Your correspondent has been abroad this month in Europe. I was intending to write a nice little report about a concert in France in which Japanese pianist Kotaro Fukuma, who trained at the Paris Conservatoire, played music by Albéniz in the corner of the cloister of the Saint-Pierre Abbey in Moissac. It was a very hot, dry day and I was hungry and not much in the mood for a piano recital, but we made our way to some deckchairs and the music drifted over in a most pleasant way.

Photo © Donald Tong/Pexels

I also considered writing about another outdoor musical moment in London when we walked past Buckingham Palace on our way to lunch near Oxford Circus and happened to run into the Changing of the Guard. The Royal Band was playing a piece resonating with all the pomp and splendour of hundreds of years of history – ABBA’s Dancing Queen. I imagined Camilla upstairs in a wing of the palace busting out a few moves and singing, “Dancing Queen – that’s me!” I also wondered if ABBA was getting any money from this. Does royalty pay royalties? And is...