The routine practice session may on occasion feel like panning for gold – there may well be some nuggets in there but they will reveal themselves in amongst a lot of worthless material that we need to sift through and eventually discard. This takes time and patience.

I was recently contacted at the last minute by BBC Television to appear on the 6 o’clock news for an interview about the case of the Spanish pianist who was being sued by a neighbour for practising. I was secretly glad I had teaching commitments that evening, because I may well have found myself on the side of the neighbour! All that repetition, all that stopping and starting, all those extra decibels – overhearing someone practising the piano can be torturous.