Kryzhanovsky was very interested in folk music. Every time I visited him he used to bring out a pile of music – his collection of folk melodies – and play or sing me examples. All this must certainly have helped to establish my own interest in folk music. It was then, too, that I heard the great Russian singers Fyodor Shalyapin and Ivan Yershov. And all this was part of the Conservatoire ‘milieu’.