10.02.17
www.thebookseller.com
INTERVIEW MIN KYM
23 Unbeknown to them, professional thieves were
circling. Moments later, the violin had gone. The title of Kym’s memoir refers both to this dreadful moment and to its far-reaching consequences, not only for her career but for her state of mind and sense of identity. “There were fathoms beneath me, cold and dark,” she writes. Following the loss of her violin, Kym entered
‘‘
The violin was a crutch. It was the thing that supported me, and once it was gone, I realised that I’d almost built my life on sand
a period of deep mourning, shutting herself in her room, wearing black clothes and expunging music from her life. When the theft hit the headlines, the press reports compounded her agony by making light of it: “A violin worth more than £1m was stolen from a brilliant musician when she stopped for a £2.95 sandwich,” as the Daily Mail put it. As Kym relives the moment of the theft seven years later, her eyes brim with tears. To this day, she is haunted by dreams of her lost violin.
played big concert venues around the world. Aware of the instrument’s inherent sensitivity and fragility, Kym hated to let it out of her sight, even briefly, and not only because of its value. “All loved violins sound beautiful to their owners, just like every baby is beautiful to every mother,” she writes. And then in November 2010, with Sony about to
release Kym’s recording of Brahms’ Violin Concerto, calamity struck. Drinking tea in a café at Euston station, Kym allowed her boyfriend at the time—the unhealthy control he had over her is evident in the book—to persuade her to unhook her violin from its customary position, with its strap wound securely around her legs, and move it to the side with the rest of their luggage. “I was fed up . . . I was in a bad mood and he wore me down,” Kym remembers.
DEVASTATING INSIGHT The second half of Gone reveals both the fate of her Stradivarius and how its owner recovered from the trauma of losing her soulmate. The process was an immensely painful one, but with the hiatus in her career, Kym was able—for the first time ever—to properly reflect on her life to date: her strange, even dysfunctional childhood (“What is a child prodigy? A means to another’s end”), her long-concealed eating disorder, and the nature of her former boyfriend’s control over her. “The violin was a crutch. It was the thing that supported me, and once it was gone, I realised that I’d almost built my life on sand,” she says, with devastating insight. In time, Kym started to enjoy music. Eventually she
played again; at first “just for the love of playing”. She also found a new partner, an Amati: a “Sleeping Beauty” of a violin which had lain unplayed for 100 years. She is preparing to relaunch her solo career, and to coincide with the publication of Gone, a soundtrack will be released by Warner Classics on Spotify and Apple Music, featuring recordings from an tape made when Kym was only 11, to the Brahms Concerto recorded for Sony. Writing Gone has been a healing experience, Kym
tells me. “It took me such a long time, but eventually I discovered a voice that the violin had completely taken over. This supressed, repressed person came out. But the stronger that person became, the more I realised I needed to talk about this. And now I’m talking to everyone.”
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