an international concert violinist, under the auspices of Ildebrando Pizzetti and his patroness Katherine Dalliba-John. In 1918, Pizzetti and Rudge did a joint concert tour of Italy, performing modern Italian music. Career Rudge first met the poet Ezra Pound when he reviewed a concert Rudge gave at the Aeolian Hall in November 1920, admiring the "delicate firmness of her fiddling" yet criticising the "piano whack" of her accompanist Renata Borgatti. Rudge continued her association with Borgatti and pursuing her interest in modern Italian music, giving concerts with Borgatti and Pizzetti at the Sala Bach in Rome in 1921, and joining Renata Borgatti again at the Salle Pleyel in 1922. One of her first meetings with Pound took place in 1923, in Paris at the salon of Natalie Barney. Pound later recalled "her delicate and unemphatic reserve". At this time Pound was developing his own musical interests, composing an opera and advancing the work of American composer George Antheil. Antheil and Rudge were to enjoy a long professional collaboration dating from this period, which also marked the beginning of her sexual relationship with Pound. Rudge was now an established and successful soloist living in a luxurious apartment on Paris's ultrarespectable "right bank". She had nothing to gain by an association with a bohemian eccentric poet such as Pound, who was definitely "left bank" in his views and works. This willingness to flout convention and put her reputation at risk would typify her long affair with Pound. In December 1923, Rudge and Antheil gave a concert at the Salle du Conservatoire which included not only works by Mozart, Bach, and Antheil, but also Ezra Pound's "Sujet pour violin". For his work to be performed by a notable soloist was exactly the publicity Pound the aspiring composer desired. In 1924, Rudge and Antheil performed "Musique Americaine" at the Salle Pleyel. This concert also included work by Pound and Antheil's "Deuxieme Sonate", dedicated to Rudge. From 1923 onwards, Pound's letters to Rudge advise her on her career. He strongly recommended her to pay more attention to her patrons (something he himself never failed to do), and chided her for her lack of interest in the press comments concerning her concerts. By 1924, Pound and his wife, the former Dorothy Shakespear, had moved from Paris to Rapallo, Italy. Rudge, now in the full throes of her enduring love affair with Pound, visited him several times.