Nadia Boulanger once described a Menuhin recital: He gave a number of encores, and the last was the slow movement of Brahm's Sonata in D minor. What happened then was part of an indescribable completeness. The whole house found itself in the grip of the same mute emotion, which created silence of an extraordinary quality. Everyone understood, felt, participated in what he himself must have been feeling." Menuhin has always possessed this quality. Even as a child, his playing had an innate innocence (which is still intact) that made Einstein declare that, hearing him play, he knew there was a God.
One of the most pathetic things about us human beings is our
touching belief that there are times when the truth is not good
enough for us; that it can and must be improved upon. We have
to be utterly broken before we can realize that it is impossible
to better the truth. It is the truth that we deny which so tenderly
and forgivingly picks up the fragments and puts them together again.