I remember my pianist Tasso Janopulo and I were rehearsing Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata. This was in Paris on the rue du Faubourg St-Honoré. It's a marvellous place, a quiet cul-de-sac inhabited by film stars and artists. It was late June, and quite warm, so we opened the window into the long inner courtyard. The celebrated French actor, Louis Jouvet lived opposite. He had an exotic servant – a Turk in a fez. Rehearsing the Kreutzer, we had got to the characteristic closing theme of the exposition of the first movement when suddenly the Turkish servant called to us across the courtyard, “You’re playing my people’s music!” Out of the blue, it seemed, he was holding a tambourine, then singing along and dancing while beating the rhythm on the tambourine! At first Tasso and I were astonished, but then I thought, Of course, the theme is Turkish in character! That’s why it’s so inconvenient to play, by the way. We are so used to hearing it in the context of the Beethoven sonata that we do not notice its exotic roots. << less