Ulli had scarcely eaten since the Charlottenburg concert. He wasn’t sure that even during the deprivations of his childhood he had felt real despair before. Some of the country’s best composers had been banned or had gone into exile; the greatest one had been conscripted as a signature tune to a mad dictator; now, so had this unstable and heart-rending concerto. Many times in the past he and his friends had grumbled about politicians’ lack of artistic awareness. Yet today they had some who knew the power of music too well and could use it for their own ends, and this was a great deal worse.

Every postal delivery was a source of terror lest it contain the call-up papers that could be the Reich’s revenge on an employee who had made the mistake of championing Jewish musicians. One of his friends, a young historian who had openly challenged the government’s racial policies, had been arrested; nobody knew where he had been taken, or whether he was still alive. And Ulli’s own handwriting had appeared on the envelopes in which the great Aryan Schumann concerto had flown the country into the hands of Jelly d’Arányi and Yehudi Menuhin. If that were noted and traced… Ulli could no longer tell which of his fears were justified and which the products of his frazzled insomniac brain. Trying to pick up the telephone to call Jelly again, as he had promised to do, his hand shook and sweated, his head spun and he could not continue.

To leave the country and find sanctuary elsewhere; to give up the job he loved and gamble on the outcome. Was it braver to stay or to go?

‘What are we going to do, Willy?’

‘All we can do is wait. Wait for the cycle to turn, because it has to, eventually. Wait for it to end.’

‘Das Ende.’ Ulli quoted Wagner’s Wotan. ‘Das Ende… ’

And beyond the deep windows of the Schott’s headquarters, beyond the pink cathedral, the conservatoire that had thrown out its Jews, and the swastikas fluttering like crows on the Rathaus, the autumn winds were gusting in from distant mountains, bringing with them the first hint of snow.

Chapter 17

‘The Nazis’ biggest propaganda party of the year,’ Adila fumed. She was trying to tune in to German radio to hear Kulenkampff’s performance, fighting the wireless’s unreliable tuning and cursing in Hungarian, by far the best language for it. Across the Atlantic, they’d been informed, Yehudi Menuhin was not only listening but had a journalist with him to monitor his reactions.