Not long ago, I found a little pink rosebud sitting in a small sealed glass container in a Budapest antique store. I presumed it was designed to be hanging on a necklace. I thought, why should I wear something that was crudely extracted from its natural habitat, put into an airless prison, and probably decaying?

“G for Gustav, F for Frankreich, and K for Karajan!” instructed maestro Alain Altinoglu as he conducted a ‘symphonic mob’ rehearsal in the middle of a lovely park in Bad Kissingen, a spa town in Bavaria.