So said the fifth child and second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel. These immortal words of wisdom from one of the wisest and most rational of 18th century composers, C.P.E. Bach, are never far from Emma Sholl's mind.

"He talks about how music is there to move the audience - that's what he's trying to do," she says.

"He's trying to make the audience feel all these different emotions. And in order to do that successfully, the performer has to also feel those things. You can't just be a technician. He talks about that very clearly."

She's speaking in the present tense, but the words go back centuries. And she loves wondering what he might think of the way she, one of Australia's finest flautists, is taking his words to heart, and interpreting them for a modern audience.

Sholl will be taking to the stage this week with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra as a soloist, performing C.P.E. Bach's Flute Concerto in D Minor. It's part of a Llewellyn Series program, devised by artistic director Jessica Cottis - Miracles in the Age of Reason.

It's a theme that, in Cottis' eclectic style, draws a thread through seemingly disparate pieces - the "outright revolutionary" forces at work in Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries.

And for Sholl, it's a miracle just to be able to stand on stage, with her signature, cutting-edge flute made of gold, backed by a 21st century orchestra, and interpret the notes of someone so rational.

"I feel it in my bones - it's so beautiful," she says.

"The way he has these twists and turns of harmony and it's so emotive. It's been really fascinating reading C.P.E. Bach's books, which Mozart and Beethoven and all those huge composers studied themselves ... He talks about performing in general and he talks about how music is there to move the audience."

Sholl has a vivid memory of the first time she was moved by seeing music performed, in a way that made her realise it was something she might be able to do too, one day.

"I definitely remember going to a particular concert when I was a teenager and seeing a flute soloist onstage - his name was Patrick Gallois, and it was at the Opera House," she says.

"My dad took me, and I just remember thinking it would just be so amazing to do that."

It was also her dad - a journalist and music lover - who took her to a music shop and helped her pick out an instrument to play for the first time. It was the flute, from the very beginning.

"I remember after my very first lesson coming home and my nana was staying with us at the time, and I rushed in and said, 'Mum, Nana, I can play the flute!' And of course it was one, you know, very breathy note that came out of my instrument," she says.

"I was pretty cute, I was only seven. They were trying hard not to put a dampener on my enthusiasm."

Music was already in her bones and blood; her paternal grandmother and great-grandmother were both classical pianists, and her brother plays clarinet. They grew up in a house filled with all kinds of music, an atmosphere she is recreating with her own young family today.

And she knows too much now to be fussed about whether her own children choose a career in music; it's something that simply can't be forced

"People develop at different times - you don't have to be a prodigy by age seven to have a career in classical music," she says.

"Some people start later, they start on a different instrument, they switch instruments.

"It's not an immediate skill. [Children] are in a world where things happen at the push of a button and light up and everything's so immediate and such a sensory overload, whereas with learning a musical instrument, it's a slow game.

"Even if you're talented, you still progress slowly in the scheme of things and that is part of the joy."

In this way, music has always been a joy for her - conquering her instrument, mastering new pieces, looking forward to the next challenge.

By the time her peers were saving up for their first cars, she was saving up for a flute. She began working with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the age of 19 and was awarded Second Flute the following year, one of the youngest musicians ever appointed.

She's now 41, and plays a 14k rose gold flute made in America by Lillian Burkart. She says she can't see herself ever going back - to a silver one, that is.

"I love the sound of a silver flute - they're really clear and bright and beautiful, and I had never tried a gold flute that I liked," she says.

But she was inspired to try one at a flute festival.

"The sound was just gorgeous, and it just responded immediately. It had this capacity for different colours and it just really registered.

"But it's not what flautists would have played on when C.P.E. Bach wrote the work, but I'm sure if he had heard of a golden flute, he would have been very interested to hear how it represents."

But despite all the bells and whistles of a modern orchestra in a modern city like Canberra, Sholl feels quite sure that C.P.E. Bach would still find the essence of his work untouched by time. This, she says, is the beauty of performing and listening to music.

"The basics of human nature probably haven't changed since the time of C.P.E. Bach," she says.