He listened as Raabe and Ludwig batted names about. The key issue was that the violin as soloist must sound triumphant, representing a great leader – not a point that appeared ever to have occurred to Schumann himself. Hans Pfitzner? He’d put too much of his own stamp on it. Carl Orff? He’d probably leap at it, but the deadline could be a problem. He was a busy man, currently writing a massive new choral piece called Carmina Burana. Ulli hoped nobody would draw attention to that; he’d seen the Latin text and feared it would prove too explicitly erotic for the regime. The last thing Schott’s needed was yet another banning. Willy would have chosen Paul Hindemith, the finest craftsman they knew, a string player himself, and a ‘real’ German – but even he had fallen foul of Goebbels, having written an opera, Mathis der Maler, about a painter who turned against the idea of war. Mention of him was forbidden.

‘Whoever you ask will have to work fast,’ said Raabe eventually. ‘The premiere must take place as soon as possible.’

Ulli jolted towards hope: Raabe had said ‘will’ rather than ‘would’.

‘Speaking of the premiere… ’ Ulli recognised the moment to make his bid: now or never. ‘This concerto would not have come to light were it not for our efforts, acting on information from the eminent musicologist Sir Donald Francis Tovey and the violinist Miss Jelly d’Arányi. Miss d’Arányi is the great-niece of the violinist for whom the concerto was originally written. It is only right that she, as its discoverer and his close relation, should be the one to give its first performance.’

‘The great-uncle is Joseph Joachim, the Hungarian composer and famous violinist,’ muttered the hitherto silent backstop to Goebbels. ‘He was a Jew and we have taken down his statues. Miss d’Arányi is his great-niece, originally from Budapest, where she was born in the Jewish quarter. She is extremely celebrated and it’s rumoured that she was once Bartók’s lady friend.’

Ludwig and Willy both stared towards Ulli, stunned into silence. So did Goebbels, half rising from his chair as he turned that implacable gaze upon Ulli’s eyebrows.

‘Oh, my dear friends,’ Goebbels began. ‘You come into my headquarters, requesting my time to discuss a great German premiere for a great German concerto by a great German composer – and your employee sits in front of me saying that he, personally, wants a Jewess to play it? One more word, Dr Schultheiss, and I will pick up that telephone and call my friend in the Gestapo headquarters. I consider your views more naive than treasonous, but possibly he may not. In this case you wouldn’t see the beautiful pink cathedral of Mainz again for a long, long time. What must your employers here think of your judgement? Well, that’s for them to decide. Isn’t that so, my friends?’