White heat - Meng Yang Pan

I recently spent a very pleasant short break in London with my mother.

The lunch time piano concert by the superbly talented Meng Yang Pan, she played with breath taking fluency and passion. It was incredible to see such a perfect and skilled performance. 

The music: Scarlatti, Haydn, Poulence and Liszt was varied from the gentle and melodic to the crashing complex cords of Liszt. My mother commented that she didn't look heavy enough to have played this last piece. Her whole body and in particular were very expressive as she throw herself into this work body and soul.

I really was quite breath-taking to see such a powerful young talent perform at her very peak. 

Watching her perform, I was reminded about a recent article about measuring brain activity in an MRI scanning. The article compared popular past times and activities like go to the gym, having a drink, ... not surprisingly top of this "pop chart" was sex.. However watching this incredibly intense performance I couldn't help feel that her level of engagement was off the scale and it made wonder if the "white heat" generated by a top perform must be hard to rival in their person relationships. I could help wondering if being "better than sex" might also be a bit of a burden?

The setting - St James Church Piccadilly is a beautiful old church with lovely stained glass windows and fine carvings and fittings. According to Mum, it was a "Wren Church".