To the Musical Instruments Museum  (Brussels) this morning, to a privately-organised concert to celebrate a friend’s 50th birthday. The music was provided by four brilliant young musicians, including the friend’s highly talented daughter, and organised via Musica Mundi. On the menu were Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Chopin. The latter’s Impromptu Fantasy was performed so brilliantly that it had the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. But also on the menu was some more exotic though equally beautiful fare. We had the first movement of Henri Vieuxtemps’s Violin Concerto, for example; a Tarantella by Pablo de Sarasate; and Palimpsestes, by Michel Lysight. They were all wonderful to listen to and wonderfully performed, but my favourite  in the whole concert (if I had to choose) was a lyrically evocative Prayer for cello and piano by Ernest Bloch. Somehow, the young cellist got all of the passion, sorrow and hope of the diaspora into this remarkable piece. And not one of the musicians was more than fourteen years of age! The concert was an immensely privileged and inspiring experience.