Once upon a time, in the early 1990s, a young music editor was asked by his employer, Universal Edition Vienna, the most important publishing house for twentieth-century music and the original publisher of the works of Leoš Janáček, to go to London at short notice to meet Sir Charles Mackerras. It was said that the world-renowned conductor was keen to discuss two Janáček topics: the finalisation of new performance material for the opera Káťa Kabanová (which he had edited) and the preparation of the ‘Brno 1908’ edition of the opera Jenůfa. For a young music editor to be sent to London for a meeting with the great Charles Mackerras may seem at first to be a great honour, but in fact none of my colleagues were queuing up for the job. Universal Edition had not yet started making new critical editions of the works of Leoš Janáček and so there was no editor at hand reasonably familiar with this composer's music. Nobody wanted to expose their weaknesses in a conversation with this leading Janáček conductor on a topic about which they had little idea. And so it was that the honour fell to the youngest member of the editorial team, without arousing any envy at all on the part of his colleagues.

The meeting was arranged without my involvement and was to take place at Universal Edition's London offices. I had never met Sir Charles previously, nor had I ever had contact with him by letter or by telephone. Moreover, as to the two projects that were the purpose of my visit, my employers in Vienna had not given me much to go on; it was my task to find out all further details during the trip itself. In the short time before my departure I tried to discover the basics about Leoš Janáček and his works, but it was obvious that the rudimentary scope of this research would in no way be up to the occasion.