Someone has drawn my attention to the fact that last Saturday, in the Family section of the Guardian, a reader submitted a favourite recipe along with a recollection of her childhood, in which her late mother played the piano music of Billy Mayerl on the family’s beloved upright piano. The reader, Nikki Copleston, mentioned that she had not heard Mayerl’s music for many years until she came across my recording in a charity shop, bought it, listened to it, and was whisked back to a summer evening long ago, listening to the jaunty sounds of her mother playing Mayerl while the children sat outside on the lawn.

Nikki Copleston’s recolllection is here. You can listen to clips of Mayerl playing, and also of me.

I loved every bit of Nikki’s story except for the fact that she found my recording ‘in a charity shop’, but let that pass. It’s delightful to know that Billy Mayerl’s music can evoke the happy days of childhood.

I have been practising some of his pieces this morning, in preparation for playing one or two in a late-night concert this Saturday as part of the Cerne Abbas Music Festival. I’m hoping to play ‘Scallywag’, one of his most technically difficult pieces and one which I believe he never recorded himself. It jumps around all over the keyboard and I’ve discovered that you can’t play it if you don’t have good posture, or at least good balance, at the piano. It’s just too difficult to move your hands very fast in opposite directions if you’re not physically ‘grounded’. A good reason to think about posture!