Berlin, May 2002: around a wooden table in a pleasantly overgrown garden, friends and neighbours had been discussing with an English visitor some recent and imminent events — Blair's 50-minute interview on prime-time German TV, George W. Bush's coming visit, the World Cup, and so forth. The conversation turned to Berlin and the performing arts — the deficits, the new appointments, the expected disappointments, and the prospects for next season. G., the conductor of an enterprising church choir, spoke of his next autumn festival and the one to follow. There were plans for an Anglo-German festival, sensibly exploiting official civic partnerships. Given the musical interests of almost everyone present, a surprising number of English composers, from Dunstable onwards, proved unfamiliar to all but the conductor and the visitor from abroad. It was already dusk, and H. and B., the hosts, suggested a move indoors, where names and dates could be checked in the umpteen volumes of their 1970 edition of Brockhaus.