The marvelous Russian teacher, Tatiana Nikolayeva, played the way we breathe, with the same pauses which we take to convey emotion, or the sense of a phrase when reading or acting. This gives each note a chance to develop a symphony of nuance and tone, so that some notes can be flutes and some oboes. Such layering necessitates taking time: we mustn’t throw the orchestra to the wind and take off like Toad of Toad Hall in his jalopy, scarf flying, on his way to his next accident, brash young frogs that we want to be. Rather, notes must be allowed to have lives of their own: they are clues to cataclysms.

Tempo is the great enemy of emotion, which by definition is a break in the heartbeat, a skip in the blood, a moment out of the race, a trou Gascon, when all good Musketeers pause between courses to let the sauce sink in.