You don't need rock & roll to 'rock'

I went to a violin concert the other day by some virtuouso (my friend is a classical musician, so she told me how incredible the opportunity to watch this person play, so I took her word for it), and was totally blown away. First, I kind of giggled at the notion that someone as uncultured as me (I think the Pixies were the highest-brow band I ever listened to) partaking in classical music, but as it turns out, the concert involved all of the intensity and passion of any rock concert, with even more astounding virtuosity that even the likes of Eddie Van Halen brought to the masses. The performance was absolutely vicious with her violin, yet the sounds were mellifluous and flowing. As my friend mentioned during the encore "it's so ironic that something that sounds so cheerful and fast is so painfully difficult to play." Now, apparently she's making me a CD to explore if this classical music thing is something I'll really get hooked on. I'm horribly unhip and have stopped listening to music in the early 21st Century, so perhaps I need to look back a couple of centuries to get some fresh melodies flowing in my head....