“I first met Ida around 1982 at Harold Holt’s offices. I still remember her grand entrance – she had of course no idea who I was.

I think it’s important for all of us to have a link with our tradition, our history – we need to know our heroes. It’s a great gift to have a representative of the golden era of violin playing still among us. I mean those days where you could recognise a violinist by their own, personal sound – their tonal fingerprint so to speak. It is a grace and a curse at the same time, that recordings of these heroes of the past have helped us to constantly increase the level of violin playing to the level where it is generally today. But with that we’ve lost this very quality of a truly personal playing – in exchange for ever so polished performances. Ida is a constant reminder to us, what it really means to be a live performing artist: She never lost the desire to get up and go through all the difficulties of performing to keep an appointment with her beloved public. She is a true communicator. That is probably her greatest quality, this never-ending desire to give: she still wants to tell us musical stories.”