For Josef Suk (1929-2011)

He was one of music's aristocrats. Seriously. He was the great-grandson of Dvorak, the grandson of Josef Suk. And he played like an aristocrat. Completely without showmanship, all natural elegance, letting the composer do the talking for him, displaying an effortless command of the violin. Yet nobody would ever call his playing robotic. Beneath all the methodical understatement lurked an unmistakable poet. Rather than a career on the concert circuit, he was far more comfortable as a chamber musician and did not even make his solo debut until he was 27. This was clearly a man comfortable in his own skin.