Is Sir Andras Schiff becoming the Ken Dodd of the piano? In his later years, you’ll recall, the Yorick of Knotty Ash took to delivering marathon one-man routines that finished long after midnight. A couple of years back, Schiff expressed a similar wish: why should he have to tell us in advance what he was going to perform? And fair enough, because even with no advertised programme, the Wigmore Hall was sold out. Clearly, a lot of people will gladly pay to hear Schiff play anything at all, and part of me hoped he’d launch into Chopsticks or Richard Clayderman’s Ballade pour Adeline.

But no, Schiff had a far crueller joke up his sleeve. He walked out without a word and began the ‘Aria’ from Bach’s Goldberg Variations. A purr of happy recognition ran through the room. The numb horror of the (presumably smaller) constituency for whom the Goldbergs are sonic kryptonite was, of course, inaudible. True, I’d heard the rumours – that Schiff had been known to sit down at these open-ended gigs, and plunge straight into the full 70-minute nightmare. Somehow you never believe it will happen to you, until suddenly you’re wedged in the middle of a row hearing those tinkly little mordants and that deadly three-four tread.

What if he decided to play the rest of the Goldbergs after........

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