A good example of how it must have been is today's world of conducting, which is still utterly dominated by men, and the prejudice the few female conductors have to battle even today is astounding.
However, the thought hit me that this was a pretty pathetic way to kick the bucket - being accidentally poisoned during a photo shoot, of all things - and I started weeping at the idiocy of it all.
I am very lucky and grateful to have this living link to a past era, the violin presumably having much more history to it than the later portion that I know.
I had been playing since I was 2 years old, never remembering a life without music, always playing everything naturally and mostly by ear, and all the grownups wanted were more scales and drudgery out of me.
I thought that maybe it is not so much, as he seems to think, that the world loses interest in female performers after they hit a certain age, than the performers lose interest in the world.
Mostly this problem is contained in the fact that the US makes it so difficult for Canadians to get green cards (you heard it here), but if an American orchestra really wants a player, they have their ways.
Music is art, art is life, and we are who we are, and all of these aforementioned women, unless they should choose not to, will be performing well into the next many decades because they are great artists.
Raising a small child as a woman while travelling 10 months out of the year would, I believe, be something I would not be able or even want to do, although with the amazing example of Leila, I am no longer so sure.
