The next two contestants do not detain us long. Both are suburban pre-teens who attack the violin as if it has done them harm. Amanda Garvey and Russell Thornton are products of an Oriental tuition method that takes four-year-old tots and turns them into musical robots. One after the other, this pair hit every note on the nail until the piece is hammered in, five points each. I am bunching my papers and looking forward to an easy night when the last finalist, a fifteen-year-old from Oldbridge, Peter Stemp, walks on stage, tunes up his violin and begins the opening movement of the Bach G minor sonata, one of the great interior meditations of classical literature.

The boy is too tense to inject much expression, too immature to offer enlightenment. Intonation is good, double-stopping well practised, Grade Eight exam pass.

He finishes the Adagio and pitches without pause into the near-mechanical rhythm of the Fugue, as if fearing we might stop him and send him away. The movement is less than a minute old – I have been reduced to watching the clock – when, on the pure tone of an open G string, my heart stops beating. Turns off. Cuts out.

This is it, I reckon: the moment of reckoning. ‘This has come from the Lord,’ I hear the sweet Psalmist singing, ‘let it be a wonder in our eyes. This is the day the Lord made, rejoice and be happy in it.’ Contentment consumes me and I surrender to fate. Davidian hymnody yields to Tudor poetry: ‘An end that I have now begun . . . My lute, be still, for I have done.’ Picasso’s Guernica, for some reason, springs to my mind’s eye. I am being conducted on a farewell tour d’horizon of cultural monuments as life ebbs sweetly away.

Then, with a jolt, the beat returns. Still alive. I exhale, coming to my senses at the close of the second movement, which is all we have time for. The applause is polite, my colleagues inert. ‘Nothing special,’ I hear one prof carp to the other.

So the heart-stopping moment is mine alone. What was it – an early warning of the inevitable? I run a quick self-check. I took my pills in the proper order and at the appointed hour all day long. Apart from a ridiculous amorous jolt, there has been no serious stress. Diet has been sensible. Pulse ninety-two, breathing normal. It must be the music.

Can’t be the piece, the Bach G minor, which has no sentimental history for me, so far as I am aware – a good piece, but not a gutwrencher. Something to do with the way it was played? Peter Stemp has hit some spot in me, a bullseye unmarked in years. There must be something about the pesky boy. Damnit, he nearly killed me.