Yehudi Menuhin became an iconic figure in the classical music world and beyond it. At the end of World War II he played to survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; thereafter, performing music to people who were suffering, ill or disadvantaged became a lifelong preoccupation. This led him to found the organisation Live Music Now, and numerous other initiatives to assist the training of young musicians. After settling in Britain he took UK citizenship and was ultimately awarded the Order of Merit. He died in 1999.

Georg Kulenkampff left Germany in 1943 in protest at the regime. He died in 1948, aged 50.

Hans Gál moved to Edinburgh after Tovey invited him there to catalogue the university music library. He later became professor of music at the university.

W.B. Yeats died in January 1939 and his wife George in 1968.

Richard Strauss wrote some of his finest works after the end of World War II, when he was in his eighties, including Metamorphosen and the Four Last Songs.

The Queen’s Hall was destroyed by a direct hit during the Blitz in 1941. The Charlottenburg Opera House was destroyed by Allied bombing.

Ulli Schultheiss is fictional, but his moral dilemma is very real. Had he indeed lived, his move to Britain would have seen him interned as an enemy alien, possibly in the Isle of Man, but he might well have joined his principled friends and colleagues in rebuilding British musical life after the war. If only Jelly could have had an Ulli in her life. Perhaps she did.

The Schumann Violin Concerto has overcome its difficult start to become a staple part of its instrument’s repertoire – even though in the US, after Menuhin’s premiere, it was not performed again for some 23 years. Today, though, some violinists speak of it as perhaps the most personal, exquisite and heartbreaking of all the great concertos.

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Author’s Note

I first read about the strange history that has become Ghost Variations when I was researching my third novel, Hungarian Dances. I had found a second-hand copy of The Sisters d’Arányi by Joseph Macleod, the sole biography of these remarkable women. A chapter entitled ‘The Truth about the Schumann Concerto’ contained the whole extraordinary saga.

Of course creating fiction out of real events and people is far from straightforward. I humbly beg forgiveness from ‘my’ characters’ living relatives, should it be the case that I’ve put two and two together and made seven, and I hope this novel will be accepted in the spirit in which it is offered: the evocation of a vanished world and a tribute to its vibrant inhabitants and their artistry. I hope, too, that it may help to win fresh appreciation for them and for their recorded and written legacies.