Looking for some old documents one day, I found a reminiscence I had written at the end of the 1990s as the result of a remarkably moving moment on stage with the Residentie Orchestra in The Hague. This short story tells us something about the magic of the conductor. While composing may be mysterious to many, the art of conducting also has its secrets. What does that man or woman do in front of an orchestra? With their back to the audience? Sometimes the conductor waves ferociously with his arms, or communicates with the musicians with his entire body. At other moments we see absolutely nothing happening. It seems as though the many sounds we listeners experience coming from the stage are the result of a secret ritual. What, then, if the conductor were also just a child…

There he sits on the conductors’ rostrum, in the maestro’s place: a thin, tired-looking boy with big, dark eyes. He was rolled onto the stage in a wheelchair. He raises his hand gingerly. There is a moment of absolute silence, and then the orchestra starts Brahms's Akademische Festouvertüre. There is a brief eye contact between the boy and the musicians opposite him, but also amongst the musicians themselves. This is a new experience even for the most seasoned orchestral musician. Something remarkable is happening here. This boy, still a teenager, takes the orchestra through Brahms's score seemingly with the greatest of ease, like an experienced conductor: someone who doesn't have to think; someone who knows.

A few days earlier he had borrowed the score from the orchestra to study it with me in hospital, surrounded by nurses and apparatus. We go through it page after page, bar for bar, voice by voice and note by note. Sometimes he waves his hands above the sheets, as if for that brief moment a full orchestra is hidden in his room. Then he reads on in silence.

‘It is a fine feeling, huh, when you can read a score, isn't it?’ he sighs. In his mind he conducts the difficult transitions, the beautiful melodies, but all too soon he becomes tired and asks, eyes closed, for stories about conductors.