Erich Höbarth and I are travelling down to Bath today to prepare for our concert in the Mozartfest on Saturday morning.

Our programme is all of Mozart, interspersing duo sonatas with piano solos, but it’s a different programme to the all-Mozart one we played in the Wigmore Hall in September. Of course, with several dozen Mozart duo sonatas and dozens of piano pieces to choose from, there are endless permutations.

Erich and I spent a long while juggling different combinations of sonatas and solo piano pieces to try to make some interesting, unusual programmes.  We played one of them in London. To my amazement, the very first person who popped into the Green Room after the concert said, ‘I heard exactly that programme played in the 1970s by David Oistrakh and Paul Badura-Skoda.’ ‘What, exactly the same?’  ‘Yes, exactly the same, including the same programme order.’ ‘Really? With the two Rondos placed where we placed them, one in the first half, one in the second?’ ‘Exactly where you placed them.’

If this was really so, I wonder what the chances are of a pair of musicians coming up with exactly the same combination of duo sonatas and solo piano pieces as chosen by another pair of musicians (in a different time and place), and putting them in precisely the same order?