IT SOUNDS like a wailing ghost and you play it like you are stroking an invisible cat. But concerts featuring the theremin captivate audiences across Europe, thanks to an Abingdon musician.

Lydia Kavina, widely regarded as the world’s leading theremin player, gave a concert last Tuesday at Oxford’s Holywell Music Room to show how musical it really is.

She played classical pieces by Robert Schumann and Sergei Prokofiev as well as more modernist pieces.

The concert marked the 22nd anniversary of the death of the instrument’s creator, Leon Theremin, who taught her to play while she was growing up in Moscow in the 1970s.

He was her grandfather’s cousin and his lessons gave her a lifelong love of the device.

When Lev Theremin patented the theremin in 1928, it was unique among musical instruments because the performer did not need to touch it to produce a sound.

Its two antennas produce electrical fields and when the thereminist puts her hands into those it causes a disruption which translates into a wobbling musical tone.

The resulting ghostly wail became a hallmark of 1950s sci-fi and horror movies such as Rocketship X-M, The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing (From Another World).

But by the time Ms Kavina started to play, the theremin and its inventor were going through hard times. The Soviet Union took a dim view of new or experimental arts and Theremin and his invention had been largely forgotten in his own country.

Ms Kavina recalled: “I started on the piano like a normal kid. Then I started learning the theremin about eight or nine, quite an early age.

“Being so close to the inventor I had such sympathy for his attempts to popularise his invention because the theremin was quite forgotten as an instrument and its music in Russia was not officially allowed so it was hard times in the 1970s.

“When he came to my house he was over 80 – that man really needed support.”

But the instant she heard the theremin’s plaintive howl, she fell in love. “That wonderful instrument has fascinated me. Every day it opens new ways to express yourself.”

After her concert in Oxford, Ms Kavina – who lives in Abingdon with husband George Pavlov and their two children – went on to perform in Kiev last week and and will play film music with other musicians in Germany on November 29.

She has herself contributed to the world of film, having played theremin for Howard Shore’s soundtrack of Tim Burton’s movie Ed Wood.

Ms Kavina is now a composer herself and, of the theremin sound, she said: “ It can belong to any kind of music but it still sounds quite odd and quite specific. It brings emotional and very sensitive sounds. It can be quick and aggressive, it can be meditative, it can jazz or classical. It is up to the musician.”

Find out more about her work at www.lydiakavina.com