Of the many reasons I have to hold Persinger in loving remembrance, none is greater than his setting high my sights from the beginning. At our first lesson I was told to play some little thing and was advised on this and that, but these preliminaries speedily dispatched, Persinger invited Imma and me to sit down, took up his violin, and announced he would play for us. With admirable intuition, this man who made no profession of teaching little children chose not to stun us with pyrotechnics, but to exalt us with one of the noblest works ever written, the Adagio from Bach’s Sonata in G Minor for Solo Violin. So passionate and moving is this improvised Adagio that many years later in my presence, Pablo Casals, abandoning himself at the keyboard, gave it a mock-Hungarian-cybalom, broken-chord accompaniment, insisting that it proved Bach to have had gypsy blood! At the time, aged five, hearing the Adagio for the first time, such speculations were beyond me. I knew only that the music was very near to me and very moving. We sat spellbound, Imma and I, until the last note died away and stillness filled the room to overflowing: then we went home, still transported to another plane of existence, drunk on Bach. I knew this sublimity was what I must strive for, and that she expected my striving no less than I did myself. We had shared an experience that marked us both. << less