Eight-year-old Russell would probably laugh at you if you said he’d become a musician. Then he’d show you his latest amazing Lego creation. Because in those days it was all about becoming an engineer or an architect or something like that.

It’s not that music was undervalued in our family. Far from it. Music was one of the most important parts of life at home. My mother remembers being taken to school on the back of her dad’s bike, and them whistling the Radetzky March. I’d find out later in life that Papa was a great classical music lover, particularly Sibelius. It’s a great sadness of my life that he never lived long enough for us to chat about it.

At home, the radio was always on – Richard Baker’s Melodies for You on BBC Radio 2 was the first place I heard the drama of Beethoven. Mum and Dad...