Albert Sammons turned out to be a kindly, lantern-jawed man, sensitive to boys’ needs – he gave us sixpence each to buy sweets around the corner while he discussed music business with my father. When we returned with fistfuls of wine gums and Black Jacks, he led us to his private washroom to scrub our hands before asking Dovidl to play something for him. A vignette of Wieniawski’s produced an audible hum of pleasure from the senior virtuoso. A snatch of Ysaÿe brought him leaping to his feet. ‘Come, boy,’ exclaimed Sammons, ‘let’s have a go at the Kreutzer Sonata, I’ll take the piano part, years since I played it.’ The assault on Beethoven collapsed in gales of laughter, Dovidl eleven bars ahead of his hesitant, squinting accompanist, and sprinting for the finish.

‘By heavens,’ panted Sammons, ‘the boy reminds me of meself at his age. Never had a lesson in m’life, y’know. My father was a shoemaker. He put me to work in a hotel band when I was eleven, and I’d been at it for ten years when Sir Thomas Beecham dropped into the Waldorf one night for dinner and heard a few bars of me playing the finale of the Mendelssohn concerto. That was it: I was made. Always play your best, boy, you never know who might be listening – that’s the only useful advice I can give you.’

Dovidl nodded respectfully. He knew Sammons was the real thing, Brylcreemed hair and plebeian accent notwithstanding. Father had played us his gramophone recording of Sir Edward Elgar’s concerto, a work written for Kreisler but which Sammons had invested with russet English colourings and broad rolling tones in its very first recording.

‘Flesch is a damned good teacher,’ reflected Sammons, ‘and I wouldn’t advise you to let anyone tamper with one of his prodigies. The boy’s a natural, as I was. What he needs is what the Germans – damn their eyes – call Bildung, a whacking great load of musical and cultural knowledge from which he can begin to develop an interpretative style. I dunno who can do that for him. He needs some kind of mentor, a moral tutor more than a technical supervisor, someone who can bring out the inner voice. Look at the boy, he knows what I mean, don’t yer? We’re brothers under the skin, aren’t we, boy?

‘Bring him back in a year, Simmonds. No, bring him sooner and I’ll take him through the Elgar concerto that I nicked off Kreisler while he had his eye on the ladies. I want to hear the boy play something big like that.’ And, with a pat on the head and another sixpence each, he shepherded us generously through the echoing marbled corridors and out into the wintry street.

We sat upstairs on the homeward-bound seventy-three bus, Dovidl admiring the view over Hyde Park, my father deep in thought. This was a critical juncture for Dovidl, and I had to lead the way.