You're right about the music, I like it, a very evocative piece...

You're right about the music, I like it, a very evocative piece while watching the progress of our xmas tree being set up. Really suits the mood. If only the snow were softly falling outside. Rain will have to do.

I'm more attracted to the European sensibility than the Anglo. But, I'd say that is just because I was raised within it so my mind looked elsewhere. I don't know much about Emile Zola but van Gogh and his crowd were fans so I'm assuming he wrote of the lives of ordinary folk. Anything like a French Dickens?

Having said that, I think highly of Australian art and literature. It has a quality that is hard to find anywhere else. Most people wrapping themselves in the Southern Cross wouldn't have the foggiest idea about their own culture but self-assuredly pin their Aussie credentials to their chest for all to see. My Australia is the old Australia which disappears piece by piece. Culturally and artistically, we just aren't hitting the highpoints we did when we were known to be 'uncultured'. No doubt that is a world phenomenon though.

As a retort to your last, I'll raise you one and carry on the Russian theme (no, I'm not a communist sympathiser). This is Leonid Kogan, dare I say you probably know of him, one of the great virtuosos of the 20th C. Incredible we live in a time when we, the hoi polloi, can watch him play.