A lesson was an inspiration, not a stage reached in a course of instruction. It was the making of music, much as if I were his orchestra, playing under his direction, or his apprentice-soloist and he both conductor and orchestra, for while he accompanied me at the piano he also sang the different voices of the score. There were few interruptions. Sometimes he took up his own violin to illustrate a point of, say, vibrato or glissando; very, very rarely would he give me a dissertation on violin theory, for the circumstances of both our lives short-circuited the clumsy locutions of speech. Having started at the age of five, within no time Enesco played the violin excellently. The superb quality of his trills, vibrato, bowing, he must have had from the beginning, discovering them in himself with no more recourse to theory than the gypsies had, or than, for that matter, Rumania itself required to be the most naturally and effortlessly musical country in Europe. If his innate powers were cultivated in the rigorous classical schools of Vienna and Paris, the schooling in no way dampened their force, nor fastened them down to any man’s technical directives. << less