We took part in La Folle Journee de Kanazawa and listened to Sayaka Syoji playing Shostakovich’s first violin sonata. My god! She is such a brilliant violinist. No wonder she won the Premio Paganini as young as eighteen years old. She took all of us to another universe using her violin. I was greatly moved by her performance.

We were seated in the third line, just behind the conductor

We got back slowly after the concert, dropping in a garden in the centre of Kanazawa