‘My dear Dr Schultheiss… ’ Strauss’s voice was starting to sound doddery, Ulli thought. He was 72; it should be time for him to retire to Garmisch-Partenkirchen to grow roses and enjoy his grandchildren. Chances were limited that a composer would produce any more important works at this stage of life.

Ulli explained the Schumann situation and met with an exclamation, then a silence, while Strauss took in the story and its implications.

‘Kulenkampff is a fine violinist,’ the composer volunteered eventually.

‘It’s not the violinist we mind so much,’ said Ulli, though for him it was. ‘It is Breitkopf. You see, we’ve been involved with the retrieval of this work from the start. This business of the government overriding everything… ’

‘I know, I know.’ Strauss certainly did.

‘Is there anything you can suggest?’ Ulli pleaded. ‘I should explain that Schott’s has started to lose money from the official blacklisting of our Jewish composers by your Reichsmusikkammer successor, Peter Raabe. It’s not that your works are not doing well – they’re doing extremely well – but if the company can capitalise on a hitherto unknown work by Schumann, then we’ll have more to invest in promoting today’s great composers, such as yourself.’

‘Yes, yes,’ sighed Strauss. ‘I appreciate that, Dr Schultheiss, and I wasn’t born yesterday. But I have no influence now, nor do I wish to. Not after… that.’

‘I’d value your opinion in any case. I know you understand this environment,’ Ulli admitted. ‘I might try to persuade Dr Strecker to organise a meeting with some of the official party people.’

‘Raabe?’ Strauss grunted.

Ulli knew Raabe as a second-rate conductor, a former Weimar Kapellmeister with an unhealthy fondness for the music of Franz Liszt. Ulli liked publishing Liszt, but not playing it; too much bluster for his taste. He had no doubt that Raabe was appointed for political reasons, not artistic ones. ‘Yes, Raabe – and perhaps Goebbels himself. Do you think that, in a case as strange and significant as this, it could be necessary?’

‘That upstart pipsqueak?’ said Strauss. ‘Yes, Goebbels might well take an interest… ’

Ulli was possessed by a sense of unreality. ‘I can’t help wondering what could be so important about a violin concerto. So crucial that it might even capture the time and energy of Hitler’s minister of propaganda,’ he remarked.

‘All I can say,’ Strauss growled, ‘is that, well, you’d be surprised.’

All the more reason to hold on to it, not only for the company’s sake, but for the music’s. Hitler had annexed Wagner and Bruckner for his own ends; he must under no circumstances be able to take Ulli’s beloved Schumann as well. This long-buried work must remain a great Romantic violin concerto, and nothing else.

*

Except that the concerto, apparently, was not that great after all.