The unknown German composer championed by Mahler

I was sceptical when the lady on the bus to Reading town centre told me that her father knew Liszt. Who wouldn’t be? This was a long time ago, mind: probably 1980, and I was on my way into school. I think our conversation started because I was reading a book about music. She was old and tiny, wearing a luxuriant wig. She introduced herself as Mrs Ball but her accent was unmistakably German. Even so, Liszt had been dead for nearly a century. Could it be true?

‘Oh, my father knew everyone,’ she said. ‘Richard Strauss was a great friend. And dear Bruno Walter. He lived in our house, you know. They were wonderful days – we were surrounded by the finest music.’ But by this stage the Number 26 had reached its destination; Mrs Ball had to curtail her memories of musical soirées in pre-war Berlin as we were dumped in front of the Butts shopping centre.

There were a couple more brief chats on the bus, during which I learned the name of her father: Ertel. He’d been a composer, she said, but no one played his music any more. That was the only time she looked sad. Mostly she was girlishly excited to be asked about her musical idols, of whom the greatest couldn’t possibly have met her father. ‘Le divin Mozart!’ she exclaimed, wriggling with delight on the beer-stained seat.

Later, when I was at university, Mrs Ball visited our house: she and her frail English husband lived a few doors away. She was sweetly enthusiastic about my ham-fisted performance of a piece from Schumann’s Kinderszenen, but by that stage I was too self-absorbed to pay her much attention. She celebrated her 80th birthday about that time and then we moved away. And ever since I’ve regretted not asking her more about her life in Germany, and especially her father’s connection with Liszt.