In the past decade it has sold 200,000 seats at £5 each to under-25s. Some have gone on to become donors. Gilhooly says: “One young couple who could only afford to come here 10 years ago because of our £5 tickets now give us £50,000 a year.”

It was a  midweek evening in October 1914 when the curtain rose on the first concert of the First World War at London’s Wigmore Hall. Back then, the venue was called the Bechstein Hall after its owners, the elite firm of piano makers. The audience that night listened to music by Schumann and Brahms, and the chords were accompanied by the gentle click-clicking of knitting needles. Many women in the audience were doing their bit for the war effort, and had brought along the items they were making for the troops at the front. But it was an event laced with irony: the socks being knitted would go to British troops now fighting Germans. The Bechsteins were German: and so too were Schumann and Brahms.

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