Cultured Views

I saw this inspirational young man being interviewed on television last week and I thought how very unfair life can be at times. Alex has been called everything from genius to child prodigy but one thing is absolutely certain – Alex is a supremely gifted musician and every single day in his life matters more than anything.

Alex is nineteen, he also has cystic fibrosis and lives everyday with the knowledge that he could be just one infection away from dying. Those are not nice words for me to write so heaven only knows how it is for Alex to live the reality. But he does; he gets up each day and gets on with it. Alex studies music at Cambridge University and is a talented pianist and conductor.

In April Alex conducted Bach’s mighty St Matthews Passion - a work of which the score is a book 2ft square and 300 pages long. For weeks and months he lived and breathed this momentous work with an energy and exhuberance that his health at times could barely afford. But for Alex, as with most fine musicians, music is a matter of life and death and the day after he conducted this work to a sell out audience he entered hospital – in his own words – “at death’s door” . He gave his all for his love of music and at the same time raised money for research into CF.

I wish Alex all the best in his future and may it be a very, very long one.

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