The first clear memory I have of hearing the recorder played was at Abbotsholme School, probably in my last term there in 1933.  Our solicitous music master, Mr. C.J. Kelly (my piano teacher at the time), not only gave us daily recorded programmes of classical music and prepared us for concerts to which we were taken, but also invited well-known musicians to give performances at the School.  It was on one such occasion that he had invited the young Carl Dolmetsch (born 28^th August 1911) for an evening concert in the School’s unusual chapel, with Joseph Saxby at the keyboard.  The evening’s music-making left a strong impression on me, revealing a quite different and earlier music of the old English masters rarely heard since the seventeenth century. And what attracted me enormously was the lovely “woody” sound (I always think of it as a “nutty” tone).