Quite immeasurable thanks to you & to Kitty for a day that was truly unique in my experience. I never remember a day in which the music heard in it meant so much to me. And that is really saying a lot when I think back to the small boy who used to sit alone in the drawing-room just to hear his sister practise; & of the young fellow who used, again alone, to be entertained by a head-master on a Sat. night after a cricket-match while he played the piano; & of the many, many hours I spent listening to Janet de Selincourt playing Beethoven, still later. But yesterday the gods conspired with you, dear Kay, to create—for me at least—the occasion of a lifetime. I was deeply grateful to you first for giving me the opportunity of meeting the Great Man [Sir Donald Tovey]—for so I truly esteem him.... Certainly I know of no living musician whom I would rather have met. But then, as you know, the amazing thing happened. When we might have gone with the rest of your guests, the thing happened that was like the fulfilment of a wish dream earlier dreamt. John Hunt had evidently dreamt it too & Peggy Sampson just rose to the occasion like a goddess from the sea. And I’ve never heard anything that moved me so much. It was as if they had been waiting & preparing to play together. —Perhaps I was deceived by my own music-thirstiness & by feeling so unwelcome a vein of sadness in the afternoon performance. I only know I was entranced by the way they played together & by the seeming competition in excellence they were setting each other—he subscribing with complete adequacy & she responding without the least faltering. I can’t describe it—& it would be an impertinence for me to try: I only felt, well, here’s the cellist & here’s the pianist, & how came the gods to get them to play together here & now? And then the day didn’t end there. For you just rose to the occasion as if it were all in the day’s work & I thought it was a perfectly splendid performance of Billy’s Sonata—a thing I’m certain he’s proud of & equally certain he has mighty good reason to be proud of. << less