I was watching a video of 2Cellos playing recently. So erotic! So voyeuristic - like watching them have sex with their instruments.

I have always found the cello to be a particularly erotic instrument - the size of it and the way it’s held is so lover-like. But I find the interaction between any musician and instrument sexual - whether it be a tiny piccolo or an enormous harp, tuba or marimba (if you don’t know what a marimba is, look it up, it’s like a huge xylophone, and I once saw the most amazing marimba performance - the musician was all over his instrument - glorious!).

It goes way beyond technique, which is important, but what makes music glorious is the connection. It’s the way the musician takes their instrument and controls it utterly, yet is in exquisite unison with the instrument. The musician lets him or herself go to the instrument and the music they are co-creating, there is a perfect merging.

The better the merging, the more complete the unison, the more sublime the music. Whatever the type of music is being played, whether it’s sweet sonatas or heavy metal.

Virtuoso musicians have that ability to be simultaneously in control and in surrender; both making the music and losing themselves in the musical creation.

Is the musician playing the instrument or is the instrument bringing out the control in the musician - who is leading and who is being led?

Virtuoso lovers have the same skill. And in the same way that while at times one lover might be leading the encounter and the other being led, they are both surrendering to the ‘music’ of the sex.

Are you a ‘virtuoso’ lover? What kind of ‘music’ are you capable of making?