Journeys into your own past are, at their best, a sharp mixture of reassurance and surprise. Sitting the other night in a church in Aberdeenshire, I heard the first performance of a string quartet written by my childhood piano teacher, a piece unearthed from boxes of manuscripts and musical fragments and then assembled for a premiere that brought an extraordinary man back to life. It left all of us who heard it more determined then ever to keep his music alive.

Over the bank holiday weekend in the small town of Huntly, where he lived and wrote, we went back to his house to toast his memory and to retell his remarkable story.