an abrupt stop, it had been very, very gradual. Into the deepest of silences.

I want to be able to play like that.

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I feel so