I first met him [Dennis Brain] in 1937 when the Academy opera-class was rehearsing Puccini’s Trittico: in the second of these three one-act operas, Suor Angelica, I had been enlisted to play the ‘pianoforte interno’, an off-stage effect whose main purpose was to keep the equally invisible chorus in time and in tune; but my ears were constantly distracted by an unusually eloquent sound coming from the wind department in front.  ‘That’s Dennis, the son of Aubrey Brain,’ it was whispered.